Report: Lebanon-Israel talks may include Ron Arad remains in exchange for security prisoners

A Washington-based Al-Jadeed report said Tuesday that diplomatic contacts between Lebanon and Israel will include discussion of a remains-for-prisoners deal, under which the remains of Israeli pilot Ron Arad could be handed over in return for Lebanese prisoners. The report comes after years of speculation over Arad, who disappeared after being captured in Lebanon in 1986.

The article also revisits an Israeli raid in March on a cemetery on the outskirts of Nabi Sheet in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, which Lebanese reports said was intended to find new information about Arad. At the same time, the IDF carried out heavy strikes on the nearby town of Jebshit in southern Lebanon. Those events, the report says, have put both towns back in the spotlight.

According to the article, Nabi Sheet and Jebshit have served for more than 40 years as major Hezbollah strongholds, important sources of influence for the group’s leaders and frequent Israeli targets. Nabi Sheet, in the center of the Bekaa, became a training and logistics base where Iranian envoys operated, while Jebshit was part of a Shiite support belt in southern Lebanon, alongside Al-Bazuriyah and Abbasiyah. The towns were central to the rise of Hezbollah after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, when Tehran deepened its presence among Lebanon’s Shiite population.

The piece highlights two key figures linked to the towns, Ragheb Harb of Jebshit and Abbas Musawi of Nabi Sheet, saying they helped mobilize the Shiite community. Harb was arrested by the IDF in March 1983, sparking protests, released after two and a half weeks, and later killed near his home in 1984. Musawi, who later became Hezbollah’s secretary-general in 1991, was killed in an Israeli Apache helicopter strike in 1992 along with his wife, son and bodyguards after leaving a memorial in Jebshit. He is buried in Nabi Sheet, where a large shrine later became a pilgrimage site and a show of strength; he was succeeded by Hassan Nasrallah, alongside whom Imad Mughniyeh later rose.