Israel to free 110 Palestinian prisoners in latest Gaza ceasefire exchange

In the third stage of an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire and captive exchange agreement, according to The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, 110 Palestinians will be freed today from Israeli prisons.

Additionally, five Thai nationals and three Israelis will be freed from custody by Hamas and other Palestinian organizations.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society estimated that the majority of the freed Palestinians would arrive in Ramallah’s Radana neighborhood at around 12 noon local time (10:00 GMT).

20 prisoners who will be exiled outside Palestine won’t be included in this. At least 30 children were included in the list of the prisoners’ names and ages that the prison advocacy group published.

Zakaria Zubeidi, 49, a well-known former Palestinian resistance fighter and director of theater, is one of the names on the list whose dramatic 2021 jailbreak shocked Palestinians and shocked Israeli security officials.

According to The Associated Press, Zubeidi once led the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group that is affiliated with the Fatah party that controls the Palestinian Authority (PA). He also participated in uprisings against Israeli occupation between 2000 and 2005.

In 2019, after Zubeidi had already served years in Israeli prisons, he was arrested again.

However, he and five other prisoners escaped from a maximum-security facility in northern Israel in 2021, helping to cement Zubeidi’s status as a folk hero among Palestinians.

Later, he and the other five escapees were recaptured.

In order to encourage cultural resistance against Israel, Zubeidi established The Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp, his home in the north of the occupied West Bank.

The West Bank theater offers local men, women, and children a creative outlet to reflect on their experiences living under Israeli occupation. It has recently made its original theatre productions available internationally.

In the Jenin refugee camp, which is thought to be the epicenter of Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank, violent Israeli raids are frequently carried out.

At least 16 Palestinians have been killed and dozens have been wounded in the camp’s second-week intensive military operation, which is being conducted by Israeli forces.

As part of its ongoing operation in the occupied territory, Israel’s military announced on Wednesday that it had killed 18 Palestinians and taken 60 prisoners into custody in Jenin and Tulkarem.

Thousands still imprisoned

As Israel’s and Hamas’ ceasefire continues, 400 Palestinians will be released from Israeli prisons with the 110 Palestinians who are scheduled to be released.

During the second week of prisoners’ release, Israeli forces detained dozens more Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including 12 Palestinians detained in occupied East Jerusalem on suspicion of violating a ban on “expressions of joy” and “identification with Hamas” during the release of 12 of those prisoners.

Prior to the current round of prisoner releases, 10, 400 Palestinians were being held in Israeli custody, including more than 3, 300 held in administrative detention without charge or trial.

Palestinian prisoners’ records do not include those held by Israeli forces during their occupation of the Gaza Strip, where many of them work as doctors, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital director in Gaza.

After launching a vicious attack on Abu Safia’s hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on December 29, Israeli soldiers stormed his hospital.

After Israel’s Ashkelon Magistrates Court extended his detention without charge until February 13, according to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Israeli authorities had previously extended a ban on Abu Safia from speaking with his attorneys until February 6.

Palestinians in Gaza have been held separately from other Palestinian prisoners, according to a joint statement from Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations, including in “ad hoc, army-administered detention camps, primarily located in the Naqab desert in southern Israel.”

“Testimonies from released prisoners indicate that the torture inflicted on Gaza detainees has reached unprecedented levels”, the rights groups Addameer, Al Mezan, Al-Haq, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said last year, following the news that Palestinian orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Adnan al-Bursh, had been killed in Israeli custody.

Source: Aljazeera