Since the Nakba in 1948, Israel has been detaining Palestinians, some on bogus charges and others for being militants. Some are incarcerated for months or years without trial in what Israel calls “administrative detention.”
“Administrative Detention allows Israeli military courts to hold a Palestinian prison without charge or trial for periods of six months that can be renewed indefinitely,” reads a 2018 report on Israeli prisons by the State of Palestine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates.
The report, titled Factsheet about the Palestinian Prisoners and their Conditions inside the Israeli Prisons, states that: “Since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in 1967, an estimated number of 800,000 Palestinians have been detained in Israeli prisons. This number constitutes about 20% of the Palestinian population as a whole in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and as much as 40% of the total male Palestinian population.”
Nearly every Palestinian home has at least one empty seat where a family member ought to be, yet is languishing in an Israeli prison instead.
Since the Gaza ceasefire agreement went into effect on 19 January, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are being released in increments, in what has been dubbed Toufan Al-Ahrar (The Flood of the Free).
Among those recently released, 36 had received life sentences for their involvement in attacks against Israel. Twelve were allowed to return to their homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. According to Palestinian medics, four needed urgent hospitalization. The other 24 were exiled.
The remaining 333 freed Palestinians were detained in Gaza following 7 October 2023.
Israeli forces have arrested hundreds of Gazans and detained them without trial. As part of the ceasefire agreement, Israel pledged to release more than 1,000 prisoners on the condition that they did not participate in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
Here’s a look at some prominent prisoners released since the ceasefire took effect on 19 January:
Ahmed Barghouti, 48
Ahmed “the French” Barghouti led the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Fatah movement, in Ramallah. He was arrested in 2022 and issued 13 life sentences for organizing and dispatching suicide bombers to Jerusalem during the Second Intifada, in which 12 Israelis were killed and dozens were injured. Barghouti is also the right-hand man of imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti.
He will be deported abroad via Egypt.
The Sarahneh brothers
Musa, 63, Ibrahim, 55, and Khalil, 45, three brothers from East Jerusalem, were freed after more than 22 years in prison for their role in organizing suicide bombings which killed several Israelis during the Second Intifada.
While Musa and Ibrahim were sent back to their home in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, Khalil will be deported through Egypt.
“The conditions of detention are more difficult than you could imagine,” Ibrahim Sarahneh told the Associated Press (AP) as he stepped off a bus in the West Bank village of Beitunia. “There is beating, insults, and cursing.”
The Aweis brothers
Brothers Abdel Karim Aweis, 54, and Hassan Aweis, 47, from the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, were also freed Saturday after nearly 23 years in confinement.
Hassan was sentenced to life in 2002 on charges of voluntary manslaughter, planting an explosive device, and attempted murder. He also carried out planned attacks by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade during the Second Intifada.
Abdel Karim Aweis — weighed down with the added charges and sentenced to the equivalent of six life sentences — was transferred to Egypt for deportation.
Iyad Abu Shakhdam, 49
Abu Shakhdam was serving the equivalent of 18 life sentences for participating in Hamas attacks that killed tens of Israelis during the Second Intifada, which included a suicide bombing that targeted two buses in Beersheba in 2004, killing 16 Israelis, including a four-year-old.
Abu Shakhdam was arrested in the West Bank in 2004 following a gunfight with Israeli security forces in which he was shot 10 times, according to AP.
His family stated that he finished high school and earned a certificate for psychology courses during the 21 years he served in Israeli prison.
Jamal al-Tawil, 61
Al-Tawil is a prominent Hamas politician operating in the West Bank. He spent most of the last two decades in and out of Israeli prisons partly over allegations that he helped organize suicide bombings. He was last arrested in 2021, and he has been languishing in prison since without charge or trial on the claim that he had participated in riots and incited Hamas-affiliated political activists in Ramallah.
Too weak to walk, Al-Tawil was hospitalized following his release on 8 February, as reported by AP.
Mohammed el-Halabi, 47
In 2016, the Palestinian manager of the Gaza branch of World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization, was arrested and charged with misappropriating tens of millions of dollars for Hamas. This sparked backlash from human rights groups. Despite el-Halabi and World Vision refuting the claims and independent inquiries finding no evidence of misconduct, he has been in pretrial detention for the past eight years.
He was released on 1 February.
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 5 June 2002, killing 17 Israelis in what became known as the Megiddo Junction suicide bombing.
The attack during the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, between 2000 and 2005, 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 Saturday and released into exile.
“We wish to have felt the joy of his release here, on the land of Jenin refugee camp,” said Bassam Amouri, his brother. “But, thank God, what matters is that he is free of the suffering of prison.”
Ashraf Abu Srour
Abu Srour, 50, sentenced to life in prison over a 2000 attack that killed Israeli soldier Shahar Veckart, was also among those released Saturday into exile.
Hailing from Aida refugee camp in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Abu Srour was detained in 2001 and convicted the next year over the shooting at Rachel’s Tomb, the traditional burial place of the wife of the biblical patriarch Jacob. During the second intifada, the shrine became a target of Palestinian militants protesting Israel’s claim to the holy site revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.
Abu Srour belonged to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade — an armed group affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party that controls the Palestinian Authority.
Zakaria Zubeidi, 49
Zakaria Zubeidi is a prominent former militant leader and theatre director whose dramatic jailbreak in 2021 thrilled Palestinians across the Middle East and stunned the Israeli security establishment.
Zubeidi once led the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade. After the second intifada in 2006, he co-founded a theatre in his hometown of Jenin refugee camp, a hotbed of Palestinian militancy, to promote what he described as cultural resistance to Israel. Even today, the Freedom Theater puts 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, released Thursday into the West Bank, had been awaiting trial in prison. He denies the charges, saying he gave up militancy to focus on political activism after the intifada.
In 2021, he and five other prisoners tunnelled out of a maximum-security prison in northern Israel, an escape that helped solidify Zubeidi’s image among Palestinians as a folk hero. All six were recaptured days later.
Mohammed Abu Warda, 49
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 Warda had helped to recruit suicide bombers — including his cousin, his cousin’s neighbour and a classmate at the Ramallah Teachers College — whose attacks targeting crowded civilian areas in Israeli cities killed scores of people in the early 2000s.
Warda was released and deported on Thursday.
Mohammed Aradeh, 42
An activist in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Aradeh was sentenced to life in prison for a range of offences going back to the second intifada. Some of the charges, according to the Israeli Prison Service, included planting an explosive device and attempting 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 occupied West Bank, Aradeh has three brothers and a sister who have all spent years in Israeli prisons.
On 25 January, he was welcomed as a sort of cult hero in Ramallah. 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 Silwan neighbourhood 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 sentenced to 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 kingpin in the attack.
All three were transferred to Egypt on 25 January. Their families live in Jerusalem and said they will join them in exile.
The Abu Hamid 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 also deported to Egypt on 25 January. They had been sentenced to life in prison over deadly militant attacks against Israelis in 2002.
Their brother, a different Nasser Abu Hamid, was one of the founders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade. He was also sentenced to life in prison for several deadly attacks. His 2022 death from lung cancer behind bars unleashed a wave of angry protests across the West Bank as Palestinian officials accused Israel of medical neglect.
The family has a long arc of Palestinian militancy. The mother, Latifa Abu Hamid, 72, now has three sons exiled, one still imprisoned, one who died in prison and one who was killed by Israeli forces. Their family house has been demolished at least three times by Israel, which defends such punitive home demolitions as a deterrent against future attacks.
Mohammad al-Tous, 67
Al-Tous had held the title of longest continuous Israeli imprisonment until his release last Saturday, stated Palestinian authorities.
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 25 January.
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