Kansas Bear

Israel knows that kidnapped reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev have not been transferred to Iran, government officials involved in negotiating their release told Army Radio Sunday, denying a report in Asharq Alawsat.


Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser's destroyed humvee, on the Israel-Lebanon border, July 2006.
Photo: Channel 10


Karnit Goldwasser is escorted out of a UN press conference with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Photo: Channel 2
According to Asharq Alawsat, the soldiers were moved last July in an operation directed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a short time after the two were kidnapped by Hizbullah in a cross border raid.

Recently, the paper reported, a deal involving Iran and Germany has been forming, according to which Germany would release an Iranian intelligence official detained over allegations of killing an Iranian expatriate in Berlin, and Iran, in return, would transfer the captured soldiers to Israel.

The officials discounted Sunday's report, calling it spurious.

Late July and again last week, publications in the Arab world have reported that Regev and Goldwasser were in fact dead. Al Hayat last week quoted European sources as the basis of this claim.

Goldwasser's wife, Karnit, told Israel Radio that she was loath to believe "another" newspaper report, and that the reservists' families put their faith in "official" sources only.

"We've heard reports like this all along... we don't know anything. We don't know what their condition is… Even the Red Cross hasn't been allowed to visit them," she told Israel Radio.

"[Hizbullah leader Hassan] Nasrallah has declared over and over that he's being supported and aided by [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahamdinejad," Goldwasser continued. "That's why I confronted [Ahmadinejad]."

Goldwasser also confirmed that negotiations led by a mediator from the UN have been going on continually. She refused to divulge the level or stage these negotiations have so far achieved.

Sunday was the couple's wedding anniversary, the second to pass with Ehud in captivity.

Sunday's report was the latest in a series of contradictory reports on the condition and whereabouts of Goldwasser and Regev. Thus far, Hizbullah has refused to even confirm whether the two were alive. Only last week, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper also reported that Israel was "convinced" that the reservists had been killed.

Israel was quick to dismiss the report, saying it was full of "baseless rumors," and that there was nothing new to report with regards to the kidnapped soldiers.

"The premise of the state of Israel is that they are alive, and all of our actions are based on that premise. We are doing our utmost to free them," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisen, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday morning.

One official told Israel Radio that similar reports in the past had proven to be incorrect.

Furthermore, Israel Radio reported that officials in the defense establishment maintained that the soldiers were alive, and that Hizbullah was responsible for any change in their condition.

'Goldwasser, Regev aren't in Iran' | Jerusalem Post