The Israeli government is encouraging dozens of families of Lebanese militiamen, who fought with Israel and then fled into Israel when the army withdrew from South Lebanon last year, to return to their home country - and is giving them cash payments when they depart, reportedly to bribe their former Hizbullah enemies to go easy on them.
Several dozen Lebanese - former fighters from the pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army and their families - crossed the Israeli border into Lebanon on Tuesday, more are due to make the journey today, and still more are expected to do so next week. The Israeli government is said to be giving them a parting gift of about $25,000 per bachelor or head of family, with a further $2,000 payment per child.
According to Israel Television, much of the money, officially designated to help them resettle, will in fact be paid to the Hizbullah group, whose guerrilla attacks on the SLA and the Israeli army prompted Israel's hurried withdrawal in May 2000 from the buffer zone it had carved out in South Lebanon.
Hundreds of former SLA members - some of whom stayed on in Lebanon after the Israelis departed, and others who have returned over the past year-and-a-half - have either turned themselves in to Hizbullah or been captured, and in some cases have been jailed for a year or more for having fought alongside Israel. Eighteen of those who returned on Tuesday are said to have been arrested.
The new "resettlement" financial package, said the TV report, would be used by the latest returnees to try and ensure lenient treatment from the Hizbullah. If so, ironically, Israel will be helping to fund Hizbullah at a time when the US-led anti-terror coalition, strongly backed by Israel, is attempting to freeze the funding of Hizbullah, Hamas and other extremist groups.
An estimated 6,000 SLA fighters and their families fled into Israel with the departing army in May 2000. Almost 2,000 have since returned to Lebanon; several hundred more have found homes in Germany, Australia and elsewhere. And while most of those still in Israel have been housed in rented homes across the north, unemployment is high, with the language barrier and Israel's overall economic slowdown deepening the hardship.
At the border crossing on Tuesday, as they bid farewell to friends and relatives who are staying on, the returning ex-fighters spoke of having "no future" in Israel.
Mr Eli Landau, a prominent ex-army officer who has been seeking to obtain better treatment for the former SLA fighters, has lamented what he calls Israel's "heartless treatment" of its former allies.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, is to make a delayed trip to the US early next month, a diplomat said yesterday, as expectations grew of renewed US mediation in the Middle East peace process.
Mr Sharon cancelled plans to visit Washington and attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week, when the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, promised more Middle East diplomacy "in the days and weeks ahead".