Who are the Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for Israeli hostages?

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) – The release of four female Israeli soldiers from Hamas captivity on Saturday came at a great cost to Israel.

Israel has released 200 Palestinian prisoners, 120 of whom are serving life sentences, from its prisons as part of a ceasefire agreement. They ranged in age from 16 to 67.

Others were released and taken to the West Bank in a frenzy, while those with crimes deemed more serious were transferred to Egypt.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah on Saturday, dozens of freed Palestinians, all haggard and thin in dirty Israeli prison jumpsuits, disembarked from a white Red Cross bus. They threw themselves into the excited crowd.

The images evoked the trauma of Israelis whose loved ones were killed by some of those who were freed.

Moshe Har Melech, whose son was killed in a shooting incident in Palestine in 2003, said he was outraged by the released prisoners being hailed as “great heroes” and warned that even deportation was not an obstacle.

“They will continue to recruit remotely and establish terrorist cells,” he said. “But this time, they will have more information.”

Excited teenagers broadcast the show on social media, and mothers wept as they hugged their sons for the first time in years.

“It cannot be explained. Being between your mother and father is an indescribable feeling,” said Azmi Nafaa, who was accused of trying to steal his car from Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint in 2015 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

After nine years in prison, Nafaa hugged her mother, Hadiya Hamdan. He suggested they cook meatballs in a yogurt sauce, then laughed, suggesting the more elaborate “mansaf,” a Bedouin dish of lamb and rice.

“That will be difficult for you,” he said.

“No,” he replied. “Nothing will be difficult.”

There was no such reception for the 70 deported prisoners, whose convoy entered the south and slipped peacefully through the Gaza Rafah border crossing into Egypt.

Underscoring Israel’s challenges, the reception of prisoners in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, has revealed support for the rival group Hamas. Many young Palestinians waved blue Hamas flags and called on the militant group to arrest more Israelis for the release of all prisoners.

Hard-line commentators have criticized the deal as narrowing the scope of justice and conceding to the enemy.

“A deal that frees brutal killers … puts Israeli lives at risk,” said David M. Weinberg, senior executive at the conservative research group Misgav, writing in the right-wing newspaper Makor Rishon. “And that road is not particularly long.”

Here’s a look at the most prominent Palestinian prisoners released on Saturday.

Mohammed Aradeh, 42

A Palestinian Islamic Jihad activist, Aradeh, has been sentenced to life in prison for multiple crimes dating back to the second intifada, or uprising against Israeli rule in the early 2000s. Other charges, according to the Israel Prison Service, include planting an explosive device and attempted murder.

He is said to have plotted to escape from prison in 2021, when he and five other prisoners used spoons to break out of one of Israel’s most secure prisons. They were released for days before they were caught.

From a poor 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 cult hero in Ramallah on Saturday as family, friends and supporters booed him, some chanting “Freedom Tunnel!” about his escape from prison. When asked how she felt, Aradeh lost her breath.

Again and again he murmured, “Thank God, thank God.”

Mohammed Odeh, 52, Wael Qassim, 54, and Wissam Abbasi, 48

All three of these men are from the Silwan neighborhood, east of Jerusalem, and rose within Hamas. Charged with a series of deadly attacks during the second intifada, the men were sentenced to multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison in 2002.

They were accused of planning a suicide bombing in a crowded hall near Tel Aviv that killed 15 people. Later that year, it was discovered that they planned the Hebrew University bombing that killed nine people, including five American students. Israel had identified Odeh, who was working as an artist at the university at the time, as the mastermind of the attack.

All three were among those transported to Egypt. All their families live in Jerusalem.

Abu Hamid’s brothers

Three brothers from the prominent Abu Hamid family of the Al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah – Nasser, 51, Mohammad, 44, and Sharif, 48 – were deported together on Saturday. They were sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2002 Israeli riots.

His brother, the distinguished Nasser Abu Hamid, was one of the founders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade – an armed force affiliated with Fatah, the political party that controls the Palestinian Authority.

He was also sentenced to life in prison for multiple murders. His death in 2022 from lung cancer in custody sparked angry protests and strikes in the West Bank as Palestinian officials accused Israel of medical negligence.

The family has a long line in the Palestinian military. The mother, Latifa Abu Hamid, 72, still has three exiled sons, one is still in prison, one died in prison and one was killed by Israeli soldiers. Their family home has been demolished at least three times by Israel, which defends the punitive demolitions as a deterrent to future attacks.

Mohammad al-Tous, 67 years old

Al-Tous held the record for Israel’s longest-serving prison sentence until he was released on Saturday, the Palestinian Authority said.

First arrested in 1985 while fighting Israeli forces near the Jordanian border, the Fatah activist spent 39 years in prison. Originally from the city of Bethlehem in the West Bank, he was among the prisoners deported to Egypt.