Posted on 07/15/2008 10:40:48 AM PDT by mojito
Samir Kuntar and four Lebanese prisoners captured in the Second Lebanon War will receive an official state welcoming when they are released by Israel on Wednesday as part of the prisoner swap with Hizbullah.
The five men will be greeted at Beirut's airport by Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and President Michel Suleiman.
Later, a huge rally will be held in the capital's southern suburbs where Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah will speak, the group's Al-Manar TV has said.
French news agency AFP reports that the coastal road from the Israeli border to the southern port city of Sidon has been covered with Hizbullah decorations, and hundreds of volunteers have been hanging banners to praise Hizbullah's role in the prisoners' release throughout the south of the country.
In Kuntar's home in Abey, streets are decorated with banners welcoming the return of the former member of the radical Palestine Liberation Front. "Samir Kuntar is the conscience of Lebanon, Palestine and the Arab nation. Abey welcomes the hero, prisoner Samir Kuntar," reads one sign.
Meanwhile, a senior Hizbullah official has said Israel's approval of a prisoner swap with his group is an "official admission of defeat."
Hizbullah's commander in south Lebanon, Sheik Nabil Kaouk, said Tuesday that Wednesday's prisoner exchange showed Israel's "humiliating failure in confronting the resistance militarily and politically."
The cabinet gave final approval for the deal Tuesday, a day ahead of the expected return of five Lebanese prisoners to Lebanon, Samir Kuntar among them in exchange for Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.
"...Kuntar, 45, is about to be freed. In 1979, he took an Israeli family hostage in the northern coastal town of Nahariya, shot and killed father Danny Haran and dashed the skull of his 4-year-old daughter Einat against a rock with his rifle butt. Danny's wife, Smadar, managed to hide from Kuntar in a crawl space of their apartment with two-year-old daughter Yael, whom she accidentally suffocated while trying to keep the toddler quiet. A policeman was also killed in the attack. Kuntar was sentenced to 548 years in prison. In 1985, Palestinian terrorists seized the Achille Lauro cruise ship to win Kuntar’s release. Wheelchair-bound U.S. passenger Leon Klinghoffer was murdered along the way. Kuntar has never repented and recently vowed to continue fighting once released.
“My oath and pledge,” he wrote Sheik Nasrallah in a letter reprinted in a Palestinian newspaper, “is that my place will be at the battlefront, which is soaked in the sweat of your giving, and the blood of the most beloved among men, and that I shall continue down the path, until complete victory.” Tomorrow's plans call for Kuntar to be flown to Beirut in a Lebanese Army helicopter, to be festively received by the heads of the Lebanese government. Such are their heroes.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2045587/posts
Lebanon is now officially a terror state.
Yes. Yes he is.
The US State Dept is reported to have a statue ‘celebrating’
the murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer by
Arafat. Is another coming to the State Dept to ‘celebrate’
the murder of the 4-year old helpless child?
The five men will be greeted at Beirut’s airport by Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and President Michel Suleiman.
Disgusting that they would do this.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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