Israel's Cabinet voted overwhelmingly yesterday in favor of an emotionally charged deal to swap a notorious Lebanese prisoner for the bodies of two soldiers declared earlier in the day to be dead.

The deal with the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group has sparked a fierce debate over whether Israel would be giving up too much - or carrying out its highest commitment to its soldiers to do everything possible to bring them home if they fell into enemy hands.

Hezbollah militants captured Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a vicious, monthlong war.