ISRAEL MAY DECLARE TWO KIDNAPPED SOLDIERS DEAD, HAVE DEAL FOR ANOTHER

Shalit Deal: 230 Terrorists to Hamas (IRIS)
Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement on the identities of 230 Palestinian prisoners to be freed as part of a deal to secure the release of captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, Army Radio reported Monday morning.

According to the report, disputes remain regarding 120 additional prisoners the group is demanding be freed in the first stage of the deal - prisoners Israel has thus far refused to release.

Progress in the negotiations was reportedly made after a decision by a special ministerial committee to relax the criteria for defining a prisoner with "blood on his hands." Initially, Israel was only willing to release 44 prisoners on the Hamas list.

Report: Israel to declare Lebanon hostages dead (JTA)
A German magazine said Israel plans to declare dead two soldiers who were abducted by Hezbollah.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's administration will soon go public with its assessments that Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, two army reservists seized by Hezbollah in a July 2006 border raid, are dead, Germany's Der Spiegel magazine reported over the weekend.

Israeli officials said there was no formal change to Jerusalem's policy that Goldwasser and Regev should be considered alive unless proven otherwise, and the soldiers' families dismissed the Der Spiegel report as speculative.

Germany has been key to efforts to mediate an Israeli-Hezbollah prisoner swap under which the soldiers would be returned home.

Hezbollah has refused to give any information on the condition of Goldwasser or Regev.

Israeli security sources believe that one or both of the men may have been killed during their kidnapping, given the amount of ordnance used against their convoy as it patrolled the Lebanese border.

Der Spiegel regularly runs stories about the Middle East and is believed to have high-placed government sources in Israel.