Israel has requested the transfer of the remains of Jews buried in cemeteries in Lebanon to Israel as part of negotiations between Jerusalem and Beirut over a permanent agreement, according to a report on Monday.

The Israeli side has pointed to a large number of Jewish graves in Beirut and Sidon which belong to people who have relatives currently living in Israel, Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported.

Jews resided in Lebanon for centuries. Lebanon was the only Arab country whose Jewish population grew after the establishment of Israel in 1948, reaching around 10,000 people. But the community quickly dwindled after that, numbering in the low hundreds in the 1970s, and has since shrunk to just a few dozen at most today.

The issue was reportedly raised in the context of talks over Lebanese prisoners who were detained during the war in Lebanon and are being held in Israel, whose release Lebanon is demanding.

According to the report, Israel proposed transferring the remains from Lebanon as part of what it called a “civilian prisoner exchange deal,” which would include the transfer of the remains and the release of only some of the detained Lebanese, excluding........

© The Times of Israel