Samir Kuntar’s ex-wife welcomes death of ‘murderer’ ex-husband

The divorced Palestinian wife of assassinated terrorist Samir Kuntar welcomed his death on Monday, in an interview with the pan-Arab Al-Arabiya television network.

Accusing Kuntar of fighting not against Israel but against the Syrian people, Kifah Kayyal insisted in an interview translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute that “murderers should be killed.”

“Kuntar and Hezbollah are on the Arab land of Syria not in order to fight Israel, the Zionist enemy, or any aggression,” she said.

“They are there to fight the Syrian people and the Palestinian people. They are fighting the rebels on the land of Syria.”

She added: “We show no solidarity with murderers. Murderers should be killed.”

Kuntar and Kayyal were married while he was in jail in Israel for murder. She was serving time for terrorist activities in the Palestine Liberation Front. Acre-born, she lives in Ramallah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J5Big2Y7Cw

Arab media reported early Sunday morning that Israel assassinated Kuntar. Several Israeli Air Force missiles struck the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, killing Kuntar and eight other operatives, late Saturday night, the reports said.

There was no official Israeli confirmation of the attack, although officials expressed satisfaction at his death. Kuntar was with a group of commanders from different terrorist groups that were there planning attacks on Israel.

Hezbollah on Sunday morning confirmed that Kuntar was killed in an Israeli airstrike, and alleged that Israel may have coordinated the hit with Syrian rebel “terrorists” operating in the area.

The Assad regime also blamed “terrorist groups” for the strike.

“At 10:15 p.m. on Saturday, December 19, Zionist warplanes struck a residential building in Jaramana city in Damascus countryside,” Hezbollah said in the statement carried by its Al-Manar news outlet. “The dean of liberated detainees from Israeli prisons, brother Mujahid Samir Kuntar was martyred along with several Syrian citizens in the strike.”

A Lebanese Druze, Kuntar became infamous for a brutal 1979 raid from Lebanon in which he helped kidnap an Israeli family from Nahariya, then smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl, Einat Haran, with his rifle butt, killing her. Three other Israelis, including her father, Danny Haran, were killed in the attack. Kuntar was 16 at the time, a member of the Palestine Liberation Front.

He spent 29 years in an Israeli prison before being traded to Hezbollah in 2008 in exchange for the bodies of IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. After that, he took on a senior role in the group, was honored by then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and by Syrian President Bashar Assad, and helped to organize Syrian Druze on the Golan Heights and elsewhere into terror cells charged with carrying out attacks against Israel.

Reports said that Kuntar was assassinated not as revenge for his past actions, but rather because he was planning fresh attacks against Israel.

Syrian media said that among the dead was also Farhan Shaalan, a commander in the Syrian anti-Israel resistance group founded by Kuntar and others. Those reports said that senior Hezbollah members were also present in the building at the time of the attack.

The Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese Almayadeen outlet reported that Kuntar had an apartment in the building that was targeted and would occasionally stay there. At the time of the attack, he had been in the building for at least 12 hours, the report said.