...beyond all tactical and political considerations, there is something morally repulsive in the hero's welcome given the most famous - or notorious - of the Lebanese prisoners released by Israel. Samir Kuntar had been sentenced to 542 years in prison for killing four people during a raid in 1979. Kuntar executed a father, Danny Haran, in front of his 4-year-old daughter. Then he killed the little girl by smashing her head against a rock with a rifle butt.

This is the creature Nasrallah hailed as a resistance hero, the figure Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called a "huge hero who sacrificed 30 years of his life for the Palestinian issue," the celebrity that Lebanon's president and prime minister saluted as a liberated freedom fighter.

All wars are inhumane. But not all warriors lose their humanity.

Gaza - Ma'an - The best course of action to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners is the kidnapping of more Israeli soldiers, Abu Yousef, the military spokesman for An-Nasser Brigades, the Military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, said in a statement on Thursday.

He said that the prisoner swap between Israel and Hizbullah has shown that kidnap can be a useful bargaining tool in brokering deals to release prisoners and that it is possible to defeat the Israeli army. This goes some way to confirming several analysts predictions that the deal, executed on Wednesday, would embolden both Palestinian and Lebanese resistance fighters.

He added that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped in 2006 by militants from the Gaza Strip, should not be released until it was possible to arrange a deal that satisfies the needs of the Palestinian people.