Caledoniyya

For the past few days the prisoner exchange has been observed with bated breath: would Israel and Lebanon go through with it? Would either back down and raze the fragile framework of negotiations to cinders?

In the event, both parties have followed through to the jubilation of the Lebanese prisoner’s families and communities, where elaborate celebrations took place on a national day of commemoration.

While watching a clip of the prisoners emerging from the Israeli jail, I was struck by the demeanour of one of the prisoners.

Robust, with a bristling moustache and wild eyes that screamed nonchalance, as his contemporaries quivered wearily in the background he stepped up with the look of a man imbued with unrivalled confidence and grit.

As my friend told me about the time the man in question entered an Israeli court and refused to stand up to acknowledge the presence of the presiding judge, since the judge represented Israel, a non-existent entity for the man, I knew it could be no urban folk-lore.

Perceiving his blasé stance, I quipped that he had weathered the past two years well.

My friend looked shocked and expostulated that the man had not been captured during the 2006 Lebanon War, but in 1979.

The man, it transpired, is Samir al-Kuntar (سمير القنطار), the longest held Arab prisoner, and saviour, or villain, extraordinaire – depending on the source.

As certain colleagues unite in rapturous glee at the release of this “Arab Mandela” – as some media circles entitle him – and gloss over the exact reasons for Kuntar’s release, a little googlization afforded a gruesome background.

I am hesitant to cast opinions on a subject on which I am not entirely au fait – Lebanon, with its intricate divisions and conflicts has always been akin to a mathematical conundrum – and I am confused on the issue.

If I believe the pro-Kuntar line, this is a remarkable development; if I follow the anti-Kuntar camp, the tragedy of the Haran family massacre renders those eyes less owned by a courageous revolutionary, but more those of a cold-blooded murderer.

But first, a quick catch-up:

A Lebanese Druze born in Aabey in 1962, Kuntar was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Front when, at the age of sixteen, Kuntar led a raid in Nahariya, northern Israel, that killed two policemen, a civilian man and his four-year-old daughter.

The specifics of the fatalities are too horrific to recount, but in addition to the four-year-old child, a baby girl was also accidentally smothered by her mother as she hid in a cupboard during the attack.

Later that year, Kuntar was sentenced to 500 years in jail; a fate that has been commuted through the prisoner exchange.

In return for Kuntar, Israel received the remains of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, who were seized in 2006.

Until now there had been no confirmation of their deaths.

For Goldwasser’s father, the Lebanese jubilation is inexplicable:

I cannot understand what the Lebanese are so glad about and happy about. They sacrificed over 700 of their best warriors and all their economy, and what they get for what they did is a murderer, a bloody murderer of a three-and-a-half-year-old girl and her father – and for this they are making all this glory, for this they sacrificed so much. So I feel only pity for them.

It is rare that I can touch upon the subject of Middle East conflict and politics without bearing a conclusion or opinion.

Nevertheless, this particular case has unsettled me.

Perhaps the following slogan taken from a banner at the welcome ceremony in Lebanon can best capture the status quo: “Lebanon is shedding tears of joy – Israel is shedding tears of pain”.

Who is right in this scenario, I shall leave you to decide.

For now, however, it seems both sides have lost.