The government has instructed the police to investigate a senior Arab Balad party official for praising the release of child murderer Samir Kuntar following reports issued by the Israel Law Forum.
Assistant Prosecutor Shai Nitzan told police that Balad secretary Abad al Fatah said at a party meeting last July 17, "We won." Al Fatah also sent letters of congratulations to the Lebanese people for the freeing of child-murderer Samir Kuntar and several Lebanese prisoners.
Hizbullah celebrated the return of Kuntar, who was convicted to life imprisonment for brutally killing a four-year-old girl in front of her father and then killing him and two others in 1979.
Kuntar told the French news agency AFP last week, "As long as there is something called Israel in this region, the resistance must continue...and I am totally committed to the resistance [which] will end only when the Zionist entity disappears."
Legal Forum for the Land of Israel director Nachi Ayal wrote that the government "had no choice" but to open the investigation because of the indictment against former Knesset Member Azmi Bishara, charged with aiding Hizbullah and selling it information during the Second Lebanon War. Bishara left the country before the charges were filed.
"The fact that [al Fatah] is so close to Bishara, who was charged with aiding and abetting the enemy in a time of war," indicates that the party may become a "fifth column," Ayal stated.