Prisoner Deal Reopens an Israeli Wound

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/world/middleeast/16israel.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

NAHARIYA, Israel — Israel is a tale of family tragedies lived out within small distances.

Consider the Harans and the Goldwassers, two families in Nahariya linked by shocking killings nearly 30 years ago that have returned anew to break mothers’ hearts.

Their stories have reopened wounds in a nation that expects on Wednesday to swap a prisoner held responsible for the deaths of three members of the Haran family for the remains of a Goldwasser son taken hostage just across the border in Lebanon in 2006.

Soon after midnight on April 22, 1979, Samir Kuntar, 16, a Lebanese Druse, slipped from a small boat onto one of Nahariya’s beaches along with three other fighters from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. That bloody night is seared into Israel’s national consciousness, one of the great tragedies in a country marked by them.

The four men killed a policeman and broke into an apartment building and kidnapped a young father, Danny Haran, and his 4-year-old daughter, Einat, taking them to a nearby beach. Mr. Kuntar was found guilty of murdering Mr. Haran in front of Einat, then turning to the child and crushing her skull against a rock with the butt of his rifle.

Smadar Haran, Danny’s wife, hid in the apartment’s crawlspace with the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, accidentally smothering her to death in an effort to stop her from crying out.

Now, almost 30 years later, Mr. Kuntar has lived to intersect with another family’s fate, the Goldwassers.

Against a backdrop of indirect peace talks with Syria, Israel is preparing to trade Mr. Kuntar and other Lebanese terrorists in a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah, which captured Ehud Goldwasser and another army reservist, Eldad Regev, in a cross-border raid that started the war between Hezbollah and Israel two years ago. Syria has always been one of Hezbollah’s main patrons, along with Iran.

The deal has stirred an especially painful debate in Israel, where the captured reservists, Mr. Goldwasser and Mr. Regev, both university students, have been declared dead. Though Israel has a history of trading large numbers of prisoners to receive captured soldiers, the prospect of exchanging the country’s most despised prisoner for corpses has raised hackles. There is also considerable mistrust of Hezbollah and fears that its seeming success in obtaining Mr. Kuntar’s release will only encourage it to attack again.

Hezbollah has said it carried out the 2006 raid in a bid to win the release of Mr. Kuntar, whom Hezbollah celebrates as a hero. Past attempts to secure his release include the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985.

Mr. Kuntar, who was formally pardoned by Israel on Tuesday as part of the swap agreement, gave a different version of the night of the attack in his court testimony in 1980, excerpts of which were published for the first time on Monday in Yediot Aharonot, an Israeli newspaper. He told the court that Israeli gunfire had killed Mr. Haran as soldiers burst in to free him and that he did not see what happened to Mr. Haran’s daughter.

Smadar Haran, the widow, still lives in Nahariya, just six miles from the Lebanese border. So do Mr. Goldwasser’s parents; his wife’s mother lives just a few doors down. In a home surrounded by lush red bougainvillea, lemon and orange trees, and a high wall with a security gate, Mrs. Haran recently discussed her decision to speak out on the prisoner release.

Folding herself up on a high-backed striped couch, dark eyes staring straight ahead, she spoke softly but firmly of her decision not to stand in the way of Mr. Kuntar’s release.

“Samir Kuntar is not my private prisoner, and we live in a country where there is a framework for making decisions,” she said, echoing what she wrote in a letter to the prime minister and the cabinet ahead of their decision to proceed with the deal. “I asked them not to think about my personal pain and to make decisions according to the interests of the state.”

“What happened to me and my family will always be part of me, part of my personal pain, but it does not mean that I don’t see the pain of others, the Goldwasser and Regev families,” she said.

Mrs. Haran, who has since remarried and has two daughters, knows the Goldwasser family as acquaintances, in the way all long-time residents in Nahariya seem to know one another. They say hello in passing and share words of support, but they have refrained from discussing the prisoner exchange.

“What she did is a noble act,” said Miki Goldwasser, Ehud’s mother, who has aggressively campaigned to pressure the Israeli government for a trade. She knows the chances are low, but she still holds out hope that he may be coming back alive.

A poster of her son smiling on his wedding night a few months before his capture rests on a wooden bookcase behind her. The bookcase is full of folded-up banners, bumper stickers imprinted with slogans like “Don’t Leave Soldiers in the Field” and other paraphernalia used in the struggle to win the release of Mr. Goldwasser, Mr. Regev and another soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was captured shortly before they were by Hamas and two other militant groups. Corporal Shalit is thought to be alive, and Israel has been negotiating separately for his release.

Mrs. Goldwasser said her son Ehud, then 3 years old, was asleep in his bed that night three decades ago when gunshots and grenades suddenly sounded a few blocks away. “We heard the gunfire,” she said. “Rumors began to fly.”

Danny Haran’s mother and brother have come out against the agreement, as has the family of Eliyahu Shahar, the policeman killed by Mr. Kuntar during the attack. The Shahar family even went to the Supreme Court last week, seeking to block Mr. Kuntar’s release, but the justices deferred from intervening in the case.

Smadar Haran, the widow, said she did not want to be seen as an obstacle. Recalling the night of the attack, she said the terrorists’ original plan was to kidnap Israelis.

“I could have been on the other side of this, and I would have been the one working to get my family released,” she said.

Ilana Hazan, 66, lives in what was the Haran family apartment. She pointed out the crawlspace where Mrs. Haran hid with her daughter, Yael. It now stores paper towels.

“I’ll be happy to see our captured soldiers return; we think of them as our own sons, but there is a terrible pain that comes with seeing him, of all people being released,” she said of Mr. Kuntar, her voice echoing in the quiet, empty stairwell that the terrorists came charging up so many years ago.

In the Lebanese city of Sidon, preparations are under way for a festive return for Mr. Kuntar. The central square is decorated with pictures and banners welcoming him home as a hero.

The swap is scheduled to take place on Israel’s side of the border at Rosh Hanikra. The town’s antenna towers are visible in the distance from Nahariya, where Mrs. Haran and Mrs. Goldwasser will be waiting for their shared tragedy to come full circle.
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