Exchange set for Wednesday morning on Israel-Lebanon border

       The cabinet on Tuesday ratified a deal to return two Israel Defense Forces soldiers captured by the Lebanon-based Hezbollah guerilla group in 2006, in exchange for five Lebanese militants jailed in Israel. The deal was approved with a majority vote of 22 ministers in favor and three opposed. The swap will see the return of abducted reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in exchange for four imprisoned Hezbollah militants - Maher Kourani, Khodor Zaidan, Mohammed Srour and Hussein Suleiman - and infamous Lebanese terrorist, Samir Kuntar. A majority approval had been expected, despite Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's pronouncement Monday that Hezbollah had handed over an "absolutely unsatisfactory" report on its efforts to discover the fate Israeli navigator Ron Arad, who disappeared in Lebanon 22 years ago. Israel had demanded the Arad report as part of the exchange deal, but government officials said it would not be a deal-breaker. The cabinet had met for the special session to discuss Hezbollah's report on its efforts to determine Arad's fate. The ministers were briefed on its assessment following deliberations by the heads of the country's intelligence organizations. The Prime Minister's Office said following the meeting that the cabinet decided to reject the Hezbollah report. According to a source in Ehud Olmert's entourage to Paris, the result of the cabinet's final vote on the prisoner exchange was to be based on what it heard in the briefing. But the director of the Rosh Hanikra compound where Israel is to receive Goldwasser and Regev said that military and other preparations for the exchange had begun at the site early on Tuesday, long before the cabinet ratified the deal. Former IDF chief rabbi Israel Weiss, who took part in a 2002 prisoner excahnge in which Hezbollah returned the bodies of three IDF soldiers as well as captive civilian Elhanan Tennenbaum, said that the first task of examining the bodies would be to make a positive identification. Weiss told Army Radio that it would also be possible to determine when the soldiers died. The Goldwasser and Regev families renewed their campaign this week to convince cabinet ministers to support the prisoner swap with Hezbollah, fearing that despite the cabinet's approval of the deal on June 29, last-minute problems might pop up. In particular, the families worried that criticism of Hezbollah's report on Arad could provide an excuse for cancelling the deal. (20,37)