Meretz Was Kind Of Hoping To Recruit Samir Kuntar

Kuntar would have brought a valuable perspective born of spending so many years behind bars in the company of people who generally have no real voice in Israel’s parliamentary politics.

Tel Aviv, December 20 – Leaders of the Meretz Party expressed disappointment today that after his assassination in Damascus yesterday, Hezbollah operative Samir Kuntar would now be unable to serve as a legislator for them, as some had hoped.

Kuntar, 53, brutally murdered four Israelis, including a child, in Nahariya in 1979. He was imprisoned for more than 20 years for his crimes, but was eventually freed in exchange for the remains of several Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah in Lebanon. He rose within the organization, and, until a rumored Israeli airstrike destroyed the building he was in, helped coordinate Hezbollah’s activities with Iran, its chief patron. Kuntar’s political bona fides appealed to Meretz’s hard-left ideology, and the movement sought ways to recruit him as a party official, if not an actual parliamentary delegate. His death put an end to such aspirations.

Party chairwoman Zehava Gal-On voiced her regret to several aides upon hearing the news, saying she had dreamed about an alliance with Kuntar for years. “One of the legitimate criticisms of the Left’s vision is that we’ve become somewhat detached from the realities on the ground in our many years out of power,” she explained, referring to her party’s relegation to the Opposition since 2001. “What Mr. Kuntar could bring to the table is hands-on experience with the ‘dirty’ work on the ground.”

MK Ilan Gilon added that Kuntar would have brought a valuable perspective born of spending so many years behind bars in the company of people who generally have no real voice in Israel’s parliamentary politics. “With no disrespect intended to the Arab parties, their activities and interests are not especially focused on people who have been tried and imprisoned for terrorist activities,” he noted. “For valid political reasons, they tend to represent people who have not been apprehended by Israeli security forces. If Sami had agreed, he could have added his voice and experience to the discourse.”

Meretz officials declined to say how close, if at all, they were to an arrangement with Kuntar when he was dispatched, and with good reason. “Technically, such contacts are illegal, considering Kuntar’s status as a member of a hostile terrorist organization, working to strengthen the hold of a hostile power, Iran, on Israel’s northern border,” said Moshe Negbi, a legal analyst for Reshet Bet radio. “But if Kuntar’s position in Meretz could be presented as a fait accompli, the party would be in a more defensible position. They could simply point to successive Israeli governments’ ongoing official contacts with arch terrorists such as Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.”