Samir Kuntar (Arabic: سمير القنطار, also transcribed Sameer, Kantar, Quntar, Qantar; 20 July 1962 – 19 December 2015) was a Lebanese Druze member of the Palestine Liberation Front.
[6] Israel's refusal to release Kuntar (and other Lebanese citizens) was cited as the justification for the 2006 Hezbollah cross-border raid, which lead to the 2006 Lebanon War.
His arrival in Lebanon was greeted by crowds of tens of thousands of people, as well as Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Sinora.
The father remarried and moved to Saudi Arabia, leaving Samir in the care of his second wife, Siham, in Abey, a village southeast of Beirut.
[1] Kuntar dropped out of school at 14 and underwent training in the camps of various Palestinian militant groups and became a member of the Palestine Liberation Front.
[20] On 22 April 1979, aged 16, Samir Kuntar led a group of four PLF militants who entered Israel from Lebanon by boat.
[22] Smadar Haran accidentally suffocated Yael to death while attempting to quiet her whimpering, which would have revealed their hiding place,[23][24] from where she saw Danny and Einat being led away at gunpoint by Kuntar.
An anonymous witness for the prosecution confirmed that Haran had shouted to the soldiers "Cease your fire, don't shoot, my little girl is here," but that Kuntar then shot him in the back.
An Israeli physician testified at the trial that the child was killed by "a blow from a blunt instrument, like a club or rifle butt."
[21] A few days before Kuntar's expected release in the 2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange, Yedioth Ahronoth was finally given access to Court File No.
[5] During his imprisonment, Kuntar married Kifah Kayyal (born in 1963), an Israeli Arab female activist on behalf of militant prisoners.
[24] Kayyal is an Israeli citizen of Palestinian origin from Acre, now residing in Ramallah, who was then serving a life sentence for her activities in the Palestine Liberation Front.
[29] In October 1985, the Palestine Liberation Front seized the MS Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise ship, demanding that Israel release Kuntar along with 50 Palestinian prisoners.
In 2003, Israel agreed to release around 400 prisoners in exchange for businessman Elchanan Tenenbaum and the bodies of three soldiers held by Hezbollah since 2000.
[30][31] Israel then agreed to release Samir Kuntar on condition that Hezbollah provided "solid evidence" as to the fate of Ron Arad, an air force navigator missing in Lebanon since 1986.
[34] On 26 May 2008, Israeli sources announced that Samir Kuntar was among those who would be exchanged for the bodies of two reservists, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, captured by Hezbollah in the cross-border raid that sparked the 2006 Lebanon War.
[35] On 29 June 2008, the Israeli cabinet approved the prisoner exchange between Hezbollah and Israel which would involve the release of Kuntar despite intelligence stating that the two soldiers were almost certainly dead.
Also included in the deal was the release of the remains of other Lebanese from all other previous wars and, after a suitable interval, dozens of Palestinian prisoners.
[40] Hezbollah arranged a public celebration in Dahieh (their stronghold in Beirut), where Hassan Nasrallah gave a welcoming speech to Kuntar.
The ceremony was addressed by Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt and the Labour Minister and Hezbollah official, Mohammad Fneish.
In it, the head of Al Jazeera's Beirut office, Ghassan bin Jiddo, praised Kuntar, calling him a "pan-Arab hero", and organized a birthday party for him.
Seriously, we are jealous of our enemy and its care for a [body] and how it goes to the end of the world in order to return it, and of its concerns for captives and how it will go to the very edge to bring them back.
[16] He is accused of being behind the attack on a Magen David Adom ambulance by Israeli Druze who claimed it was transporting Syrians to Israel for health care.
[citation needed] In July 2015, it was claimed that Kuntar was targeted and possibly killed in an alleged Israeli drone strike upon his automobile in the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights town of Hader, along with members of Hezbollah and the Syrian National Defence Forces.
[47] On 19 December 2015, in the midst of the Syrian Civil War, Kuntar was killed by an explosion destroying a six-story residential building in Jaramana on the outskirts of Damascus.
[54][55] On December 21, the Free Syrian Army released a video clip claiming responsibility for killing Kuntar and accusing Hezbollah of blaming Israel for propaganda purposes.
However, Free Syrian Army's responsibility is considered unlikely since Kuntar was killed in precision executed strike which destroyed only part of a building without further collateral damage which would clearly exceed the Free Syrian Army's capability although they certainly had a motive due to Kuntar's cooperation with Assad.
[56][18] In late February 2016, a remark by Israeli politician Omer Bar-Lev was interpreted as an admission that Israel was responsible for Kuntar's assassination.