The curious case of the Israeli who crossed into Lebanon and wasn’t taken hostage
Oleg Gammerman, said to have mental health problems, returns home with the help of the UN… and the tacit agreement of Hezbollah
An Israeli citizen who crossed the border into Lebanon last week was returned to Israel on Friday in a rare and remarkable instance of constructive negotiation between warring parties that involved the IDF, the Lebanese security forces, the UN’s border monitoring force… and Hezbollah, the Shiite terror group sworn to Israel’s destruction.
Oleg Gammerman, a 55-year-old Jerusalem resident, went missing from his home on Wednesday, and climbed the northern border fence into Lebanon on Thursday. The fence in that area is less sophisticated than border fencing on the Golan Heights and other areas, but still not easy to clear, according to an Army Radio report on Sunday. The report said the IDF became aware that the fence had been breached, but by then Gammerman had been captured by Lebanese Army forces.
Israel immediately reached out to the United Nations peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, UNIFIL, and other potential intermediaries, and negotiations were begun to try to secure his safe return. Nominally, he was being held by the Lebanese Army, but practically his fate was in the hands of Hezbollah, Army Radio said, quoting Israeli security officials.
Hezbollah in 2000 abducted and held hostage Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum, later released in a prisoner exchange, and in 2006 it prompted the Second Lebanon War with a raid into Israel in which three soldiers were killed and two were grabbed — their remains later returned to Israel in another lop-sided exchange. But in last week’s episode, Hezbollah acted very differently, the security sources were quoted as saying approvingly.
Because Gammerman had “fallen into their hands,” the report said, and had evidently crossed the border because of what his wife said Sunday was a history of mental illness, Hezbollah chose to allow his safe return to Israel. The sources praised “Lebanon’s behavior” over the incident — “and by Lebanon, they mean Hezbollah,” the radio report said. One official quoted by the Walla news website praised Lebanon for its “humanitarian” response to the situation.
The Israeli officials drew a sharp contrast between Hezbollah’s actions in this incident and those of Hamas, the Islamist terror group in Gaza, specifically citing the case of Avraham Mengistu, an Israeli of Ethiopian origin with mental health issues who crossed into the Gaza Strip in September 2014, and whom Israel accuses Hamas of holding.
After he was handed back to Israel via UNIFIL at the Rosh Hanikra crossing on Friday, Gammerman was debriefed and questioned by Israeli security officials for several hours, Walla reported Sunday after a media gag order on the case was lifted.
Israel and Lebanon are technically in a state of war, and it is illegal for Israeli citizens to enter the territory of an enemy country.
According to his wife Ruhama, Gammerman has a history of mental illness and is “currently not doing very well.”
“I can’t explain why he did this,” she told Walla. “He’s a very sensitive and kind person who has suffered a lot of trauma in his life.”
She thanked Israeli and Lebanese officials for their successful efforts to return her husband safely.
“This is the acceptable thing to do,” an unnamed Israeli official told Walla, “in a situation in which an innocent man who clearly has mental health needs manages to cross the border.”
