Senior Israeli opposition lawmaker Yuval Steinitz told Israel Radio on Sunday that he views favorably a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert intends to announce that two Israeli reservists abducted by Hizballah in 2006 are dead.

Mr. Steinitz said that as long as Israel has no sign of life from Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser it must presume they are no longer alive, and thereby deprive Hizballah of the ability to elicit concessions from Israel for mere scraps of information regarding their condition.

The cross-border Hizballah raid that resulted in the abduction was what sparked the bloody 34-day Second Lebanon War. The UN resolution that ended that conflict insisted that Lebanon return Regev and Goldwasser to Israel. Beirut has refused to act on that demand.