Last Monday was an emotional day for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem as 1,968 prisoners were freed from Israeli prisons.
The vast majority, approximately 1,700, were civilians kidnapped by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) from Gaza. None of them were charged, and all of them spoke of the systematic torture and starvation inflicted on them by the Israeli prison authorities.
Another group of 250 Palestinian captives serving life sentences in Israeli prisons were also released. But only 96 went home, while the remaining 154 were instantly deported from their captivity to Egypt without meeting or seeing their families.
Of these, 157 belonged to Fatah, 65 to Hamas, 16 to Islamic Jihad, 11 to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and one to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Large groups of people in Ramallah welcomed the freed captives who were released first in the West Bank, the first stop. Thirty-eight buses then crossed into Gaza carrying the vast majority of the released POWs where bigger crowds waited for them in Khan Younis.
Almost all the captives appeared to be severely malnourished, traumatised, and in many cases missing limbs. According to testimonies from Israeli doctors, amputations are frequently carried out at the notorious Israeli Sde Teiman Camp as a result of the torture, prolonged shackling, untreated injuries, gunshot wounds, and medical neglect of Palestinian prisoners.
The Israeli occupation bars the families of the captives from celebrating or speaking to the press after their loved ones are released, threatening them with punishment and arrest.
The Sharm El-Sheikh ceasefire framework of 9 October called for a large, phased swap, with Hamas handing over lists of the Israeli hostages it holds, and Israel freeing a large number of Palestinian captives as part of the first phase, including about 250 long-term “security” prisoners and dozens of minors, according to the mediators’ plan.
The Hamas lists were rejected by Israel, however, which contested several high-profile names and certain categories, such as members of the elite Al-Qassam Brigades.
Hamas and some of the mediators say that Israel backtracked, despite US guarantees and attempts to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhyahu of some of the prisoner commitments made during the negotiations.
Israel vetoed the names of popular Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, PFLP Secretary General Ahmed Saadat, and Al-Qassam leaders Abbas Al-Sayyed, Ibrahim Hamed, Hassan Salameh and Abdullah Barghouti, all of whom are serving multiple life sentences.
Because they were imprisoned by the IOF for resisting the occupation, or in many cases on no charges at all, Palestinians held in Israeli detention are considered asraa (prisoners of war). Just like statehood, self-determination, the right of return and other principal quests of the Palestinian struggle, the POWs have been intrinsic to the cause since Israel’s creation in 1948.
For decades, both the Arab states and the Palestinians have swapped prisoners with Israel. For the Palestinians, their POWs have spanned the political spectrum since the early days of the secular Fatah Movement in the 1960s, and then the left-wing factions, followed by the Islamist resistance groups which emerged in the mid-1980s.
In 1998, a Ministry for Palestinian POWs was created by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), which later became the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees.
An 18-year-old autistic teen appeared among the freed Palestinians in Gaza on Monday. Omar Yehia Al-Kanaoui was seen eating a snack while being escorted by the Red Cross, whose members carried his teddy bear. The IOF shot Al-Kanaoui while he was waiting for aid near the Netzarim Axis in Gaza before arresting him and holding him for months.
Israel also held hostage 71-year-old diabetic Siham Abu Salem for two years. She was kidnapped from her hospital bed when the IOF raided the Nasser Hospital in Gaza in January 2024. Abu Salem was held without trial or charges as a bargaining chip and was released on Monday. Her two sons were killed by the IOF.
Haitham Salem was seen being pulled in a wheelchair sobbing and shaking after learning that his entire family had been killed during his detention after Israel bombed their tent in Khan Younis. He made an armband for his daughter, whose second birthday would have been in five days.
Freed photojournalist Shadi Abu Sido told reporters that he and others had been “physically and psychologically” tortured and abused “in every possible way” in Israel’s notorious detention centres.
The liberated prisoner said the Israeli prison authorities had starved him for two years and threatened to gorge his eyes out. “They hung our bodies up day and night, naked and abused, and they insulted us,” he said.
Abu Sido was told his children had been killed – a lie he later found out.
He described his shock at seeing the ruins of Gaza upon his release on Monday, saying it was like witnessing “Judgement Day.”
“Where is everybody? Where is Gaza?” he cried.
Many of the “security” long-sentence liberated prisoners were arrested in connection with the First and Second Intifadas at a very young age.
Nader Sadaqa, 48, who was serving six life sentences, spent the past 20 years of his life in Israeli prisons. He lived in Nablus and threw rocks at the IOF in the First Intifada. He became active with the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as a university student and joined the PFLP’s military wing in the Second Intifada that broke out in 2000, rising in its ranks to lead military operations.
Like many of the incarcerated figures of the various resistance movements, Sadaqa became a “prison branch” leader. He is among the 154 prisoners deported to Egypt.
One of the longest-serving captives, Jerusalem-born Mahmoud Issa, 57, from Hamas’ military wing the Al-Qassam Brigades, spent 31 years in prison, including 13 in solitary confinement. He founded the 101 Unit tasked with kidnapping IOF soldiers to exchange for Palestinian captives.
Bassem Khandagji was a journalism student when he was arrested at the age of 20 and sentenced to three life terms. He had joined the Communist People’s Party at a very young age and was detained in connection with the Second Intifada.
He spent 20 years in several Israeli prisons, where he published multiple novels and poetry collections and pursued postgraduate studies. His novel A Mask the Colour of the Sky won the Arab Booker Prize for Fiction in 2024.
Mohamed Imran is known as one of the masterminds behind the “Alley of Death” operation, an ambush during the Second Intifada in which 13 occupation soldiers, including a senior officer, were killed.
Imran, 43, from Hebron, is a leader of the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, and a prominent figure in the armed resistance in the West Bank.
He was arrested in 2002 after a lengthy pursuit, sentenced to 13 life terms, and deprived of family visits for years by the occupation. He also participated in the 2004 hunger strike, enduring 19 days without food.
Issa, Khandagji, and Imran were deported to Egypt.
Fifty-five healthcare workers from Gaza were also released on Monday, according to Healthcare Workers Watch. The group includes 24 nurses, seven doctors, and two paramedics, most of them abducted directly from hospitals and held for up to 22 months in detention and torture facilities.
At least 115 medical staff from Gaza remain imprisoned, including 20 doctors and 15 senior specialists.
There have been two prisoner swaps since the war started in October 2023. Many Palestinian prisoners who were released on both occasions were rearrested by Israel in the West Bank.
Historically, Israel has maintained a pattern of rearresting Palestinians after prisoner swaps and reinstating their sentences. For every Palestinian released by Israel, 15 others have been arrested.
Between 7 October 2023 and 17 April 2025, Israel released just over 2,000 Palestinian prisoners as part of captive exchanges with Hamas. During the same period, Israel detained about 30,000 Palestinians, leading to the one-to-15 ratio.
According to the UN and Palestinian prisoner organisations, Israeli forces have arrested over 18,000 Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since 7 October 2023. The figures do not include the thousands arrested in Gaza.
The number of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails nearly doubled after October 2023, rising from about 5,250 to nearly 10,000 by April 2025.
A record number of Palestinians have also been placed under administrative detention, meaning that they are being held indefinitely without charge or trial.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 October, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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