Israel hands over 'heroine'

2008-07-16 14:12

Beirut - The body of a Palestinian woman regarded by Arabs as a heroine of the resistance after she led a bloody bus hijacking in Israel 30 years ago was among the bodies handed over in a prisoner swap on Wednesday.

The International Committee for the Red Cross, which is supervising the exchange, handed over to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia the remains of eight fighters transferred from Israel as part of the exchange.

Dalal al-Moghrabi is regarded as a terrorist by Israelis for leading a commando attack in March 1978 that left 36 people dead in what Israelis call the "Coastal Road Massacre".

The 11-member commando group entered Israel by sea and hijacked a bus driving to Tel Aviv from the northern port city of Haifa, shooting at other vehicles along the way.

Moghrabi and another seven commandos were killed in a battle with Israeli security forces after her group blew up the bus. Another two were arrested and the fate of another, Yehya Skaff, remains unknown.

Israeli Defence Minister and former premier Ehud Barak was a member of the security force that battled the group and photographs of him disarming Moghrabi's dead body appeared in papers around the world.

"As a Palestinian, Dalal wanted to be buried in Palestine," her younger brother Shadi, 31, told AFP.

"It was her most cherished wish and it came true for a period of time," he said the day before her remains were to return to Lebanon.

"We are happy to finally be able to touch her coffin," he said adding that she will be buried in Beirut's Martyrs Cemetery "until the day she can return to Palestine".

Moghrabi was born in 1958 in the Palestinian refugee camp of Burj al-Barajneh in Beirut and was a member of Fatah, the main faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).

In all, Israel is handing over the remains of 199 Palestinian and Lebanese fighters and the five remaining Lebanese prisoners in its custody, including Samir Kantar who was serving multiple life sentences for murder and is the longest serving Arab prisoner behind Israeli bars.

In return, Hezbollah has handed over coffins containing what it says are the remains of two Israeli soldiers snatched by its guerrillas in a deadly July 2006 raid that unleashed a blistering 34-day war in Lebanon.

- AFP