Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Tuesday to "spare no efforts" to retrieve the country's captive and missing soldiers.

Netanyahu's comments came in response to a deal reportedly being finalized between Israel's Justice Ministry and two convicted felons in which the latter would be granted amnesty in exchange for information on the location of the body of Majdi Halabi, a soldier from northern Druze village of Daliat al-Carmel that has been missing since 2005.

On Sunday, Israel's Channel 2 reported that Justice Minister Yaakov Ne'eman and President Shimon Peres have signed the unprecedented agreement, which is contingent upon finding the soldier's grave.

The Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Aharonot on Tuesday disclosed identities of the prisoners slated for amnesty: a convicted murderer serving a life sentence and an international drug dealer sentenced to 16 years in jail.

Under the terms of the agreement, a third prisoner, who is serving two life sentences for two separate murder convictions, will receive financial compensation for providing details on the whereabouts of Halabi, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances while hitchhiking to his base.

"I don't spare any effort to try and bring captive and missing (soldiers) home," Netanyahu said of the controversial deal. "I wouldn't say at any price, but if this missing (soldier's) location can be found through these means, then yes, I'll do it."

"The efforts (to locate and free soldiers) are tireless, because that is our duty... One of the reasons I decided on the required action to free Gilad Shalit was my estimate that the window of opportunity was closing," the prime minister said, referring to an Israeli soldier who was freed from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip last October in a prisoner-swap deal and an air force navigator captured by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 1986 and still missing.

Local media outlets Tuesday pondered whether the deal geared to find the body of the Druze soldier will ultimately yield results, citing police investigators' skepticism regarding the reliability of the information promised by the prisoners.

Nazmi Halabi, the missing soldier's father, said he believes his son is alive.

"This belief is what is holding our family together," he told Yediot Aharonot. "There were other prisoners who in the past claimed to know the whereabouts of the body, and every time it turned out to be nonsense."