BACKGROUND: Israel's main prisoner exchanges since 1956

Oct 12, 2011, 11:12 GMT

Berlin - The following is a chronology of some of the main prisoner exchanges involving Israel since 1956:

March 1956: Israel frees 41 Syrian prisoners in exchange for four soldiers who were captured by Syria two years earlier in the Golan Heights.

January 1957: More than 5,500 Egyptian soldiers captured by Israel during the Suez Crisis War of October-November 1956 are freed in return for four Israeli soldiers held by Egypt.

December 1963: Israel frees 18 Syrians in return for 11 Israeli soldiers and civilians held in Syria.

June 1967: After the Six Day War, Israel carries out unilateral prisoner swaps with its Arab neighbours. Fifteen Israeli soldiers were held by Arab armies at the end of the war. Israel had 6,708 Arab prisoners of war. Under a prisoner swap with Syria, Israel freed 572 Syrians in exchange for a lone Israeli air force pilot held by Damascus.

November 1973: Israel and Egypt exchange prisoners following the October War. Some 242 Israelis and 8,372 Egyptians were freed in a multi-stage swap deal.

March 1979: Israel frees 76 militants in exchange for a soldier held in Lebanon. The soldiers was captured during a military operation in southern Lebanon a year earlier.

November 23, 1983: Israel frees 4,700 militants held in the Ansar jail in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon, and 65 militants held in prisons in Israel, in exchange for six soldiers captured in Lebanon on September 3, 1982, and held by the Palestinian Fatah organization.

June 28, 1984: Israel hands over to Syria 291 soldiers, 13 civilians, and the bodies of 74 Syrian soldiers, in return for three soldiers and three civilians captured in Lebanon, and the bodies of five soldiers.

May 21, 1985: Israel releases 1,150 militants in exchange for two soldiers captured in Lebanon on September 3, 1982 and held by Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, and in exchange for an Israeli tank crewman who was captured by the Syrians in a tank battle in the 1982 war.

Sept 12, 1991: Israel receives the body of a Druze soldier snatched by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) in south Lebanon April 1983. In return, two DFLP activists are allowed to return to Israel.

July 21, 1996: The bodies of two Israeli soldiers, who had been abducted at a roadblock in south Lebanon in 1986, are returned to Israel. In exchange, Israel returns 123 bodies to Lebanon.

June 25, 1998: Israel receives the body of a soldier who had been killed during an unsuccessful commando raid on Lebanon the previous year.

January 29, 2004: Israel releases 23 Lebanese, 400 Palestinians, and 12 nationals from other Arab countries, in return for the bodies of three soldiers snatched in south Lebanon on October 7, 2000, and for an Israel civilian kidnapped by Hezbollah while on a trip abroad.

July 16, 2008: Israel frees five Lebanese prisoners in exchange for two Israeli soldiers captured in a Hezbollah cross-border raid on July 12, 2006. The deal also calls for 10 Palestinian prisoners to be freed, and for Israel to return to Lebanon the bodies of 199 Lebanese buried in a special cemetery for fallen soldiers.

October 11, 2011: Israel and Hamas agree on a deal that is to see Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit freed in exchange for the release of 1,027 militants. Shalit was snatched in a cross-border raid by Gaza militants in June 2006.

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