Who are the Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for Israeli hostages?
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Israel released 183 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday in the latest exchange for Israeli hostages held in Gaza, part of a ceasefire that has paused the war but whose future is uncertain.
Israel views the prisoners as terrorists, while Palestinians see them as freedom fighters resisting a decadeslong military occupation.
Nearly every Palestinian has a friend or family member who has been jailed by Israel at some point, for militant attacks or lesser offenses such as rock-throwing, protesting or membership in a banned political group. Some are held for months or years without trial in what is known as administrative detention, which Israel says is needed to prevent attacks and avoid sharing sensitive intelligence.
Eighteen of those released Saturday had been sentenced to life and 54 were serving long sentences for their involvement in deadly attacks against Israelis. Some have been in jail for two decades. In the West Bank town of Beitunia, whistling crowds greeted the released prisoners as heroes, waving flags and chanting support for Hamas.
Some of the released men dropped to their knees as they stepped off the bus, weeping as they kissed the cold pavement. They were greeted by tearful relatives before traveling on to their homes throughout the West Bank.
“We’ve been waiting. And waiting is the most painful thing, it wears on the nerves,” said Samah Abu Aliya, whose 34-year-old son, Imad Abu Aliya, was freed Saturday after serving four and a half years for his affiliation with Hamas. “Thank God he’s been released. Now we wait for the other prisoners, we wait for the negotiations. That’s what we do in this country, wait.”
Seven of those convicted of the most serious crimes were transferred to Egypt and under the terms of the ceasefire agreement will either stay in that country or be deported elsewhere.
Also among those released were 111 Palestinians from Gaza who were rounded up after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza. They had been detained without trial. The Red Cross brought them to the European Hospital in Gaza’s southern town of Khan Younis, where scores of people poured into the streets in celebration.
A look at some prominent Palestinian prisoners released since the truce went into effect on Jan. 19:
Iyad Abu Shakhdam
Abu Shakhdam, 49, was sentenced to the equivalent of 18 life sentences over his involvement in Hamas attacks that killed dozens of Israelis during the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, between 2000 and 2005.
Among the most infamous of those attacks was a double suicide bombing that blew up two buses in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba in 2004, killing 16 Israelis, including a 4-year-old, and wounding more than 100 others. In interviews with Arabic news outlets, he described his militancy as a desire for revenge stemming from his brother’s killing by Israeli security forces in 2000.
Abu Shakhdam was on the run for weeks before his arrest in his hometown of Hebron in the West Bank in November 2004, following a gunfight with Israeli security forces in which he was shot 10 times.
During 21 years in prison, his family said, he finished high school and earned a certificate for courses in psychology.
As he stepped off the Red Cross convoy into the town of Beitunia, Abu Shakhdam was hoisted up onto the shoulders of dozens of supporters. Hugging his father tight, a sense of relief and defiance washed over him.
“From the moment I entered prison, I was sure, one day, I’d go home,” he told The Associated Press. “The prison guards didn’t believe me. But this whole time, I was sure that, with God’s help, I’d be free.”
Jamal al-Tawil
Al-Tawil, 61, a prominent Hamas politician in the occupied West Bank, has spent nearly two decades in and out of Israeli prisons, in part over allegations that he helped plot suicide bombings.
Most recently, the Israeli military arrested al-Tawil in 2021, saying that he had participated in violent riots and mobilized Hamas political activists in Ramallah, the seat of the semiautonomous Palestinian Authority and Hamas’ main rival.
He had been held without charge or trial since then. After his arrest, he went on a hunger strike for more than three weeks to protest his administrative detention.
During one of al-Tawil’s stints in Israeli prison in the early 2000s, he ran a successful electoral campaign from custody to become mayor of Al-Bireh, a West Bank town abutting Ramallah.
U.S. court documents from 2007, filed by the families of Israelis killed during the second intifada, show that al-Tawil had served for years as chairman of Al-Islah Charitable Society, a front organization to raise money for Hamas. The case accused al-Tawil of recruiting a Hamas militant to carry out a 2001 suicide bombing that targeted a crowded pedestrian mall in Jerusalem, killing 11 people.
His daughter, 32-year-old journalist Bushra al-Tawil, was among the dozens of women and teenagers released in the first round of prisoner-for-hostage exchanges on Jan. 19.
Before her father’s release, she wrote on Instagram that Israeli security forces burst into their house near Ramallah at dawn and threatened her with rearrest if her family engaged in any form of public celebration. The Israeli military did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Too weak to walk, al-Tawil had to be lifted off the bus of prisoners and taken immediately to a hospital for treatment. His family shared photos of him lying on a hospital cot, looking exhausted. Six other Palestinian prisoners were also taken immediately to the hospital after their release.
