Qantar gets hero's welcome on return to Lebanon

The Guardian
July 17, 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/16/lebanon

By Hugh Macleod
Naqoura, south Lebanon

Samir Qantar, one of the Arab world’s icons of armed struggle, set foot on Lebanese soil yesterday to a hero’s welcome after being freed from thirty years imprisonment in Israel by a Hezbollah prisoner swap, which the Iranian-backed group said vindicated its use of arms.

Qantar was welcomed before a crowd of thousands of ecstatic supporters in the southern suburbs of Beirut by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, making his first public appearance in a year.

“The era of defeats had ended and now we embark on an era of victories,” said Nasrallah, who has become a revered leader - in a region beset by corrupt and ineffectual politicians - since Hezbollah fighters drove out Israeli forces from Lebanon in 2000.

An overwhelmed looking Qantar told the crowd he had “returned from Palestine, only to return back to Palestine” and said he looked forward to the destruction of Israel.

“The resistance has turned into a power that will never be defeated,” he said. “Its weapons have become a culture that will build a country of resistance. This is the culture of the next generation that will fulfill our dream to destroy this oppressive entity.”

In scenes unthinkable just two months ago when a threatened crackdown on Hezbollah by the US-backed government brought the country to the brink of civil war, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora stood at Beirut’s military airport shoulder to shoulder with Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, to greet Qantar and four Hezbollah fighters captured during the July War with Israel two years ago.

“You should be proud of you country, your people, your army and your resistance,” former army chief and recently elected President Michel Suleiman told the returning fighters, underlining his support for Hezbollah’s weapons.

Earlier in the day, hundreds of Lebanese applauded and waved yellow Hezbollah flags as a healthy looking Qantar, dressed symbolically in military fatigues, crossed the Naqoura border post between Israel and Lebanon and was greeted by dozens of religious leaders from across Lebanon’s diverse sectarian spectrum.

Qantar, a Lebanese Druze who fought for the Palestine Liberation Front, was convicted by an Israeli court of killing three Israelis, one a four year old girl, during a 1979 raid on the coastal town of Nahariya. He was sentenced to multiple life sentences, but has always maintained the girl died in cross-fire during his shoot-out with Israeli forces.

“This release shows the success of kidnapping Israeli soldiers. Lebanon is the land of jihad,” said Nabil Qaouk, Hezbollah’s commander in south Lebanon, his voice cracking with emotion as he welcomed the freed prisoners home.

“Lebanon is Palestine and Palestine is Lebanon. We freed you when the whole international community saw you behind bars and ignored you.”

Bassem Kantar, Samir’s brother, told The Guardian the prisoner exchange would boost the credibility of armed resistance across the region.

“This exchange will raise the big question: Is resistance a way to liberate land, to secure sovereignty and, at least in Palestine, to negotiate with some power in your hands in order to reach your goals? The answer is yes.”

The exchange, in which Israel received the dead bodies of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah in a cross border raid that triggered the July War, also included the return to Lebanon of seven dead Hezbollah fighters and the remains of Dalal Mughrabi, the first female Palestinian guerilla leader, and four of her team who died in a 1978 raid into Israel.

Nearly 200 other bodies of Lebanese and Palestinians, as well as militants from Tunisia to Yemen, captured or killed fighting Israel between the 1970s and 2000 were also returned to Lebanon, underlining Hezbollah’s credibility as a regional force.

Mughrabi’s sister wept as her coffin, draped in the Lebanese flag, arrived through Naqoura to a military salute by around 100 Hezbollah fighters, as drums blazed out and a team of horses decorated in the yellow colours of the Islamic Resistance galloped down the green carpet.

“Our oath is to Imam Khomeini and Imam Khameni and to stay on the path of resistance,” pledged the young fighters, referring to the founder of the Iranian Revolution and the current spiritual leader of the Shiite-majority nation, which channels hundred of millions of dollars a year to Hezbollah.

Many observers saw Hezbollah’s successful deal-making with Israel as a major blow to moderate Arab leaders, such as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is currently pursuing US-backed peace talks with Israel.

“This sends a very dangerous message that Israel only makes concessions if you use violence against it,” said Amal Saad Ghorayeb, an expert on Hezbollah. “The exchange has also laid bare that, in Lebanon at least, national power is not in the hands of the state, but with a non-state actor.”

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement controlling Gaza, said the Hezbollah deal strengthened its own hand in demanding freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Israeli solider Gilad Shalit, captured by the group in June 2006.