In downtown Sidon yesterday, political activists decorated a central city square, the site of an installation two years ago depicting longtime Lebanese prisoner Samir Kuntar, who murdered an Israeli family in Nahariya in 1979, behind prison bars.

"We will not vacate this spot until Kuntar comes here himself," a young female activist said yesterday.

The preparations come as Israel's cabinet voted yesterday to approve the prisoner swap. According to the deal, Hezbollah will return Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the Israeli reservists it abducted in a 2006 cross-border raid that sparked the Second Lebanon War, in exchange for Israel's return of Kuntar, four Hezbollah militants, the remains of Lebanese citizens and several dozen Palestinian prisoners. The swap is expected to take place by July 12, the second anniversary of Hezbollah's abduction of Goldwasser and Regev.

Hezbollah television station Al Manar launched round-the-clock broadcasts on the cabinet vote. It said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had backed down from his stated position that Kuntar would be released only in return for information on the fate of missing Israeli navigator Ron Arad.

"Today the promise of the resistance was kept," the smiling announcer said, using the station's term for Hezbollah. "In a few more days Kuntar will put all his years in jail behind him."

Hezbollah is marketing the deal as a major success for the organization and its militant ideology, and is making no reference to issues on which it made concessions.

"Our prisoners are freed not by words and not by diplomacy or tears and kisses," the Al Manar newscast began yesterday. "Only blood liberated the land and liberates man."