Lebanese people hold pictures of their jailed relatives during a sit-in marking Prisoner's Day in front of the International Red Cross Organisation's headquarters in Beirut's Hamra neighbourhood on July 14, 2008 Photo by: AFP PHOTO/RAMZI HAIDAR

A victory arch with a portrait of detainee Maher Kurani hangs at the entrance to his home village of Yater, east of the port town of Tyre. Alongside are pictures of 20 men killed in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Bulldozers have levelled roads leading to the Kurani home, where people have been congratulating the family even ahead of the exchange.

Israel said on Sunday that five Lebanese prisoners will be freed on Wednesday in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah in 2006. Mohammed Hassan Kurani, 70, has been proudly receiving well-wishers at his humble home covered in yellow Hezbollah banners and red-white-and-green Lebanese flags. Israeli soldiers captured his son Maher in the southern village of Shaheen on July 29, 2006, he said. Maher's own son, Hassan, named after Hassan Nasrallah, chief of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, "doesn't know his father who was arrested a few months after his birth," Kurani said. "We believe in the words of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. He is the one who told us that we will not leave our detainees in prison," he said, using the title for descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. "We're no longer the only ones to die and no longer the only ones who are detained. Our blood has become valuable and worth more than Israeli blood," he said. Kurani was referring to the July 12, 2006 cross-border raid in which Hezbollah captured two wounded Israeli soldiers and eight others were killed, triggering a 34-day war with the Jewish state. Hezbollah said at the time that the aim of its raid was to press for the release of Arab prisoners held in Israel.