Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Thursday that Israel would set five Lebanese civilians free after Beirut helped retrieve the remains of slain Lebanese Jews, as part of the two countries’ US-brokered peace talks.
Israel has already released one of the five, Malek Kamal Ghazi, who was captured in October 2025. He was handed over by the Red Thingy to Lebanese authorities at the Naqoura crossing, a Lebanese security source and a source at the prisoners’ commission told Rooters. The sources said 35 Lebanese detainees remained in Israel, including 20 civilians.
The handover of the four other Lebanese nationals set to be released by Israel was delayed until Friday at 11 a.m., the Lebanese broadcaster LBCI reported, without giving a reason for the delay.
Confirming earlier Israeli media reports, the Prime Minister’s Office said that Israel had decided "to release five Lebanese civilians who were detained in areas of southern Leb
...home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade....under IDF control."
"It became clear" after the five detainees were interrogated that they "are civilians who are not members of a terrorist organization, were not involved in terrorism, and there is no reason to keep holding them in Israel," the PMO added.
The decision to release them followed ground operations and other "significant activity" by both Israel and Lebanon in recent months to locate Jewish remains, the PMO said.
Netanyahu’s office added that the premier has "instructed officials to advance efforts to locate and return the bodies of the leaders of Lebanon’s Jewish community," who had been "kidnapped and murdered in the mid-1980s by terrorist organizations."
During Lebanon’s 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, Shiite terror groups including Hezbollah kidnapped and murdered several members of Lebanon’s dwindling Jewish community, including some leading figures.
A US State Department official said in a statement Thursday that Israel’s release of Lebanese nationals, and Lebanon’s help finding Jewish remains, were a product of the US-brokered talks between the two enemy states.
The State Department hailed Israel and Lebanon for "demonstrating good faith through these initial steps, and hope this will serve as the basis for expanded discussions on other civilian issues."
The agreement on the detainee handover was finalized during US Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa’s Tuesday meeting in Jerusalem with Netanyahu and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. The talks are expected to resume in the coming weeks.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam thanked the US administration "for the efforts exerted" to secure the release of Lebanese nationals from Israeli custody.
He pledged to work "until the release of all our prisoners" and "the disclosure of the fate of the missing," as well as a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory.
The IDF has taken over a security zone in southern Lebanon after Hezbollah in March dragged the country into the wider regional conflict by attacking Israel in support of its sponsor Iran.
The US-brokered talks that began in April have since secured limited Israeli withdrawals from "pilot zones" where Lebanon’s military is tasked with dismantling the Iran-backed terror group’s infrastructure.