Israel hands Lebanese detainees across the Naqoura line as Rome talks are prepared

Israel transferred Lebanese detainee Malek Kamal Ghazi to the Lebanese army on 3 September through the International Committee of the Red Cross at the Naqoura crossing. Lebanese media said he received a medical check after crossing. It is the first prisoner handover since the war that opened in March. Israeli and Lebanese outlets said four more Lebanese held by the IDF are due to follow as a goodwill step ahead of a new round of talks in Rome, pencilled for mid-September.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called the return of any Lebanese "an important step" on a file that also includes missing people and a full Israeli withdrawal. He thanked the U.S. administration and named ambassador Michel Issa. The Grand Serail account posted the statement the same afternoon. In Jerusalem, the Prime Minister's Office confirmed the releases and attached a condition of its own. Benjamin Netanyahu, the office said, has instructed officials to push the search for the remains of leaders of Lebanon's Jewish community who were kidnapped and killed by armed groups in the mid-1980s. The office said both sides have done field work on that search in recent months, and that the five men being sent home were arrested in areas of south Lebanon under IDF control.

Israeli television said the five-man package was coordinated with Washington and followed a meeting between Netanyahu and the U.S. ambassadors to Israel and to Lebanon. N12 reported the Prime Minister's Office confirmed the facts after the channel published them. Ynet named Ghazi as a man who disappeared near Mount Hermon last October. Arab outlets said two more of the five would reach Beirut shortly.

The handover sits inside a larger paper signed in Washington on 26 June. The United States, Israel, and Lebanon initialled a trilateral framework whose security annex, later published by Asharq Bloomberg and confirmed to The Times of Israel by two officials, sets pilot zones in the South Litani sector, a four-step military planning model, and a conditions-based IDF redeployment tied to the disarmament of non-state armed groups and the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces. Israel has already told its own officers that the pilot in the south is not delivering what was promised. Strikes have continued. An Israeli strike killed a woman in the south in late August. Forces demolished a care home in Marjayoun. Save the Children said more than seven children a day were being killed or wounded in Lebanon.

The Rome round is supposed to be political. Military talks may move to Tampa. Beirut wants a timetable for withdrawal and state control of arms. Israel wants the remains file and a verifiable end to the arsenal on its northern border. Washington is carrying messages both ways. A single crossing at Naqoura does not settle any of those points. It does create a physical fact: a man who was in Israeli custody yesterday is in Lebanese hands today, and four names are now on a list that both governments have an interest in completing before negotiators sit down.

Ghazi's transfer is also a test of the Red Cross channel that has been idle on this border since March. If the other four move on the same road, Rome starts with a small completed bargain. If they do not, the first handover becomes an isolated gesture and the annex signed in June stays a document without a body count of returned people to match it.