BEIRUT: Israel has responded to Lebanese demands for the release of 34 Lebanese detainees with what Lebanese sources described as an “impossible” condition: information on Lebanese Jews who disappeared during the civil war in the 1980s and the return of their remains.
The Lebanese Association for Prisoners and Freed Detainees has documented 34 Lebanese held in Israeli prisons, including three detained in 1978, 1981 and 2005.
The remaining 31 include 10 Hezbollah fighters, two nurses detained while accompanying Hezbollah members who were arrested, and 21 civilians.
According to detainee lists obtained by Asharq Al-Awsat, nine Lebanese were documented as having been detained during the latest war, which erupted on March 2, while 22 were detained between October 2024 and February 2026.
Impossible conditions
The issue of detainees was discussed on the third day of the seventh round of US-sponsored negotiations at the US Embassy in Rome.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said on Friday that the Rome talks had “made positive progress on the border and detainee files,” and voiced hope that practical steps would follow soon.
One positive development was an agreement to keep discussing the issue. But the initial exchanges also exposed what Lebanese sources following the talks described to Asharq Al-Awsat as “impossible Israeli conditions.”
The sources said Israel’s response came after Lebanon pressed for information on the detainees’ fate and their release.
The Israeli delegation “demanded the return of the remains of Lebanese Jews killed during the civil war and information on the fate of Lebanese Jews who disappeared during the Lebanese civil war, particularly in the 1980s,” the sources said.
It also demanded information on Israeli pilot Ron Arad “or the handover of his remains.”
Arad disappeared in 1987 after his aircraft went down in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is suspected of having been involved in his abduction at the time.
Issue raised in 2022
The Lebanese sources called the Israeli demands “impossible,” saying the Lebanese state “knows nothing about the remains of the Jews in the first place, nor does it know anything about Ron Arad.”
Israel has detained more than one senior Hezbollah figure since the 1990s in attempts to obtain information about Arad. German-mediated prisoner exchange talks between Hezbollah and Israel in 2004 also failed to make progress on the case.
“What the Israeli side proposed is impossible, so they can justify refusing to cooperate on the Lebanese detainees file and also embarrass the Lebanese state, which has no information on what the Israelis raised,” the sources said.
They said neither the Arad case nor the issue of Lebanese Jews killed or missing during the civil war was new.
The same issues were raised during US-mediated maritime border negotiations with Israel in 2022, led at the time by US presidential envoy Amos Hochstein, the sources said.
The file was eventually closed after all sides concluded that the Lebanese state had no means of establishing their fate.
Lebanese Jews and civilians versus fighters
The disappearance of Lebanese Jews dates to security incidents in Beirut’s Qantari and Wadi Abu Jamil districts between 1984 and 1987.
A number of Lebanese Jews disappeared during that period, most notably former Lebanese Jewish community leader Isaac Sasson, who was abducted at gunpoint in 1985.
The groups behind the abductions, foremost among them the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth — a network historically linked to the early cells from which Hezbollah emerged — announced that some of those abducted had been executed.
Raising the issue adds another layer of complexity to the Lebanese detainees’ file.
Beirut’s negotiating delegation presented an updated list of detainees whose details are held by the Lebanese army, including their names, locations, and whether they are fighters or civilians.
There was no discussion of separating civilian cases from those of fighters. The Israeli side instead raised the remains of Lebanese Jews, and the two sides ultimately agreed to continue discussing the file.
Fears over detainees grow
The Lebanese Association for Prisoners and Freed Detainees also sees Israel’s demands as impossible.
Its head, Ahmad Taleb, told Asharq Al-Awsat that raising the issue during the talks “increases concerns over the Lebanese detainees.”
“What do Lebanese detainees arrested over the past two years have to do with the remains of Jews from the Lebanese war?” Taleb asked.
Lebanon has “17,000 people missing from the civil war whose fate has still not been determined, including Jews who, in the end, are Lebanese citizens,” he said.
Taleb said the Lebanese detainees’ file was “first and foremost a humanitarian issue” and should not be handled politically because it is governed by international law and the Geneva Convention.
He said Tel Aviv “refuses to cooperate with the International Committee of the Red Cross to determine the conditions in which these detainees are being held, check on their situation and document their legal and humanitarian status.”
Taleb said the association had received information from Palestinian human rights circles indicating that “Israel considers the Lebanese detainees unlawful combatants and therefore grants them none of the rights guaranteed under international law and international humanitarian conventions.”
“Some of them are wounded and we have no information about them, while most are civilians,” he said.
67 missing since 2024
The association and Lebanese authorities have documented 34 Lebanese detainees held by Israel, but the number could rise.
Another 67 people remain unaccounted for after contact with them was lost in areas that were under Israeli army control during the 2024 war.
It remains unclear whether they were killed or are being held by the Israeli military.
“We presented our demands to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun during a previous meeting with him, and today we renew our demand that the Lebanese state do more to address this humanitarian issue,” Taleb said.
He accused the state of falling short, saying the Foreign Ministry had taken no action — neither submitting a memorandum to the United Nations, forming a ministry committee to follow the case, creating an official follow-up committee, nor referring the file to the relevant UN human rights bodies in Geneva.
“That is the very least that should be done,” he said. “We demand that the state fulfill its responsibilities.”
Taleb said the detainees’ families also “feel that the state has fallen short, as not a single government official has contacted them.”
