Agencies
Gaza–183 Palestinians prisoners have been released from Israeli jails including 150 arrived in Gaza, 32 arrived in Ramallah in occupied West Bank and one prisoner will be deported to Egypt. Huge crowds greeted the freed prisoners whom many of them were sentenced to life by the occupying Israeli regime.
Hamas released three Israeli prisoners including Yarden Bibas, 34, French-Israeli citizen Ofer Kalderon, 53, and Keith Siegel, 65, a US-Israeli citizen who were taken hostages on 7 October 2023.
The Palestinian prisoners have suffered from starvation, torture, infections and injuries from beatings by Israeli prison authorities. The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said in a statement Saturday “once again, every time prisoners are released, we find the prisoners’ bodies reflecting the level of crimes committed against them, including torture that is unprecedented in its level.”
“I feel joy despite the journey of pain and hardship that we lived,” said Ali Al-Barghouti, who was serving two life sentences in an Israeli jail, as quoted by Reuters. “The life sentence was broken and the occupation will one day be broken,” he added.
The ceremony of releasing the three Israelis after 15 months in captivity was once again an occasion for a show of force by uniformed Hamas fighters who paraded in the area where the handovers took place in a sign of their re-established dominance in Gaza despite the heavy losses suffered in the war.
Meanwhile, Israel continue to commit war crimes in the occupied West Bank as its forces have been targeting the Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps along with other Palestinian communities, killing more than two dozen people in last week alone.
On Sunday, the Israeli military blew up 23 buildings in the Jenin refugee camp. Jenin is home to a crowded refugee camp of descendants of Palestinians who were driven out, or fled their homes, in the 1948 war when the state of Israel was established.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a statement urged the United States to end Israel’s military operation and requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council “to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.”
Israel has killed at least 47,460 Palestinians and wounded 111,580 in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
Hospitals in Gaza have received 27 bodies in the past 24 hours, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry. At least one of those bodies were from a new Israeli strike, two others were of Palestinians who succumbed to their injuries after previous strikes, and 24 bodies were recovered from the rubble, the statement said.
As Palestinians, despite Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, celebrate the return of their loved ones from cruel inhumane prisons in the Zionist apartheid state, Israelis seem to be in despair and deep sadness, pointing fingers to each other for not winning the war and not achieving any of its declared objectives.
Speaking to Al Jazeera about the reaction in Israel to the release of the Palestinian prisoners, Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg said, “Palestinian pain does not register on the Israeli radar. Israelis don’t have the capacity to appreciate it, and a lot of us view Palestinian pain as Palestinians’ fault.”
Goldberg noted there is a sense of joy after the return of the three captives on Saturday, “but there is also a tremendous amount of frustration and anger that … can generally be defined as a sense that Israel’s war, which was defined as the most justified war Israel fought, has, after more than 15 months, come to absolutely nothing.”



