Who are the Palestinian prisoners released by Israel? | News about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The West Bank under Israeli occupation has erupted in celebration after 90 Palestinian prisoners, most of them women, were released from Israeli prisons as part of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

Families in the West Bank waited until the early hours of Monday morning to receive their loved ones, most of whom were detained without charge.

The ceasefire, which ended Israel’s more than 15-month war against Gaza, also led to the release three Israeli prisoners. More prisoners and the prisoners are expected to be released in the coming weeks.

Here’s what we know about Palestinian prisoners which are released:

Who are some of the freed prominent Palestinians?

The prisoners – 69 women and 21 children – were released at around 1am on Monday (23:00 GMT Sunday). They were taken by Red Cross buses to the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Only eight of 90 prisoners they were arrested before October 7, 2023, when Palestinian groups led by Hamas carried out attacks in southern Israel. The attacks killed more than 1,100 people, captured around 250 of them, and launched Israel’s war against Gaza.

Israel has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians during its offensive in Gaza, drawing criticism for using disproportionate force against civilians and targeting hospitals and schools. It has also killed more than 850 Palestinians and detained more than 7,000 in often violent raids across the West Bank.

Khalida Jarrar, the leader of the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a feminist activist, was one of the most prominent of the released prisoners.

Jarrar has been serving prison terms in Israel since 2015 for speaking out about the rights of Palestinian prisoners and being associated with a “legitimate” party. Israel considers the PFLP a “terrorist” group.

In a 2016 statement, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Jarrar’s repeated arrests were part of a broader Israeli crackdown on nonviolent political opposition to its half-century military occupation of Palestinian lands.

The last arrest occurred on December 26, 2023.

The first arrest of a Palestinian occurred in March 1989 during an International Women’s Day protest at Birzeit University in the West Bank. She was a master’s student at the time.

Jarrar emerged as a feminist leader as she fought against gender stereotypes and worked to empower women entrepreneurs in the West Bank. She did community service in Nablus, helping to clean public spaces and improve public schools. She was later elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council.

From 1994 to 2006, she was the director of the Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association.

“There is this double feeling that we live in: on the one hand, this feeling of freedom for which we are all grateful, and on the other hand, this pain of losing so many Palestinian martyrs,” Jarrar told the Associated Press news agency after her release.

Another prominent released prisoner is journalist Rula Hassanein, editor of the Ramallah-based Wattan media network. She was arrested by Israeli forces on March 19 as part of the mass arrests of Palestinians.

Hassanein, 30, was tried before an Israeli military court in Israel’s Ofer prison. She was charged with incitement on social media for posts that allegedly included retweets of X and her expressing frustration over the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.

How many more prisoners will be released?

The first phase of the three-phase ceasefire should last 42 days. During that time, 33 Israeli prisoners are to be released, including women civilians and soldiers, as well as children and elderly civilians.

In exchange, up to 1,900 Palestinian prisoners will be released.

On the first day of exchange, three Israeli prisoners from Gaza were released: 24-year-old Romi Gonen, 28-year-old Emily Damari and 31-year-old Doron Steinbrecher.

It is believed that around 100 prisoners remained in Gaza before the release. It remains unclear how many are still alive.

The remaining prisoners, apart from the 33 scheduled for release in the first phase, are said to be male soldiers who will be released in exchange for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners.

How many Palestinians are in Israeli prisons?

Before Monday’s release of 90 prisoners, there were 10,400 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, not including those held in Gaza during the past 15 months of war, according to the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.

“If they do something very small to challenge the status quo, they face jail time,” according to Al Jazeera reporter Nida Ibrahim. Ibrahim said Israel has imprisoned many children accused of throwing stones at Israeli forces.

“The list of prisoners, hundreds of names that have been released, mostly serve administrative detentionwhich is a tactic used by Israel to keep people in prison indefinitely without charge,” Ibrahim said.

Prison conditions

“I left hell and now I’m in heaven. We all came out of hell. They abused us, beat us, fired tear gas at us,” Abdelaziz Atawneh, a boy who was released from an Israeli prison on Monday, told the media.

“No food, no sweets, no salt,” he said.

Israeli prisons are notorious for mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners and onlookers commented on how frail Jarrar looked compared to how she looked at the time of her last arrest.

United Nations agencies, investigators and human rights organizations have documented arbitrary arrests, inhumane and degrading treatment, torture and death of Palestinians in Israeli custody.

On the other hand, the prisoners released and sent to Israel appeared to be in good health, according to Israeli media.

The three prisoners, “along with their mothers, have just landed at a hospital, where they will be reunited with the rest of their families and receive medical attention,” the Israeli military said in a statement. The three freed prisoners are in the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv.

In April, dr. Adnan al-Bursh, head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, died in Israel’s Ofer prison. His family said he was al-Bursh tortured to death.

“The release of Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, does not mean that the conditions of detention have changed. Israeli negotiators insisted that nothing would change inside Israeli prisons,” Basil Farraj, an assistant professor at Birzeit University, told Al Jazeera.

“This is actually very worrying and explains why families flocked to receive their loved ones because they knew damn well that [the prisoners] what we’re going through is brutal.”

Farraj added: “This shows that this carceral regime is intent on crushing Palestinian prisoners. He is deliberately trying to break their spirit and soul.”