One of the key Israeli officials who has been negotiating a swap of Arab prisoners held in Israel for Israeli soldiers missing in Lebanon resigned Monday, citing personal and professional reasons.
Defense Minister Moshe Arens accepted “with regret” the resignation of Uri Slonim, a lawyer who served for six years as the Defense Ministry’s adviser on prisoners of war.
While Slonim’s departure appears to be amicable, it nevertheless focused attention on the mounting dissatisfaction among the families of MIAs over Israel’s inability to bring them home, dead or alive.
Yehuda Baumel, father of one missing IDF soldier, suggested in a radio interview last week that the entire Israeli negotiating team should be replaced by people who might come up with fresh ideas, just as police personnel are replaced when a criminal investigation reaches an impasse.
Baumel did not mention Slonim. But he suggested the replacement of among others, Uri Lubrani, Israel’s longtime official liaison with the United Nations and other bodies trying to engineer hostage and prisoner exchanges.
The efforts of former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, before he left office at the end of 1991, succeeded in securing freedom for the last Americans and Britons held hostage by Shi’ite groups in Lebanon.
But no progress was made on the Israeli prisoners and, as many here feared, the issue has since dropped out of sight internationally.
Slonim reportedly had differences of opinion with Lubrani over handling the negotiations. But the lawyer insisted that had no influence on his decision to resign.
Associates of Slonim said he had virtually abandoned his private practice, was rarely able to spend time with his family and had forfeited “very large incomes.”
Nevertheless, Slonim asked to be kept in the picture of the continuing prisoner exchange negotiating process and said he planned to keep in contact with the families of the missing men. Only one of them, Capt. Ron Arad, is believed to be alive.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
