Tyre, LEBANON (AFP)

A Lebanese-born man who has been imprisoned in Israel for six years for collaborating with the Shiite militant group Hezbollah will be released on Sunday, his family said.

Nessim Nisr, who held Israeli citizenship at the time of his arrest in 2002, was sentenced by an Israeli court to six years in jail.

"Nessim called a few days ago and informed us that he will be released on Sunday," his brother Omran Nisr told AFP on Tuesday, adding that he had received a document notifying him that he would then be deported.

Israeli army radio had reported on Monday that Israel was prepared to release five Lebanese prisoners and return the bodies of 10 Hezbollah fighters in exchange for two of its soldiers captured by the militant group in 2006.

And Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech on Monday on the eighth anniversary of Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon that a release of Lebanese detainees in Israeli prison was in the offing.

Nessim Nisr, born in 1968 to an Israeli Jewish mother and a Lebanese Muslim father, left Lebanon during the Israeli invasion in 1982 and joined his mother's family in Israel, where he settled near Tel Aviv.

Nisr's mother, Valentine, 70, who lives in the south Lebanon village of Bazouriya, told AFP tearfully that she "has been waiting for him for 17 years."

Nisr's brother Mohammed said that Nessim had told him in a phone call about a month ago that "his jailers had placed him in solitary confinement in a bid to persuade him to abandon his plans to return to Lebanon with his two daughters, who are Israeli citizens."

Mohammed Nisr said the family had already begun to make preparations for Nisr's homecoming.

"We have prepared his room and have decorated the front of our house with Lebanese flags and portraits of Hassan Nasrallah," he said.

Samir Kuntar

The most high-profile Lebanese prisoner who could be released in any swap is Samir Kuntar, who was sentenced in 1980 to 542 years in prison for killing a civilian and his daughter as well as a police officer in a 1979 attack and is now the longest-serving Arab prisoner in Israel.

Kuntar's brother said on Monday that he expected his brother to be released soon.

"I have been informed of very positive developments within the next 30 days concerning my brother as well as all the other prisoners held in Israel," Bassam Kuntar said.

"I have not been given any firm details but there are some encouraging signs," he added.

There have been a series of prisoner exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah over the years that have been brokered by German mediators with U.N. blessing.

In October last year, Israel exchanged a mentally ill prisoner and the bodies of two Hezbollah militants for the remains of an Israeli civilian.

In January 2004, Israel exchanged 30 Arab prisoners, including two senior Hezbollah officials, and a German detainee for an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers. It also freed some 400 Palestinian prisoners.

Hezbollah's demands for Kuntar to be included in that exchange nearly scuppered the deal.