A prisoner exchange between Israel and Hizbullah is set to take place Wednesday or Thursday at the Rosh Hanikra Israel-Lebanon border crossing, an Israeli newspaper reported.

Next week the Jewish state will issue an official announcement on the plans to release Lebanese prisoner Samir Qantar and four Hizbullah militants held in Israel, in return for two Israeli soldiers captured by the Shiite group in July 2006, Haaretz reported.

The report on missing airman Ron Arad will be examined by Israeli intelligence officials before it is presented to the cabinet early next week, ahead of Tuesday's final vote on the exchange. Intelligence officials will present their opinions on the report to the cabinet.

One possible obstacle to the cabinet's approval is the terms of the current deal, which go against promises the state made to Arad's family when it redeemed Elhanan Tenenbaum in 2004 - not to release Qantar without also obtaining substantive information about Arad's fate.

Under the swap deal, Israel is to provide information on four Iranian diplomats who disappeared in Lebanon in 1982 in exchange for Hizbullah's report on Arad.

At present, the Israeli cabinet seems set to give the deal final approval. One minister said he believes Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is submitting the deal to a second cabinet vote so that all the ministers will be responsible for violating the government's promises to the Arads.

If the cabinet approves the deal, the exchange will take place either Wednesday or Thursday, according to Haaretz.

Israeli officials want the exchange to be a relatively low-key affair, despite the considerable media interest in the event. If the soldiers captured by Hizbullah in July 2006 are dead, they will be given standard military funerals next Friday, not state funerals, Haaretz said.

Meanwhile, at the cemetery for enemy combatants at the Galilee kibbutz of Amiad, the military rabbinate is finishing exhuming the remains of some 200 militants from Hizbullah and Palestinian organizations. They will be sent to Lebanon as part of the exchange.

"The effort to return the abductees should not be delayed or halted because we are forced to deal with Hizbullah's constant tricks," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Thursday. "I hope that very soon we shall see the end of the fight to return the soldiers."