Israeli Cabinet OKs Hezbollah prisoner swap

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World Blog: Tel Aviv, Israel

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A day at the beach for Palestinian children

The sleepy coastal city of Nahariya is the focus of the drama behind the swap. It's where Kantar carried out his attack, where the survivors still live, where the Goldwasser family resides and where more than 100 rockets exploded during the 2006 war that followed their son's capture. It is also just 5 miles south of the border crossing where Wednesday's swap will take place.

Sasson, now 62, remembers every detail of Kantar's attack on April 22, 1979. He said he awoke to the sounds of gunshots, grabbed his two young daughters, placing one under each arm, and sprinted toward his apartment building's bomb shelter. There he found himself face to face with Kantar.

He said the assailant reached for the girls, shoved Sasson and slammed a handgun into the back of Sasson's skull. Suddenly, the hall lights went out. In the dark, Sasson said he scrambled for cover, crawling through the underground bomb shelter as the sounds of gunfire and grenade explosions filled the building.

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He hid under a parked car, where he watched Kantar drag his next door neighbor, Danny Haran, and Haran's 4-year-old daughter, Einat, toward the beach.

An Israeli court convicted Kantar, who was 16 years old at the time of the attack and is now 45, of shooting Haran in front of the little girl, then smashing her skull against a rock with his rifle butt, killing her, too.

Back at the Haran apartment, Haran's wife, Smadar, fled into a crawl space in her apartment with her 2-year-old daughter and Sasson's wife.

Mother accidentally killed child
What happened at the apartment has reverberated in the Israeli consciousness for decades. Smadar accidentally smothered the toddler in a desperate attempt to silence her cries. Sasson said his wife witnessed it all and felt the little girl's fluttering legs against her stomach.

Kantar has consistently denied killing the 4-year-old. Sasson reacted in disgust to Kantar's denial.

"He is lying! He tried to grab my child, too," he told the AP in one of only a handful of interviews he's given since the attack. "I will take this with me to the grave."

The family of an Israeli policeman killed in Kantar's attack petitioned Israel's Supreme Court to block the prisoner swap, but the court rejected the petition. Haran's widow said she was devastated by the decision, though she recently said she understood it.

Haran's mother was not as forgiving. "He is not sorry ... How a government can give him freedom?" asked 82-year-old Nina Keren, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Critics have said that by trading bodies for prisoners, Israel is giving militants little incentive to keep captured soldiers alive. And although polls suggest a large majority of Israelis support the exchange, many Israelis are anguished at the prospect that Kantar would go free.

Israeli President Shimon Peres was expected to give the final go-ahead later Tuesday by signing a document pardoning Kantar.

"This is a sad day for me and for the country," he told reporters. "On one hand, we have the most terrible murderer. On the other hand, we have our commitment to our boys who were sent to fight for their country. It is our moral duty and our heartfelt wish to see them come back."

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