Ramallah, West Bank (AP) – Israel released 110 Palestinian prisoners Thursday in exchange for three Israeli hostages detained in Gaza. Five Thai workers detained in captivity in the enclave have also been released in a separate agreement with Thailand. THURSDAY Prisoner exchange for the host marked the third cycle of exchanges as A ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas Having entered his second week.
Most prisoners have left the bus of the Red Cross and on the shoulders of jubilant supporters in occupied West Bank, where the United Nations data show that in five Palestinians crossed the Israeli prison and the liberation of prisoners is a Source of the joyful national celebration – A return to which almost all the Palestinians felt that they could participate.
But 23 of them serving perpetuity sentences for more serious crimes were transferred to Egypt before continuing the deportation.
The prisoners released Thursday were all men, aged 15 to 69.
Here is an overview of some eminent Palestinian prisoners released since the cease-fire agreement entered into force on January 19.
Zakaria Zubeidi
Zakaria Zubeidi is a former militant leader and theater director including the theater whose Dramatic jailbreak In 2021, delighted the Palestinians of the Middle East and amazed and amazed the Israeli security establishment.
Zubeidi once directed the Martyrs Brigade of Al Aqsa – an armed group affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party which controls the Palestinian authority – which led fatal attacks against the Israelis during the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising , between 2000 and 2005.
After the intifada in 2006, Zubeidi co -founded a theater in his hometown of the Jenin refugee camp, a home of Palestinian militantism, to promote what he described as a cultural resistance to Israel. Even today, the Freedom Theater camp of Jenin Refugee puts everything, from Shakespeare to the Stand-up Comedy to the pieces written by residents.
In 2019, after Zubeidi has already served years in prison for attacks in the early 2000s, Israel again arrested him for his presumed involvement in the shooting of attacks which targeted buses of Israeli colonists but did not caused no injury.
Zubeidi, who was released Thursday, was waiting for a trial in prison. He denies the accusations, saying that he had abandoned activism to focus on his political activism after the intifada.
In 2021, he and five other prisoners killed a maximum security prison in northern Israel, an escape which helped to solidify the image of Zubei among the Palestinians as a folk hero. All six were taken over a few days later.
In a room filled with family members and smiling supporters, laughing and jostling for a view of him, Zubeidi shouted to be heard on the frenzy and expressed thanks for God and his loved ones. He looked for words while journalists pushed microphones to him, offering Islamic prayers to those who were injured and killed in Gaza.
Rather than leaving for Jenin Camp after being released, he stayed in Ramallah on Thursday evening. Israel launched a vast military raid earlier this month in the Jenin camp which has hitherto killed at least 18 Palestinians and sent dozens of fleeing families.
“May God give victory to our brothers in Jenin’s camp,” said Zubeidi. His son, Mohammed, was killed in an Israeli drone strike last September in the camp.
Palestinian doctors, who have raised concerns about the conditions of prisoners emerging from Israeli detention, said Zubeidi looked weak and poorly fed. Dr. Mai al-Kaileh, who examined him, said that his coasts had been broken and that he had lost a surprising weight.
“Her condition is very difficult,” she said. “It’s not good.”
Mohammed Abu Warda
Hamas activist in the second intifada, Abu Warda helped organize a series of suicide bombings that killed more than 40 people and injured more than a hundred others. Israel arrested her in 2002 and sentenced her to 48 lifelong imprisonment conditions, among the longest sentences she has ever published.
As a young student, Abu Warda joined Hamas at the start of the intifada after the murder of Israel of Yahya Ayyash, the main bombs in the militant group in 1996.
Palestinian authorities said at the time that Warda had helped recruit suicide bombers – including his cousin, the neighbor of his cousin and a classmate at the Ramallah Teachers College – whose attacks targeting the civil zones cluttered in Israeli cities killed dozens of people in the early 2000s.
Warda was released Thursday.
Mohammed Aradeh, 42
An activist of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Aradeh, was sentenced to life prison for a range of offenses returning to the second intifada. According to the Israeli penitentiary service, some of the accusations included planting an explosive apparatus and the attempted murder.
He was recognized for plotting the prison in 2021, when he and five other detainees, including Zubeidi, used spoons to kill one of the most secure prisons in Israel. They generally stayed for days before being taken.
Of a depleted and politically active family in Jenin, in the West Bank occupied by the NorthAradeh has three brothers and a sister who have all spent years in Israeli prisons.
It was welcomed as a kind of cult hero in Ramallah on Saturday while family, friends and fans invaded it, some singing “The Freedom Tunnel!” in reference to his jailbreak. When he was asked how he felt, Aradeh was out of breath.
He murmured again and again: “Thank God, thank God.”
Mohammed Odeh, 52, Wael Qassim, 54, and Wissam Abbasi, 48
The three men come from the Silwan district, in East Jerusalem, and increased in the ranks of Hamas. Held responsible for a series of deadly attacks during the second intifada, the men were sentenced to several perpetuity sentences in 2002.
They were accused of plotting a bombing of suicide in a crowded billiard room near Tel Aviv in 2002 which killed 15 people. Later that year, they orchestrated a bombing at the Hebrew University which killed nine people, including five American students. Israel had described Odeh, who worked as a painter at university at the time, as an working ankle in the attack.
All three were transferred to Egypt last Saturday. Their families live in Jerusalem and said they would join them in exile.
The Abu Hamid brothers
Three brothers of the eminent Abu Hamid family from the Al -Amari refugee camp in Ramallah – Nasser, 51, Mohammad, 44, and Sharif, 48 years old – were also expelled in Egypt last Saturday. They were sentenced to life prison for deadly militant attacks against the Israelis in 2002.
Their brother, another Nasser Abu Hamid, was one of the founders of the Martyrs of Al-Aqsa. He was also sentenced to life prison for several deadly attacks. His death in 2022 of lung cancer behind bars sparked a wave of angry protests Through the West Bank, Palestinian officials accused Israel of medical negligence.
The family has a long arc of Palestinian activism. The mother, Latifa Abu Hamid, 72, now has three exiled sons, still imprisoned, the one who died in prison and the one who was killed by Israeli forces. Their family home was demolished at least three times by Israel, who defends such Demolitions of the Punitive House as a deterrent against future attacks.
Mohammad al-Tous, 67
Al-Tous had held the title of the longest Israeli imprisonment continues until its release last Saturday, the Palestinian authorities announced.
Arrested for the first time in 1985 during the fight against the Israeli forces along the Jordanian border, the Fatah party activist spent a total of 39 years behind bars. Originally from the city of Bethlehem of West West Cisjordan, he was among the exiled prisoners.
