Copyright 1993 Jerusalem Post
Jerusalem Post
December 2, 1993
HEADLINE: RABIN: RETURN OF BAUMEL'S IDENTITY TAG IS IMPORTANT
BYLINE: BATSHEVA TSUR
The handing over by the PLO of the IDF identification tag of
missing Israeli soldier Zacharia Baumel is "a first significant step,"
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said yesterday in Brussels.
"It is concrete evidence that there is a way to uncover further
information about [MiAs] Zacharia Baumel, Yehuda Katz and Zvi
Feldman," Rabin said.
"I regard this as the first part of a process of reaching clear
clarification about the future of the three soldiers," who were
captured in Lebanon in June 1982.
Baumel's tag was brought to Rabin from Tunisia by his special
envoy, Jacques Neriah, and was due to be brought here late last night.
The three men have not been heard from since their disappearance
during the battle for Sultan Yacoub.
The tag was received broken down the center, which, by IDF
convention, indicates the soldier was killed. The tag, however, could
have been broken as a ploy by Baumel's captors or by the PLO.
Interviewed on the Mabat news broadcast last night, Yona Baumel,
Zacharia's father, demanded the PLO return the second half of the ID
tag.
He claimed that in 1984, the PLO had produced a wax copy of the
whole tag, proving that the tag, in its entirety, had been in PLO
hands. The half-disk being handed over now was meant to mislead, he
said.
On Monday, Rabin said he would link any release of Palestinian
security prisoners to receipt of information on the MiA's.
Of the three other missing soldiers, navigator Ron Arad, shot
down in October 1986, is believed to be alive and in Iranian hands,
while Yosef Fink and Rahamim Alsheikh, captured in February 1986,
reportedly died, though their bodies were never recovered.
Rabin telephoned Baumel's father, Yona, to inform him that the
tag was being forwarded.
"We're more optimistic now than we've been in the past," Baumel
told The Jerusalem Post last night.
"The fact that Zacharia's tag will reach us only today is not
important. We're not sentimental about things like that. It's not a
holy relic. It's as good in the prime minister's hands as in ours."
Dr. Ahmed Tibi, a top adviser to Yasser Arafat, said the PLO head
had received a request from Rabin for the tag during their meeting in
Cairo.
"The chairman [Arafat] regards this as a humanitarian act of the
first order and we are doing everything possible to help with this
painful problem," Tibi told Israel Radio.
Baumel, who on Tuesday held a press conference to call for
confidence-building measures from the PLO, said:"This is an
encouraging first step on the part of the PLO. They must understand
that if they continue in this vein, they'll be doing more justice to
their Palestinian brethren because there are many more of them waiting
to return to their loved ones."
A high-ranking source in a Moslem extremist organization in
Lebanon said yesterday that Ron Arad is alive and held by the Iranian
or Syrian Intelligence services. In an interview with the French News
Agency in Lebanon the source said that the solution to the issue will
be found only through close coordination between Syria and Iran.