
File Photo: Israeli prisoner Mohammed Al-Tous. Photo courtesy of NNA website.
Mohamed Al-Tous was among 200 Palestinian detainees released from Israeli jails on Saturday, including 121 serving life sentences and 79 with long-term sentences, in exchange for the release of four female Israeli soldiers released by Hamas in Gaza as part of the prisoner exchange under the ceasefire agreement between the two sides.
In October 1985, Israel arrested Al-Tous at the age of 28 after capturing him in a bloody battle between the Israeli occupation forces and a Palestinian commando unit in the occupied West Bank near the Jordanian borders.
An Israeli warplane struck the vehicle carrying the commando unit, killing all of his comrades but leaving Al-Tous seriously injured.
Believing that their son was killed in the incident, Mohamed's family held a public wake for him and accepted condolences per tradition.
However, six months later, the family learned that their son survived the Israeli airstrike and was held in an Israeli prison.
Dumbfounded - but ecstatic - the family and other Palestinians nicknamed Al-Tous "The Living Martyr".
Later, an Israeli court sentenced Al-Tous to multiple life sentences for his involvement in military operations against Israeli occupation forces and his affiliation with the then-banned Fatah movement, which he joined at the age of 14, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).

Photo courtesy of Social media.
For decades, Israel has refused to release Al-Tous in all prisoner exchange deals with Palestinian factions, including the 2011 Gilat Shalit exchange or the 2014 swap deal.
This made him the Palestinian prisoner who served the longest continuous period in Israeli detention of any Palestinian prisoner and earned him the title of "The Dean of Palestinian Prisoners".
With Al-Tous's release, 21 Palestinians detained in Israeli jails before the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords remain incarcerated.
The PPS noted that Al-Tous endured profound personal losses during his decades of incarceration.
The Israeli authorities demolished the family home in the Al-Ja'ba village near Bethlehem on three separate occasions while Mohamed was in Jail.
In 2015, Al-Tous lost his wife Amna after a prolonged illness.

File Photo: Amna Al-Tous holding an image of Mohamed and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Photo courtesy of Fatah website.
In 2017, Parliamentarians for Al-Quds, Al-Tous' son Shadi said the family went through hard times without their father.
“Our situation has gone from bad to worse after my mother died of a stroke. My brothers and I lived as orphaned ever since,” Shadi noted.
High-profile Palestinian prisoners released on Saturday included Mohamedd Al-Arda, sentenced to life imprisonment plus 15 years over his membership in the Islamic Jihad group. Al-Arda dug his way out of jail through an improvised tunnel with three other inmates but was recaptured in 2021.
They also included Zakaria Zubeidi, the former Jenin commander of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and Mahmud Abu Varda, who is serving 48 life sentences for masterminding multiple attacks, including a 1996 bombing on a bus in Jerusalem that killed 45 people.
On Saturday, shortly after the release, Thaer, one of Al-Tous's three sons, told Al Ghad TV that the family “values the efforts of Egypt and other brotherly countries in reaching the deal and securing the release of our father.”
"Before the war on Gaza, we were able to visit my father once a month but we - and all the other families - were denied to see our prisoners after the war started," he explained.
We can now visit with our father but in his country of exile," he said.
"I pray for the freedom of all our prisoners in the occupation’s jails and the completion of this deal to start the reconstruction of Gaza," added Thaer.
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