Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarified Thursday that the five Lebanese civilians recently released by Israel are non-combatants who were neither affiliated with terror organizations nor engaged in hostile operations.
The Prime Minister’s Office stated: “Following the completion of their interrogations, there is no justification for their continued detention in Israel”.
The five individuals were initially apprehended inside IDF-controlled sectors in southern Lebanon. Their release was formally authorized once military and security debriefings concluded that none had participated in terrorist activity.
Addressing the broader diplomatic track underway with Beirut, the Prime Minister’s Office disclosed that Netanyahu has directed negotiators to aggressively advance efforts to locate and repatriate the remains of the leaders of Lebanon’s historic Jewish community—revered martyrs abducted and brutally murdered by terror organizations in the mid-1980s.
The Prime Minister has actively championed this recovery mission for decades, dating back to his tenure as Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations.
“Over recent months, numerous operations have been carried out to locate their burial sites, conducted by both Lebanon and Israel, including active operations on the ground,” the PMO confirmed.
The repatriation of the Jewish community leaders’ remains has emerged as a central humanitarian priority within the framework of negotiations with Lebanon, with Israeli authorities pursuing actionable intelligence both in the field and through backchannel diplomatic corridors to achieve closure on the decades-old file.