‘New birth’: Palestinians freed from Israeli jails return to loved ones
Crowds flocked to Palestinian prisoners as they tasted freedom after years behind bars, while Israel revealed the most notorious inmates set loose under the ceasefire deal.
With huge crowds waiting to welcome them home, Palestinian prisoners released by Israel under a Gaza ceasefire deal were overwhelmed with joy as they returned to their loved ones.
Some threw peace signs while others struggled to walk without assistance as they got off the bus and were met by a crowd cheering their return from Israel’s jails to the West Bank city of Ramallah.
“It’s an indescribable feeling, a new birth,” Mahdi Ramadan, newly released, told AFP, flanked by his parents with whom he said he would spend his first evening out of jail.
Nearby, relatives exchanged hugs, young men in tears pressed their foreheads against each other - some even fainting from the emotion of seeing loved ones again after years, and sometimes decades, in jail.
The crowd chanted in celebration “Allahu akbar”, meaning God is the greatest. Among the Palestinians to be released under a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal, 250 are security detainees, including many convicted of killing Israelis, as well as about 1,700 Palestinians detained by the Israeli army in Gaza during the war.
Israel agreed to free them in exchange for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip, under the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war that was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Nour Soufan, now 27 years old, was due to meet his father Moussa, who was jailed a few months after his birth, outside of jail for the first time.
Soufan and half a dozen relatives came to Ramallah from Nablus, in the north of the West Bank, and spent the night in their vehicle.
“I have never seen my father, and this is the first time I will see him. This is a very beautiful moment,” Soufan said.
Like him, many had defied the travel restrictions that puncture daily life in the Palestinian territory, with Israeli army checkpoints proliferating in two years of war.
Palestinian media reported on Sunday that families of detainees had been contacted by Israeli authorities, asking them not to organise mass celebrations.
“No reception is allowed, no celebration is allowed, no gatherings,” said Alaa Bani Odeh, who came from the northern town of Tammun to find his 20-year-old son who had been jailed for four years.
Dressed in the grey tracksuits of Israeli prisons, many prisoners also wore a black-and-white keffiyeh around their necks - the traditional scarf that has become synonymous with the Palestinian cause.
Some of the newly released prisoners happily let themselves be carried away on relatives’ shoulders.
“Prisoners live on hope... Coming home, to our land, is worth all the gold in the world,” said one freed detainee, Samer al-Halabiyeh.
“God willing, peace will prevail, and the war on Gaza will stop,” Halabiyeh added.
“Now I just want to live my life.” Journalists rushed to talk to the prisoners, but many declined to engage, sometimes explaining that before their release, they were advised not to speak.
In the south Gaza city of Khan Yunis, a crowd gathered near Nasser Hospital, in the hope of catching sight of the prisoners taken during the war with Israel.
In the afternoon, thousands cheered to welcome their loved ones as they caught glimpse of the buses carrying them home.
16 OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS INMATES TO BE RELEASED
Israel’s Ministry of Justice has announced a list of 250 Palestinian prisoners it plans to release in exchange for Israeli hostages.
Hamas has said it has not agreed to the final list of names.
Popular Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life sentences after being convicted in 2004 in connection with attacks in Israel that killed five people, is not among those set to be released.
Here are some of the prisoners who will be freed under the hostage-prisoner swap, including a terrorist who murdered a mother-of-six and an evil predator who raped and murdered a 13-year-old boy.
1. Baher Badr
A Hamas member, Badr and his brother planned a bus station suicide bombing at a bus station near an IDF base in 2004.
Badr received 11 life sentences for his role in the attack, which killed eight people.
2. Muhammad Zakarneh
The Fatah operative planned the 2009 attack in which innocent taxi driver Grigory Rabinovich was murdered in a tit-for-tat revenge killing.
Zakarneh was part of a trio that carried out the murder after a relative, an Islamic Jihad terrorist, was killed when the IDF tried to arrest him.
3. Muhammad Abu al-Rub
Along with his Palestinian workmate, Abu al-Rub beat and stabbed his Israeli boss Reuven Schmerling to death in a premeditated terror attack in 2017.
Mr Schmerling had hired the pair to work in his coal warehouse in the northern Arab Israeli city of Kafr Kassem.
4. Mahmoud Qawasmeh
A senior Hamas member who was released during a 2011 prisoner exchange and then allegedly went on to finance and plan the 2014 kidnapping and murders of three Israeli teenage boys in Hebron returning from their religious schools.
The murders of Naftali Frankel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, who were trying to hitchhike home from their West Bank yeshivas, sparked an uproar.
5. Iyad Abu al-Rub
The Islamic Jihad commander in the West Bank was convicted of orchestrating a series of deadly suicide bombings in Israel that killed 13 people between 2003 and 2005.
6. Mahmoud Issa
The Hamas terrorist has been jailed since 1993 for the 1992 abduction and murder of Israeli border policeman Senior Sergeant Nissim Toledano, who was found bound and stabbed after being kidnapped as he walked to work.
7. Raed Sheikh
Sheikh was a Palestinian police officer who took part in the October 12, 2000, lynching of IDF reservists Vadim Norzhich and Yossi Avrahami after they accidentally entered the West Bank city and were taken into police custody.
8. Ahmed Mahmed Jameel Shahada
The only prisoner on the list without any known link to a terror organisation, Shahada and an accomplice raped and murdered 13-year-old Oren Baharami after luring the child to an abandoned room in a Jaffa monastery.
9. Imad Qawasmeh
The local Hamas leader was convicted of directing a double suicide bombing that killed 16 Israelis in 2004.
He was tracked down by Israeli soldiers and arrested in his underwear in the West Bank two months after the attack.
He is alleged to be one of the “leaders” of the terrorists in prison, where he is serving 16 life sentences.
10. Morad Bader Abdullah Adais
Adais was convicted of stabbing to death Dafna Meir, a 39-year-old mother of six, in 2016 with a kitchen knife when he was just 16.
He allegedly returned home to watch a movie with his family after the slaying.
11. Bilal Ajarmeh
A Fatah operative convicted of conducting 17 shooting attacks along the highway in Israel and arrested by Israeli special forces in the West Bank in 2003.
12. Hilmi Abdul Karim Muhammad Hammash
Hammash was sentenced for coordinating the 2004 Jerusalem street bus suicide bombing that killed 11 Israelis, plus the bomber, and wounded 50 others.
13. Ahmad Ismail Ahmad Qawassmeh
A 35-year-old Hamas terrorist serving a life sentence for murdering a rabbi, Shaya Ben David, in Hebron in 2018.
14. Ismail Hamdan
A Fatah member who was convicted in the 2002 kidnapping and shooting death of an Israeli man who was captured at a checkpoint in the West Bank.
15. Mohammad Nasser Sha’aban Abu Rabea
The Hamas operative was serving a life sentence for the stabbing death of two Israeli civilians in 2015.
16. Amin Shuqeirat
Shuqeirat was convicted in 2005 of the murders of two Israeli security guards at a construction site.
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Originally published as ‘New birth’: Palestinians freed from Israeli jails return to loved ones
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