Twenty years have passed since the bloody battle of Sultan Ya’aqub. On 20 Sivan, 5742 (June 11, 1982), Syrian troops and tanks ambushed an Israeli tank unit in Sultan Ya’aqub region of the Lebanese Bekaa valley, leading to one of the bloodiest of confrontations in the Peace for Galilee war. The wild tank battle culminated in the deaths of tens of soldiers and the capture of three of them - Zachary Baumel, Tzvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, who are still missing to this day. Reports indicated that local terrorist gangs, Fatah (headed by PLO leader Yasser Arafat) and the Syrian-backed a-Saiqa took the three into captivity. At the end of November 1993, two months after the PLO and Israel signed the Oslo accords, Arafat handed half of Zachary Baumel\'s dog-tag to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The three missing soldiers were promoted in rank at a ceremony in Tel Aviv today. IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Mofaz afterwards told their parents that the army is continuing its efforts to bring the boys home.