Just days after the first Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel as part of the ceasefire/hostage deal, details were emerging about who was being freed and of what they were convicted.
Pro-Palestinian supporters claimed that the majority of the 90 people released on Sunday, in exchange for just three Israeli women hostages held in Gaza, were women in Israel’s administrative detention and “children”. A BBC report claimed “all of the Palestinians released on Sunday, among them several children, were convicted of relatively minor offences.
“Many …were never charged at all and were held in Israeli prisons under what is called ‘administrative detention’, a process strongly condemned by human rights groups”.
In fact, new data released by the Israeli Justice Ministry show a very different picture: the list “includes individuals previously detained on charges related to terrorism or activities considered a threat to public safety.”
The ministry says that “90 percent of all released prisoners are male; 96 per cent are over 18 and the median age is 44”, while “only 6.5 percent were held under administrative detention”.
Additionally, says the ministry, “38.7 percent of prisoners were serving life sentences, while 44.7 per cent were serving eight years or longer. The remaining prisoners had not yet been handed a sentence”.
The majority of prisoners had lived in the West Bank before their arrest. Around seven per cent lived in East Jerusalem, and a further 12.1 percent in Gaza. More telling is the figure from the Justice Ministry that “ over 40 percent of the released prisoners are members of Hamas”.
Among those released on Sunday was Bushra al-Tawil, a 32-year-old journalist who has spent more than five years in Israeli jails, though not concurrently. She told the BBC that she had always been held without charge, most recently since March 2024, apart from on one occasion when she was prosecuted over a talk she gave in a mosque.
She was previously part of a prisoner exchange when Israel released more than 1,000 Palestinians for the kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2011. The most notorious person involved in that swap was Yahya Sinwar, who became the mastermind of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack.
Today al-Tawil declines to confirm that she supports Hamas, saying she does not wish to be re-arrested. But she says: “The hostages meant I got out. As long as there are hostages, prisoners like me will get their freedom”.
Among those said to be on the list for release in the next stages of the deal is Zakaria Zubeidi, 49, imprisoned in 2019 for his role in the Beit El shootings on the West Bank. He is also understood to have been involved in a number of terror attacks, including a Beit She’an bombing that killed six people in 2002.
Mahmud Abu Warda is serving 48 life sentences for plotting multiple terror attacks including in Jerusalem in 1996, when 45 Israelis were killed in two bus bombings.
Also on the release list are said to be Wissam Abbasi, Mohammad Odeh, and Wael Qassim, three members of the so-called Silwan Squadron, jailed in 2002 over bombings that killed more than 30 Israelis in Jerusalem.
Israeli media has reported that Khalida Jarrar, leader of the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) will be freed. And Khalil Yusef Ali Jabarin, imprisoned for the murder of activist Ari Fuld in 2018, is also thought to be on the list.
In the first phase of the ceasefire deal, 1800 more Palestinian prisoners are due to be released. Those convicted of murders are thought likely to be deported to places such as Qatar and Turkey.
