The killing of the Lebanese Hizbollah member Samir Kuntar in Damascus last weekend left several unanswered questions. Perhaps that was fitting for a man who was reviled by his enemies and regarded with some doubts by his coreligionists.
Kuntar, known in Lebanon as the “dean of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli prisons”, was killed early Sunday morning in a missile attack on a building in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana. A Druze from Abey, Kuntar had reportedly converted to Shiism. He was alleged to have played a role in Hizbollah’s operations against Israel in the Golan Heights.
However, the fact that much of the information on Kuntar came from Syrian opposition figures opposed to him left some doubts as to precisely what he did. He was said to have been residing in Syria since Hizbollah announced its intervention in the conflict there in defence of Bashar Al Assad’s regime.
One report suggested he was part of the same group as Hizbollah members killed this year in an Israeli attack near the Golan, including Jihad Mughnieh, the son of the assassinated Hizbollah figure Imad Mughnieh. It is very possible that Kuntar, because of his Druze background, was used to establish contact with Druze living in the Golan.
Despite this, Kuntar was never seen as a central figure in Hizbollah. That raised questions about why he rated such a massive Israeli strike, which effectively destroyed an entire building. It could well be the Israeli government saw a public-relations benefit in killing a man who was responsible for the death of several Israelis in 1979, including a four-year-old girl.
But if Kuntar was seen as a hero by Israel’s foes, his status within his own community was somewhat ambiguous. In July 2008, when he was released from an Israeli prison in a prisoner swap with Hizbollah, relations between the party and the Druze were tense.
Two months earlier Hizbollah and armed Druze villagers loyal to Walid Jumblatt had fought each other bitterly in the mountains high above Beirut.
After 30 years in Israeli jails, Kuntar returned to Lebanon in this atmosphere.
While he posed no real political threat to the main Druze leaders, Mr Jumblatt and his traditional rival Talal Arslan, both men were unsure whether Hizbollah would try to use him to erode their authority, in that way dividing the Druze.
Together, they organised a public welcome for Kuntar, which was partly an effort to contain and neutralise him.
At the gathering it was noticeable that Kuntar was booed by some spectators when he made reference to Hizbollah in a speech, though the party and Mr Jumblatt had reconciled by then. He was soon absorbed into Hizbollah’s sphere, marrying a Shiite woman, visiting Iran and participating in the war in Syria.
To the Druze, Kuntar’s path was doubtless regarded with uneasiness. Mr Jumblatt has been openly hostile to the Al Assad regime while Kuntar was fighting on its behalf. Worse, if he was helping Hizbollah to mobilise Druze support against Israel, he was actively undermining Mr Jumblatt’s actions to protect the community in Syria by discouraging its siding with the gradually weaker Syrian regime and its allies.
As for Hizbollah, Kuntar’s fate was another chapter in its efforts to open a new front in the Golan Heights. For some time Iran and Hizbollah have been engaged in a low-level struggle to turn the Golan into an arena in which to pressure Israel, particularly as Hizbollah cannot easily do so through Lebanon, where a United Nations force is deployed.
Equally interesting was why Russia failed to respond to the Israeli attack given the presence of its S-400 air defence system in Syria. While operational details were not revealed, it’s possible Israeli aircraft launched their missiles from Israeli airspace, though Hizbollah’s Al Manar television station said they were fired from Syrian airspace.
It’s also conceivable that the Russians, who have good ties with Iran and Israel, have no intention of getting involved in their battles in Syria unless Mr Al Assad is threatened.
Kuntar’s elimination illustrated how complicated Syria has become, as it hosts an assortment of regional rivals. As British journalist Patrick Seale wrote in The Struggle for Syria (1965), the country “could not escape the attentions of others. Each sought to control it or, failing that, to deny its control to others on the tacit premise that to exercise dominant influence over Syria was to hold rival combinations at bay.”
That still applies today. It was Kuntar’s misfortune to be caught in the middle.
Having spent three decades of his life in jail for his involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, he lost his life because of Iranian-Israeli enmity. At all stages he was someone marginal, pushed by forces far greater than he.
Michael Young is opinion editor of The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut
On Twitter: @BeirutCalling
