Is this not the same Hizbollah who drove terrorist from S. Lebanon or was it Hamas.
Freed Prisoners Get Hero’s Welcome in Beirut
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By Mariam Karouny
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Fireworks lit the night sky over the Mediterranean on Thursday to celebrate the arrival of 31 mainly Lebanese prisoners in a landmark prisoner swap with Israel that reduced even hardened guerrilla leaders to tears.
Thousands of Lebanese lined the main road to Beirut airport and waved yellow Hizbollah flags to welcome the men who flew home as part of a German-mediated swap between Israel and the guerrilla group.
A senior Hizbollah official who was among those freed, Sheikh Abdul Karim Obeid, said he felt as if he had been born again following his release after more than 14 years in jail.
“My feeling can’t be described… all of us feel great, as if we’re born again… I can’t express my feeling in words,” Obeid told Hizbollah’s al-Manar television by telephone from Germany shortly before take off.
When the plane doors opened in Beirut, Obeid and fellow guerrilla leader Mustapha al-Dirani exited side by side to a red-carpet greeting by Hizbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and top officials including President Emile Lahoud.
Obeid’s adult son Sajed, who had not seen his father since he was seven years old, beamed as a Lebanese army brass band played nationalist tunes to welcome the men home.
“After 15 years we will finally live together,” he said.
Nasrallah hugged each freed prisoner one by one, patting some on the back and smiling broadly before the men were reunited with their families. Some prisoners, including Obeid, had tears in their eyes.
“My heart is beating so fast it feels like it is going to jump out of my chest,” Dirani’s son Mohammed said before the plane landed.
‘BETTER THAN MY WEDDING DAY’
As buses decorated with flowers and filled with the prisoners and their families crawled through crowds to a rally in Beirut’s Shi’ite Muslim southern suburbs, onlookers threw rice and cheered.
“This is better than my wedding day,” said Fatima Hamdan, who joined those lining the road to the airport.
Israel also freed 400 Palestinian prisoners in return for an Israeli businessman and the remains of three soldiers killed in a Hizbollah border raid in 2000.
The swap paves the way for a second stage of negotiations over the fate of Israeli airman Ron Arad, who bailed out over Lebanon in 1986, as well as four Iranian diplomats kidnapped during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
In total, 21 Lebanese and 10 other Arab prisoners returned to Lebanon. Three other prisoners chose to stay in Germany where at least one sought asylum, and a fourth, a Lebanese, stayed in Israel.
“This is a new victory for the resistance in Lebanon… which God willing will not be the only victory but will be followed by more victories and the liberation of all of the (occupied) land and detainees,” Dirani told Manar.
Obeid was abducted by Israeli commandos in 1989 to use as a bargaining chip to secure information about Arad. Dirani was abducted in 1994 from his home in a similar fashion.
But joy over the return was mixed with bitterness that Lebanon’s longest-serving prisoner, Samir al-Qantar, was not among those freed yet. His fate has been linked to information on Arad.
“He hopes we all stay united to fulfil this great mission to achieve another victory over the Zionist monster and this American arrogance,” said freed prisoner Anwar Yassin, who said he had once been a cellmate to Qantar.