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For Guadalupe, when the going gets tough, the tough get going !

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

Goliath Plouffe, campain manager for Guadalupe Perez Garcia's Gua for RELEX campain, interviewed by Edward Sheep for the Irish national television.

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Published: July 18, 2008

SCHAERBEEK — Rue royale, on the third floor, behind the lit curtains, tension is at the highest level. The deadline is set for tommorow. Guadalupe is working hard with her team to maximise the chances of getting the so desired rank of RELEX peon.

Unconfirmed rumors says that she is so deseperate about the tommorow outcome that she hired the service of a local Guru. According to those rumors, she would be now wearing a red lace around her neck. That red lace is supposed to bring her all the chance needed to succeed.

The public still has in mind her appereances during the hugely succesful campain "She shows the way!". The contrast is obvious in comparaison to the present bleak and gloomy perspectives. The decay of her fame followed the, now famous, Zymol scandal, involving Guadalupe, two high profile criminals known as Yves and Yves, small kids and miscellaneous animals.

Bon, c'est assez, etudie bien, bonne chance et a demain - Antony.

Mourners gathered in the morning heat for the Goldwasser funeral, with the soldier’s family and others taking shelter from the sun under a broad cloth canopy.

The two Israeli soldiers were seized by Hezbollah in a cross-border raid on July 12, 2006, an attack that set off a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah that left some 160 Israelis and more than 1,000 Lebanese dead.

In return for the soldiers’ bodies, Israel handed over five Lebanese prisoners, including Samir Kuntar, who had been held for nearly three decades after being convicted in connection with a deadly and notorious attack that also took place in Nahariya.

As part of the exchange on Wednesday, Israel also handed over the bodies of 199 combatants and infiltrators from Lebanon.

Among the mourners at the funeral in Nahariya were members of the family of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who has been held by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza. Sergeant Goldwasser’s widow and mother also spoke at the ceremony.

In some respects, Wednesday’s prisoner exchange closed a final chapter of the 2006 war.

But far from ameliorating the simmering hostility between the sides, the deal has further hardened the feelings of many Israelis, who charged that Hezbollah toyed with the emotions of the families of the missing soldiers up to the very end.

For the last two years, Hezbollah had refused to clarify whether the soldiers — both reservists and students at the time of their capture — were dead or alive, although Israeli officials concluded that both were badly wounded in the initial ambush and had probably not survived.

But the moment of truth did not come until after 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday, as the first stage of the exchange got under way at Nakkoura, on the Lebanese side of the border. A Hezbollah representative, Wafiq Safa, announced that the soldiers’ fate would “now be revealed,” and gestured toward two coffins.

After the coffins were transferred to the Israeli side of the border, it took several hours for the military authorities to positively identify the soldiers’ remains and to inform the bereaved families, who were waiting in their homes. Then, at about 5 p.m., Mr. Kuntar and the other prisoners were taken across the border.

Although Israel has a history of trading large numbers of prisoners to obtain the release of its captured soldiers, the deal with Hezbollah has stirred an especially painful debate, with some feeling the price Israel paid was too high.

Still, the Israeli military has always treated recovery of its soldiers as a moral imperative. In a statement released on the eve of the exchange, the army said that “such a move demonstrates a compelling moral strength which stems from Judaism, Israeli social values and from the spirit of the Israel Defense Forces.”

Local television and radio stations devoted the entire day to live coverage of the exchange and to solemn music.

Myra Noveck reported from Jerusalem and Graham Bowley from New York. Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Rosh Hanikra, Israel.