Emotional, captives' families welcome deal

"After this difficult week we've just been through – my heart aches, it's very hard for me, I'm very tired and drained inside. I don't know how to process everything, I need at least two days of quiet to sit with myself and try to understand what's going to happen, how it will all turn out," said a distraught Karnit Goldwasser as she came out of her meeting with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday afternoon after the cabinet voted in favor of the proposed prisoner exchange deal with Hizbullah.

Olmert invited the families of captive soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev to his Jerusalem office and embraced them warmly before explaining the details of the agreement and his own internal indecision prior to the vote.

"This decision to bring the boys home is a very important moment for the State of Israel," Olmert told the families.

Karnit Goldwasser leaving Olmert's office (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

Cabinet Secretary Oved Yehezkel said there was no animosity towards the prime minister on the families' part during the meeting.

"There wasn't even a single word of criticism," he said.

Olmert, who earlier in the day said the working assumption at present time was that the captives were no longer alive.

Zvi Regev, Eldad's father, grew very emotional and told Olmert he "prays to God that we will be proven

wrong.

"I believe we will be proven wrong," he said, and Olmert moved to embrace him.

Eldad's brother Ofer said that the families had not been given a detailed timetable. "The prime minister shared his doubts and hugged us. I still don't accept that the two soldiers aren't alive."

Miki Goldwasser, Ehud's mother, said the support given to the families by the people and the media was "a source of national pride."