BEIRUT, Lebanon – Five Lebanese militants got a hero's welcome from tens of thousands of cheering Hezbollah supporters and kisses from the U.S.-backed prime minister yesterday after being set free by Israel in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.
The lopsided exchange was hailed as a triumph by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who declared that the “age of victories has come,” and solidified the Iran-backed militant group's rising political power in Lebanon and the wider Arab world.
For Israel the swap closed a painful chapter of its 2006 war in Lebanon, but it prompted critics to question whether trading prisoners for bodies would encourage future kidnappings by militant groups.
Nasrallah told the crowd in Beirut that the prisoner exchange demonstrated Hezbollah's power over Israel. “The age of defeats is gone, and the age of victories has come. This people, this nation gave a great and clear image today to its friends and enemies that it cannot be defeated,” he said.
One of the former prisoners, Samir Kantar, vowed to continue fighting Israel.
An Israeli court convicted Kantar for a 1979 attack that left four Israelis dead, including a father and his 4-year-old daughter. The court found that Kantar shot Danny Haran in front of his child, then smashed her head with his rifle butt.
Kantar, who was a 16-year-old fighter for a Palestinian group at the time, denies killing the child, saying she died in a crossfire.
The welcoming rally in Hezbollah's stronghold of south Beirut drew many of Lebanon's political leaders, including some from rival parties whose supporters fought pitched street battles with Hezbollah militants in May.
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, a leader of pro-American factions that had to accept Hezbollah and its allies in a new unity government after the street fighting, did not attend the rally. But he was seen kissing the five freed men in greeting at Beirut airport.
The tears of anguish in Israel were a somber contrast to the joyous festivities in Lebanon.
Relatives prepared to bury soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose abduction by Hezbollah fighters in a July 12, 2006, cross-border raid led to a 34-day war with Israel. The war killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and about 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert comforted Goldwasser's widow, Karnit, when the coffins arrived at the Shraga army base in northern Israel. Officials had suspected the men were dead, but didn't know for sure until the bodies were delivered to the southern border town of Naqoura. It was not clear how Regev and Goldwasser died.
In addition to the five militants let out of Israeli cells, Israel is returning the remains of 199 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters.
The exchange was mediated over the past 18 months by a U.N.-appointed German official.
