Families of Palestinians jailed by Israel awaited word yesterday on whether their loved ones would be among those included in a swap with Hizbollah and urged the Lebanese guerilla group to keep on kidnapping Israeli soldiers. The relatives of three Israeli soldiers abducted by Hizbollah on the Lebanese border in 2000 and presumed dead by the army waited for their uncertainty to end next Thursday, when the first stage of a German-mediated exchange gets under way. Under rain in a "cemetery for enemy dead" in north Israel, soldiers exhumed bodies of Lebanese and Palestinian guerillas to be returned as part of a deal three years in the making. Under the agreement, Israel will release 400 Palestinian, 23 Lebanese and 12 Arab prisoners as well as a German citizen in return for an Israeli businessman, also abducted in 2000, and what it expects will be the bodies of the three soldiers. Israel is to return 59 Arab guerillas' remains on Friday. "I hope my son will be released next Thursday and that happiness will overcome long years of sorrow," said Ghalya Baroud, whose son is serving a 27-year sentence in an Israeli prison for what she called "resisting the occupation". "We are confident in (Hizbollah leader) Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah that he will not leave them behind bars," said. Palestinians say prisoner amnesties are key to a US-led "road map" to ending their more than three-year-old conflict with Israel. The plan has been battered by renewed violence, prompting Washington to send envoys to meet with both sides. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie gave his backing yesterday to a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group Hizbollah which will see hundreds of Palestinians go free. "We view this accord between Hizbollah and Israel favourably and we will not spare any effort to obtain the freedom of all our prisoners," Qurie said. Israel was exhuming the corpses of scores of Hizbollah fighters yesterday as it finalised a controversial prisoner exchange deal with the Lebanese militia that has split public opinion down the middle. **PHOTO CAPTION*** One of the prisoners expected to be released as part of the prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hizbollah looks out from a bus as it drives into Ketziot prison in southern Israel, January 27, 2004. (REUTERS/Ronen Svulun)