Lebanese officials hail swap deal as harbinger of unity

Thursday, July 17, 2008 : United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says he is encouraged by an exchange of prisoners that took place between Israel and Lebanon's Hizbullah on Wednesday. Ban said at a news conference in Berlin that he hoped it will be the beginning of many to come.

He praised the "leadership and initiative" of a UN-appointed mediator, Gerhard Konrad, who shuttled between the sides for 18 months to mediate Wednesday's exchange.

Ban said he also hopes for progress in the case of an Israeli soldier seized by Palestinian gunmen affiliated with Hamas. He said he hoped Sergeant Gilad Schalit would be released as soon as possible.

The Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas said the Wednesday prisoner swap was a "victory for the resistance."

"Hamas considers the exchange of prisoners between Hizbullah and the Israeli occupation to be a great victory for the resistance and Hizbullah," spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement.

"It proves that a useful way to liberate prisoners from the jails of the occupation is to capture Zionist soldiers, since the occupation refuses to release prisoners and keeps arresting more of them," it added.

The reaction came as Israel and Hizbullah were in the process of exchanging the remains of two Israeli soldiers captured in 2006 for five Lebanese prisoners and the remains of some 200 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters.

European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner also commented on Wednesday's exchange of prisoners between Hizbullah and Israel.

"I am satisfied that this exchange of prisoners finally takes place. We have called for this on many occasions during the past two years and now it becomes a reality," she said in a statement released by the European Commission in Beirut on Wednesday.

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Compiled by Daily Star staff
Thursday, July 17, 2008

Lebanon welcomes back its liberated sons, Israel mourns its slain soldiers

Five Lebanese prisoners freed by Israel arrived to a hero's welcome in Lebanon Wednesday, hours after Hizbullah handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers seized two years ago.

Among those freed in a prisoner swap greeted with triumph in Lebanon but anguish in Israel was Samir Kontar, who was sentenced to five life terms for a a deadly raid in 1979.

The prisoners were transported to Lebanon in a convoy of four International Committee of the Red Cross vehicles via the Naqoura border crossing, where they were cheered and applauded by crowds of Hizbullah supporters who had been waiting all day for their arrival.

They were then flown by helicopters to Beirut, where they were accorded a red-carpet welcome by Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, the entire Cabinet and a host of lawmakers and religious leaders.

The five - Kontar and Hizbullah fighters Khaled Zidan, Maher Kourani, Mohammad Srour and Hussein Suleiman - stood on a platform as Sleiman spoke before shaking hands with politicians lined up to greet them.

"Your return is a new victory and the future in your presence will be a path in which we will realize the sovereignty of our territory and the liberty of our people," Sleiman said.

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Many express hopes for internal peace
By Eugene Yukin
Special to The Daily Star
Thursday, July 17, 2008

BEIRUT: Tens of thousands of jubilant people descended into the Rayeh football court in Beirut's southern suburbs, better known as Dahiyeh, Wednesday night to celebrate the prisoner exchange that took place earlier that morning. In the prisoner exchange five Lebanese prisoners were exchanged for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured on July 12, 2006. Israel also gave back 188 bodies of dead Hizbullah and Arab fighters and according to the deal is set to release an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners.

The celebrations organized by Hizbullah were preceded by a ceremony in Naqoura, where the exchange took place, and the Beirut International airport, where the prisoners were flown and greeted by Lebanese President Michel Sleiman and other top officials. After greeting the president at the airport the five Lebanese prisoners were taken to the Rayeh football court where Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah made a brief appearance and later delivered a televised speech.

A large stage surrounded a raised podium, where five chairs were placed for the released fighters who were due to arrive. Large victory banners were placed all over the field, where thousands of chairs were placed to provide seating for those who came. Two large screens provided footage of the prisoners arriving to the airport, eliciting loud cheers from the crowd. A military band performed for the audience, interrupted occasionally by excerpts of famous Nasrallah speeches.

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OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israeli commentators sharply criticized a prisoner exchange with Hizbullah on Wednesday, saying it gave a propaganda victory to the Lebanese group and set a dangerous precedent. The Maariv daily newspaper said Israel had been humiliated, arguing that Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah "will entrench his image as the only Arab leader who fought against Israel and defeated it."

"No one except for him - neither the Lebanese government nor the Arab League, the UN or the Red Cross - none of these brought home a proud Lebanese citizen, who had been rotting in an Israeli prison for 29 years," it said.

The paper was referring to Samir Kontar, a Lebanese fighter for a Palestinian group, who was jailed for life for his role in a 1979 commando raid in which three Israeli civilians, including a child, were killed.

"No Arab entity before him kept Israel in suspense until the last moment, conducted tough negotiations with it and did not even reveal whether its soldiers were alive," Maariv added.

Right up to Wednesday's exchange, Hizbullah refused to confirm the deaths of the two soldiers it captured in a cross-border raid in 2006 - Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

The Israel Hayom daily said the swap "sends a negative message to our enemies." "Israel's willingness to pay a real price for kidnapped soldiers who are not known with certainty to be alive - or worse, who are known to be dead - could cause the other side to think that it has no interest in keeping hostages alive, because it will receive something in return in any case," it said.

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