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Israel sees security prisoners as terrorists, while the Palestinians see them as fighters for freedom that resist a military occupation of decades of decades
Former Palestinian prisoners released by Israel Waves to a crowd that cheered in the occupied city of Ramallah. (AFP photos)
Israel launched 183 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday in the last exchange for Israeli hostages held in Gaza, part of a high fire that has stopped the war but whose future is uncertain.
Israel sees security prisoners as terrorists, while the Palestinians see them as fighters for freedom that resist a military occupation of decades.
Almost all Palestinians have a friend or relative who has been imprisoned by Israel at some point, for militant attacks or minor crimes such as the launch of rock, protest or membership in a prohibited political group.
Some are carried out for months or years without trial in what is known as administrative detention, what Israel says that it is necessary to avoid attacks and avoid sharing sensitive intelligence.
Eighteen of the released on Saturday had been sentenced to life imprisonment and 54 were serving sentences for their participation in mortal attacks against the Israelis. Seven of those convicted of the most serious crimes will be transferred to Egypt before greater deportation.
Among those released are 111 Palestinians who were rounded after the attack of October 7, 2023 of Hamas in southern Israel, which triggered war. They had been arrested without trial.
Here is a look at some prominent Palestinian prisoners released since the truce entered into force on January 19.
Iyad Abu Shakhdam Abu Shakhdam, 49, was sentenced to the equivalent of 18 perpetual chains for their participation in Hamas attacks that killed dozens of Israelis during the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, between 2000 and 2005.
Among the most infamous attacks was a double suicidal bombing that exploded two buses in the city of southern Beersheba in southern Beersheba, killing 16 Israelis, including a 4 -year -old boy and hurting more than 100.
In interviews with the Arab media, he described his militancy as a desire for revenge derived from his brother’s murder for Israeli security forces in 2000.
Abu Shakhdam was fleeing for weeks before his arrest in his hometown of Hebron in the West Bank in November 2004, after a shooting with the Israeli security forces in which he was shot 10 times.
For 21 years in prison, said his family, finished high school and obtained a certificate for psychology courses.
Jamal Al-Tawil Al-Tawil, 61, an outstanding Hamas politician in the occupied West Bank, has spent almost two decades inside and outside the Israeli prison, partly because of the accusations that he helped plan suicide attacks.
More recently, the Israeli army arrested Al-Tawil 2021, saying that he had participated in violent disturbances and political activists of Hamas in Ramallah, the headquarters of the semi-autonomous Palestinian authority and the main rival of Hamas.
He had been held without charge or trial since then. After his arrest, he made hunger strike for more than three weeks to protest his administrative arrest.
During one of the Al-Tawil periods in the Israeli prison in the early 2000s, he made a successful electoral campaign of custody to become mayor of Al-Bireh, a city of the West Bank that Ramallah contains.
The documents of the US Court of 2007, presented by the families of the Israelis killed during the second Intifada, show that Al-Tawil had served for years as president of the Charitable Al-Islah society, a frontal organization to raise money for Hamas.
The case accused Al-Tawil of recruiting a Hamas militant to carry out a 2001 suicide bombing that attacked a pedestrian shopping center full of people in Jerusalem, killing 11 people.
His daughter, the 32-year-old journalist Bushra Al-Tawil, was among the dozens of women and adolescents released in the first round of exchanges of prisoners for grace on January 19.
He was between at least seven Palestinian prisoners who were immediately taken to a hospital after his release on Saturday.
Mohammed El-Halabi, the Palestinian manager of the Gaza of World Vision, an important Christian aid organization, was arrested in 2016 and accused of diverting dozens of millions of dollars to Hamas in a high profile case that caused criticisms of criticisms of The rights groups. He was released on February 1.
Both El-Halabi, 47, and World Vision, strongly denied the accusations and independent investigations did not find irregularities evidence. An independent audit found that the-Halabi had applied internal controls and ordered employees to avoid any suspect in Hamas’s ties.
The rights groups say that El-Halabi was denied a fair and transparent judgment, since he and World Vision did not have the opportunity to review the evidence against him. UN experts say that El-Halabi was interrogated for 50 days without access to a lawyer. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Israel has attributed closed audiences to confidential security information that is transmitted.
Shadi Amouri Amouri, 44, in the city of Jenin in northern Bank , killing 17 Israelis in what was known as the suicide bombardment Megiddo Junction.
The attack during the second intifada took place in northern Israel. The Palestinian militant group Jihad Islamic claimed responsibility.
Amouri was sentenced to life imprisonment, more than 20 years. He was among those transferred to Egypt on February 1 and released into exile.
Zakaria Zubeidi Zakaria Zubeidi is an outstanding former militant leader and theater director whose dramatic Jailbreak in 2021 excited the Palestinians in the Middle East and surprised the establishment of Israeli security.
Zubeidi was a main militant in the Brigade of the martyrs of Al-Aqsa 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 everything from Shakespeare to foot 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 for his alleged participation in shooting attacks that attacked the buses of Israeli settlers but did not cause injuries.
Zubeidi, who was released on January 30 at the West Bank, had been waiting for the prison trial. He denies the charges, saying that he resigned from the militancy to focus on his political activism after intifada.
In 2021, he and five other prisoners tune in with a maximum security prison in northern Israel. The 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 more than 40 people and wounded more than one hundred others. Israel arrested him in 2002 and sentenced him to 48 terms of prison for life, among the longest sentences he has ever issued.
As a young student, Abu Warda joined Hamas at the beginning of the Intifada after the murder of Israel by Yahya Ayyash, the main bomb manufacturer of the militant group, in 1996.
The Palestinian authorities said at that time that Abu Warda had helped recruit suicide bombers, whose attacks aimed at crowded civil areas in Israeli cities killed dozens of people in the early 2000s.
Abu Warda was released and deported on January 30.
Mohammed Aradeh, 42 activist in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Aradeh was sentenced to life imprisonment for a variety of crimes that date back to the second intifada. Some of the positions, according to the Israel Prison Service, included planting an explosive device and murder attempt.
He was attributed to the consignment of the extraordinary escape from the prison in 2021, when to him and five other detainees, including Zubeidi, used tunnel spoons for tunnel one of the safer prisons in Israel. They remained in general for days before being trapped.
From an impoverished and politically active family in Jenin, in northern Bank, Aradeh has three brothers and a sister who have spent years in Israeli prisons.
He was welcome as a kind of worship hero in Ramallah on January 25, since family, friends and fans invaded him, some singing “The Freedom Tunnel!” In reference to your jailbreak.
Mohammed Odeh, 52, Wael Qassim, 54, and Wissam Abbasi, 48 the three men come from the Silwan neighborhood, in East Jerusalem, and climbed into Hamas’ ranks. He would be responsible for a series of mortal attacks during the second intifada, men received multiple life imprisonment in 2002.
They were accused of planning a suicide bombing in a pool lounge full of people near Tel Aviv in 2002 that killed 15 people. Later that year, it was discovered that they had orchestrated a bombing at the Hebrew University that killed nine people, including five US students. Israel had described Odeh, who worked as a painter at the university at that time, as an attack architect.
The three were transferred to Egypt on January 25. Their families live in Jerusalem and said they will join them in exile.
Mohammad Al-Tous, 67, Al-Tous, 67, had had the longest and continuous Israeli prison title until his release last Saturday, the Palestinian authorities said.
He first arrested in 1985 while fighting against Israeli forces along the Jordanian border, the Fatah party activist spent a total of 39 years after bars. Originally from the city of Bethlehem West of Bethlehem, he was among the exile prisoners on January 25.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a FEED – PTI syndicated news agency)
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