'Peace partner' celebrates 'heroic' terrorist

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas today praised the Hezbollah terror group for successfully orchestrating a prisoner swap deal with Israel and upheld as a "hero" Samir Kuntar, a Lebansese terrorist who murdered three Israelis, including a father and his young daughter, and is set to be repatriated to Hezbollah today.

"I congratulate the deal between Israel and Hezbollah in which prisoners were released. I congratulate the family of the hero Quntar and the families of other prisoners to be released," Abbas told the Arabic media, speaking from outside a meeting in Malta.

Abbas' Fatah organization, considered moderate by the U.S. and Israel, sponsored festivities and victory rallies throughout the West Bank today, celebrating a controversial deal in which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government agreed to release Kuntar and four captured Lebanese guerrillas in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.

Other PA officials and Fatah leaders also heaped praise on Kuntar.

Ziad Abu Ein, manager of the PA's prisoner ministry, sent congratulations to Hezbollah stating, "We are proud of the resistance that succeeded to release Quntar."

Fadwa Barghouti, wife of imprisoned Fatah leader and convicted murderer and terror group founder Marwan Barghouti, traveled to Lebanon where she joined with the Kuntar family as a sign of solidarity.

The Lebanese government declared today a national holiday to celebrate the "liberation of prisoners from the jails of the Israeli enemy and the return of the remains of martyrs."

On April 22, 1979, Kuntar led a group of four terrorists who entered Israel from Lebanon by boat. The four murdered a policeman who discovered then when the first entered Israeli territory

The terrorists then raided an Israeli border town, breaking into an apartment and taking hostage 28-year-old Danny Haran along with his 4-year-old daughter, Einat. The mother, Smadar Haran, was able to hide in a crawl space above the bedroom with her 2-year-old daughter, Yael, and a neighbor.

Smadar mistakenly smothered her daughter to death while trying to mute her cries. Kuntar shot Danny Haran to death and then beat to death his daughter with his rifle.

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