Kneading before or after rising?
Up to a point, the more you can knead your dough the finer the texture of the bread.  It is theoretically possible to knead to the point where the gluten structure falls apart.  I've read that while it is unlikely when kneading by hand, it is easy to do with a machine mixer (it's never happened to me).  However, the pita bread I've eaten wasn't anything like regular bread in hole structure so I don't see the benefit of extra kneading (both before and after).
A problem with kneading after a rise is that most of the gas formed is pressed out, and if there isn't enough food (sugar) left for the yeast, the final rise won't be good.  Again, for pita bread this doesn't seem like an issue.  Maybe the pita bread flat structure is actually helped by kneading a lot of the gas out after rising.