Hizballah-sponsored Galilee group claims “Israel girl soldier” from Tiberias held hostage 5 years

Is this an Israeli version of Ingrid Betancourt’s long agony as the hostage of terrorists?
An unnamed man, saying he was chief of the Galilee Liberation Brigades, claimed in an interview Sunday, June 6, to have carried out the last two terrorist attacks in Jerusalem – the bulldozer rampage and the yeshiva massacre. He then said his group has been holding an Israeli girl soldier from Tiberias hostage for five years and promised a video-tape soon to prove it.
debkafile‘s counter-terror sources are convinced he was referring to Dana Bennett, 18, who disappeared after a late-night shift as a waitress in Tiberias on Aug. 1, 2003, and was never heard of since, although hundreds of searchers hunted for her across Galilee. A month later, the family of the teenager, who held dual US-Israeli citizenship, posted a $50,000 reward for any information of her whereabouts.
The man interviewed by the London Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi Sunday said the release of three Arab Israelis serving life sentences would be demanded. He would name them after releasing the video-tape of the girl hostage to launch negotiations for a deal.
debkafile‘s counter-terror sources have insisted since July 2003, when Cpl, Oleg Shaikhet, 20, was kidnapped and murdered a week before Dana Bennett’s disappearance, that the Galilee Liberation Brigades were a serious terrorist menace. Then, as now, after the latest Jerusalem attacks, the authorities maintain no knowledge of the group.
On July 2, the day a Palestinian bulldozer driver murdered 3 Israelis and injured 70 on Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road, debkafile alone reported that the three terrorist attacks Jerusalem had suffered in 11 months were all perpetrated by this same Hizballah Arab Israeli offshoot.
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Our sources also noted that a few hours after the July 2 attack, Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah announced in Beirut that the prisoner swap with Israel would take place in mid-July.
The nameless Galilee terrorist chief’s interview in the London paper Sunday coincided with the announced start of the reciprocal trade, yet no Israeli official source connected this chain of events.
debkafile‘s sources interpreted the interview as a signal from Hizballah that the impending handover of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped two years ago in a cross-border raid, is not the end and more Israeli hostages remain in terrorist hands.
The anonymous terrorist chief also had this to say:
1. The Israeli police recently renewed their search for Dana Bennett in Galilee woods.
2. Israel Arab lawmakers must quit the Israeli parliament and not run for re-election.
3. The group’s goal is to sow fear in all parts of the Zionist state.
4. Its links with Hizballah were confirmed but the interviewee said there were others too.
5. The two last terrorist attacks in Jerusalem were part of the revenge for the killing of Hizballah military commander Imad Mughniyeh.
6. The group is not offended by being treated as non-existent by the Israeli government, but is using its undercover status to embarrass Israeli security.