From Israeli detention to reunion: Five detainees return to Lebanon

Report by Wissam Nasrallah, English adaptation by Karine Keuchkerian

Nearly a year after he disappeared, Malek Kamal Ghazi returned to Ain Aata, the place he left one day and never came back to. There, the moment needed few words, only a long embrace with his family and a home that had been waiting for him since October last year, when he went missing while leaving his hometown. It later emerged that he had been taken into Israel.

On Thursday, part of that wait finally came to an end.

Israel handed Malek over to the International Committee of the Red Cross at Naqoura. He was then transferred to the Lebanese army in Tyre, where he underwent medical examinations before finally returning to his family. However, he was not alone.

On Friday morning, another Red Cross convoy returned to Naqoura to receive four other detainees. They were then transferred to Lebanon before being handed over to the army and taken to the Benoit Barakat Barracks in Tyre.

Two of them are Lebanese: Ali Shour and Hussein Ayash. The other two are Syrian: Asaad al-Hasaikeh and Wissam Ibrahim al-Samawi.

Along the route taken by the convoy, Mahmoud Ayash was waiting. He was neither an official nor a negotiator, but the brother of one of the detainees, who had come to the Amiriyeh checkpoint to wait for his brother.

For these families, the political process surrounding the detainees was never merely an item on a negotiating agenda.

It meant waiting every day, receiving scarce news about their loved ones and wondering about the conditions of their detention and their fate, particularly as the International Committee of the Red Cross had been unable in recent months to access all Lebanese detainees held by Israel.

The families of the detainees had repeatedly raised the issue with Lebanese officials, demanding that the fate of their loved ones be determined and that they be returned home.

The release of the five detainees did not take place separately from the political track.

Their release came as a result of President Joseph Aoun's follow-up with the U.S. Washington, meanwhile, confirmed that it had mediated between Lebanon and Israel in the arrangement that led to the releases.

For its part, the Israeli prime minister's office linked the move to progress in efforts to locate the remains of members of the Jewish community who went missing and were killed during the 1980s. The issue has since become part of ongoing negotiations between the two sides, mediated by the United States.

Between an embrace in Ain Aata and a wait at the Amiriyeh checkpoint, the releases captured one of the most sensitive issues in the negotiations. Five detainees were released over two days, but for the families still waiting for their loved ones, the detainee file will not be closed with the return of five. It will only close when the last one comes home.