On July 16th, a prisoner exchange took place between the governments of Israel and the Hezbollah- a military resistance movement that emerged in Lebanon in opposition to the Israeli occupation. Israel has returned 199 bodies of Hezbollah fighters, and five live soldiers to Lebanon in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers who were killed on Shebaa Farms, an occupied territory on the border between Israel and Lebanon.

The Israeli government was offered the same condition of exchange in June 2006, after the two Israeli soldiers were captured, but Israel refused to negotiate at all and launched an attack on Lebanon in which more then a thousand civilians were killed. The government of Lebanon has issued a statement saying: “This agreement marks a big failure, and a very big failure of Israel's policy which refused, before the July 2006 war, to seal a complete exchange deal…. and launched a war against Lebanon and its people with the excuse of demanding the prisoners, and then it returned and submitted in the end to the logic of negotiating through mediators, in order for the deal to succeed. This deal ... is a new and clear condemnation for Israel, its tactics and its policies."

At the center of the prisoner exchange is Samir Kuntar, who in 1979 at the age of 16 lead an attack in Israel in retaliation to the bombing and intervention in Lebanon by Israel and in solidarity with Palestinian resistance forces in Lebanon, most of them refugees. In the operation, one police officer, a civilian, and a four year old girl were killed. Kuntar was convicted of killing the three, although he has maintained that the girl was killed in cross fire. Upon his release, celebration broke out in Lebanon. Many Lebanese see Kuntar as the longest political prisoner held in Israel, and as symbol of resistance to the Israeli atrocities and terror in Lebanon.

Ehud Olmert, Israel's Prime Minister, has accused Lebanon of making a cold blooded killer into a national hero. But Mohamed al-Sayed Said from the Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo, responded on Al-Jazeera saying that Olmert "should not take the moral high ground" with respect to what he sees as the "destructive effect" of the 2006 war. "I don't think Olmert has any right to declare moral victory. While he may call Kuntar an animal, the war that he launched in 2006 resulted in the deaths of over 1,000 people.” Furthermore, some have found it puzzling that Israel, a country who elected Ariel Sharon to the highest position in the Israeli government, can condone anyone for making killers and war criminal’s national heroes.

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