Mohammed el-Halabi
The Palestinian manager of the Gaza branch of World Vision, a major Christian aid organization, was arrested in 2016 and accused of diverting tens of millions of dollars to Hamas in a high-profile case that drew criticism from rights groups. He was freed on Feb. 1.
Both el-Halabi, 47, and World Vision vigorously denied the allegations and independent investigations found no proof of wrongdoing. One independent audit found that el-Halabi had enforced internal controls and ordered employees to avoid anyone suspected of Hamas ties.
Rights groups say el-Halabi was denied a fair and transparent trial, as he and World Vision had no chance to review the evidence against them. U.N. experts say el-Halabi was questioned for 50 days without access to a lawyer. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Israel has attributed the closed hearings to sensitive security information being discussed.
Shadi Amouri
Amouri, 44, from the northern West Bank city of Jenin, was arrested and accused of being involved in manufacturing a powerful car bomb that detonated beside an Israeli bus packed with passengers on June 5, 2002, killing 17 Israelis in what became known as the Megiddo Junction suicide bombing.
The attack during the second intifada took place in northern Israel. The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
Amouri was sentenced to life in prison, plus 20 years. He was among those transferred to Egypt on Feb. 1 and released into exile.
Zakaria Zubeidi
Zakaria Zubeidi is a prominent former militant leader and theater director whose dramatic jailbreak in 2021 thrilled Palestinians across the Middle East and stunned the Israeli security establishment.
Zubeidi was a senior militant in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in the urban Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. After the second intifada in 2006, he co-founded a theater in Jenin to promote what he described as cultural resistance to Israel. The Freedom Theater has put on everything from Shakespeare to stand-up comedy to plays written by residents.
In 2019, after Zubeidi had already served years in prison for attacks in the early 2000s, Israel arrested him again, accusing him of being involved in shooting attacks that targeted buses of Israeli settlers but caused no injuries.
Zubeidi had been awaiting trial in prison before he was released on Jan. 30 into the West Bank. He denies the charges, saying that he gave up militancy to focus on his political activism after the intifada.
In 2021, he and five other prisoners tunneled out of a maximum-security prison in northern Israel. All six were recaptured days later.
Mohammed Abu Warda
A Hamas militant during the second intifada, Abu Warda helped organize a series of suicide bombings that killed over 40 people and wounded more than a hundred others. Israel arrested him in 2002, and sentenced him to 48 terms of lifetime imprisonment, among the longest sentences it ever issued.
As a young student, Abu Warda joined Hamas at the start of the intifada following Israel’s killing of Yahya Ayyash, the militant group’s leading bombmaker, in 1996.
Palestinian authorities said at the time that Abu Warda had helped to recruit suicide bombers, whose attacks targeting crowded civilian areas in Israeli cities killed scores of people in the early 2000s.
Abu Warda was released and deported on Jan. 30.
Mohammed Aradeh, 42
An activist in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Aradeh was sentenced to life in prison for a range of offenses going back to the second intifada. Some of the charges, according to the Israeli Prison Service, included planting an explosive device and attempted murder.
He was credited with plotting the extraordinary prison escape in 2021, when he and five other detainees, including Zubeidi, used spoons to tunnel out one of Israel’s most secure prisons. They remained at large for days before being caught.
From an impoverished and politically active family in Jenin, in the northern West Bank, Aradeh has three brothers and a sister who have all spent years in Israeli prisons.
He was welcomed as a sort of cult hero in Ramallah on Jan. 25 as family, friends and fans swarmed him, some chanting “The freedom tunnel!” in reference to his jailbreak.
Mohammed Odeh, 52, Wael Qassim, 54, and Wissam Abbasi, 48
All three men hail from the neighborhood of Silwan, in east Jerusalem, and rose within the ranks of Hamas. Held responsible for a string of deadly attacks during the second intifada, the men were handed multiple life sentences in 2002.
They were accused of plotting a suicide bombing at a crowded pool hall near Tel Aviv in 2002 that killed 15 people. Later that year, they were found to have orchestrated a bombing at Hebrew University that killed nine people, including five American students. Israel had described Odeh, who was working as a painter at the university at the time, as the architect of the attack.
All three were transferred to Egypt on Jan. 25. Their families live in Jerusalem and said they will join them in exile.
Mohammad al-Tous, 67
The 67-year-old al-Tous had held the title of longest continuously held prisoner in Israel until his release last Saturday, Palestinian authorities said.
First arrested in 1985 while fighting Israeli forces along the Jordanian border, the activist in the Fatah party spent a total of 39 years behind bars. Originally from the West Bank city of Bethlehem, he was among the prisoners exiled on Jan. 25.
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By ISABEL DEBRE
Associated Press
