Israel set free 183 Palestinian prisoners on the most recent occasion of swapping with Gaza captors for Israeli hostages. The exchange took place during a ceasefire that has temporarily halted the conflict, although the future of this ceasefire remains uncertain.
Israel views the security prisoners as terrorists, while Palestinians see them as freedom fighters resisting a decades-long military occupation.
Almost every Palestinian knows someone personally who has been detained by Israel at some time, either for participating in militant activities or for minor infractions like throwing rocks, taking part in protests, or being affiliated with a forbidden political organization. Some individuals are held in administrative detention for prolonged periods without facing trial. Israel justifies this practice as necessary for preventing attacks and safeguarding classified intelligence.
Out of the 183 prisoners released on Saturday, 18 had been serving life sentences, and 54 were incarcerated for extended periods due to their roles in fatal assaults on Israelis. Seven individuals convicted of the most severe crimes will be sent to Egypt before facing deportation.
Among those being released are 111 Palestinians who were rounded up after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, which triggered the war. They had been detained without trial.
Here’s 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 over 100 others. In interviews with Arabic media, 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.
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 prison, in part over allegations that he helped plot suicide bombings.
Most recently, the Israeli military arrested al-Tawil 2021, saying that he had participated in violent riots and mobilized Hamas political activists in Ramallah, the seat of the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority and Hamas’ main rival.
He had been held without charge or trial since then. After his arrest, he went on 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.
He was among at least seven Palestinian prisoners who were immediately taken to a hospital after their release on Saturday.
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 relayed.
Shadi Amouri
Amouri, 44, from the northern West Bank city of Jenin, was arrested for his alleged role in manufacturing the 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 over his alleged involvement in shooting attacks that targeted buses of Israeli settlers but caused no injuries.
Zubeidi, who was released on Jan. 30 into the West Bank, had been awaiting trial in prison. 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 bomb maker, 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 continuous Israeli imprisonment 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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