Israel is Refusing to Release Key Political Prisoners in Ceasefire
Hamas says it will continue pushing to free Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Sadaat in ongoing negotiations
The Palestinian delegation negotiating the Gaza “ceasefire” agreement in Doha made an eleventh-hour effort earlier this week to push for the release of two of the most high-profile political prisoners held by Israel: Marwan Barghouti, a popular political leader many believe would win a democratic election in Palestine, and Ahmad Sadaat, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
After the agreement was announced in Doha on Wednesday, Israel and the U.S. falsely portrayed Hamas as upending the deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday accused Hamas of trying to "extort last minute concessions,” saying in a statement that “Hamas reneged on parts of the agreement reached with the mediators.” Sources close to the Gaza ceasefire negotiations, however, told Drop Site that the Palestinian side renewed their push for Barghouti and Saadat as a result of Israel’s last minute attempt to expedite the release of a group of military aged Israeli men held in Gaza. Hamas often categorizes men of fighting age as soldiers even if they are not officially in the IDF. Israel, according to sources, maintained the men were civilians in need of medical care and fell under the humanitarian release category.
Some Palestinian sources suggested the move may have been motivated by Netanyahu’s efforts to convince National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to support the deal. Hamas and Israel had previously agreed to the release of five female Israeli soldiers in Phase 1 of the deal. It is not known precisely how many living Israeli soldiers remain in captivity in Gaza.
Israel also delayed a final agreement by refusing to provide maps specifying technical yet critical details about the withdrawal routes and repositioning of Israeli forces in three key areas: the buffer zone within the Gaza Strip, the Philadelphi corridor that runs along the border with Egypt, and the Rafah crossing. A Palestinian source involved with the negotiations told Drop Site that based on past experience with Israel, the maps were vital to limit Israel’s ability to exploit any vagueness. A senior Hamas official later told Drop Site that Israel subsequently provided the maps to mediators, clearing the way for the final deal to go into effect on Sunday.
From the start of the war, Hamas has said Marwan Barghouti’s release was a top priority in any exchange deal. "They know the Israelis would never allow [his release] in the first Phase," a Palestinian source close to the negotiations told Drop Site. Barghouti—a senior member of Fatah, the ruling party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—was arrested in 2002 and sentenced by an Israeli court to five life sentences on charges of murder attributed to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades during the second Palestinian Intifada. Some media reports have suggested that Abbas and the U.S. government have opposed the release of Barghouti, who is often seen as a likely successor to Abbas if freed.
“He is very much a Nelson Mandela-like figure, but there’s a big difference between the two. And the big difference is that the ANC at every opportunity was making sure to put forward Nelson Mandela’s name,” said Palestinian human rights lawyer Dianna Buttu, who previously served as an advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s negotiating team. “In our case, we have a Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who has spent the past 19 years in office never really uttering his name, or pushing for Marwan’s freedom. And the reason that he doesn’t do that is because he sees him as a rival. He does have that ability to be a leader, to unite people.”
Reconciliation efforts to resolve a long standing rivalry between Fatah and Hamas have yielded little results over the years, frustrating efforts at a united Palestinian leadership to confront Israel. The Palestinian Authority, which receives funding for its security forces from the United States, has long been derided as a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation.
“Marwan is known to be a proponent of a broad national front and of cooperation with Hamas. I certainly think it’s less a question of him being a unifying factor than of him having the potential to serve as a rallying point to oust Abbas and to provoke or be a catalyst for real change in Ramallah," Mouin Rabbani, a former UN official who worked as a special adviser on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group, told Drop Site. "If you were to have presidential elections, I think he would win hands down. I think prison has made him very popular.” Rabbani added, “I do believe that he could be the type of transitional, unifying figure that Palestinian political system desperately needs.”
Hamas negotiators are “not holding their breath that they will ever get [Barghouti and Saadat] freed," the source close to the Hamas negotiating team said. “But they will always insist on their freedom.”
Hamas negotiators responded to Israel’s effort to expedite the release of the Israeli men by seeking freedom for an additional 1,000 Palestinians held captive by Israel, including Barghouti and Sadaat. This detail was echoed by the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, Qadura Fares, in an interview on Al-Arabiya, where he highlighted a new development in the talks that “Israel insisted on adding nine other Israeli prisoners” which spurred Hamas’s counteroffer. “The number that Hamas is demanding in exchange for civilian prisoners is different from what it is demanding when it is an Israeli soldier,” Fares said. “The aim however is to release all prisoners and not just the leaders.”
In the end, the Israelis continued to reject the inclusion of Barghouti and Saadat, who is currently in the middle of a 30-year sentence, on the list of prisoners to be released — as the UK-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed has also reported. Israel vetoed their names even in exchange for moving up the release of the men, though Hamas negotiators were able to increase the number of Palestinian political prisoners Israel would agree to release. At least 284 Palestinians serving long prison sentences are slated to be freed in the first phase of exchanges. Israeli soldiers are viewed as the most valuable captives held by Hamas because they historically are exchanged for larger numbers of Palestinian prisoners, including high value members of resistance groups.
For months, Israeli officials have stated explicitly that Barghouti will not be freed as part of a deal. Palestinian negotiators, however, have indicated they will continue to press for his release and that of other “senior” Palestinian political prisoners when technical negotiations for a second phase of the deal begin. In the 2011 deal for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, during which Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and more than 1,000 other Palestinian prisoners were freed, the Israeli government also refused to release Barghouti and Sadaat. Barghouti’s lawyers have said he has been repeatedly abused in prison throughout the past year.
Israel’s position on the high-profile prisoners lines up with the edict issued by Shin Bet, as reported by the Israeli outlet Walla, that no political leaders, heads of organizations, or militants who carried out prominent attacks should be released. According to the report, Shin Bet wants Israel to release as few prisoners as possible of military age and to instead prioritize releasing prisoners with serious illnesses or who are considered too old to fight.
Palestinians with direct knowledge of the ceasefire talks said Hamas’s negotiators think they may have a shot at getting 67-year-old Nael Barghouti, the longest serving Palestinian prisoner held by Israel, freed. He has spent 44 years behind bars. First jailed in 1978 and sentenced to life in prison, Nael was released in the 2011 Shalit deal. In 2014, he was rearrested by Israeli authorities and his original life sentence reinstated. Sources pointed to the text of the “ceasefire” deal that stipulates that on the 22nd day, Israel will release all prisoners who were rearrested after being freed as part of the Shalit deal. Despite this clause and their cautious optimism, Palestinian negotiators remain concerned Israel may in the end refuse to free Nael. According to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, he was severely beaten in prison in December 2023.
According to the terms of the deal, Hamas will release 33 captives during the first phase, including women and children, men over age 50, and the sick or wounded, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. On the first official day of the ceasefire, scheduled for Sunday, Hamas is to free three hostages, then another four on day 7. After that, it will release 26 more in weekly releases over the next five weeks. In exchange, Israel will release 50 Palestinian prisoners, including 30 serving life sentences, for each female soldier freed. Israel will also release 30 Palestinian women, children or elderly for each living civilian hostage freed. By the end of the first phase, Israel is supposed to release all Palestinian women and children detained since October 7, 2023.
Israel said freed Palestinians must "refrain from any expression of joy within Israeli territory.”
The Israel Prison Service said in a statement on Friday that Israeli authorities, not the Red Cross, will transport Palestinian prisoners released as part of the deal to ensure “the terrorists do not deviate from the strict security guidelines and refrain from any expression of joy within Israeli territory.”
During the week-long truce in November 2023, Ben-Gvir instructed police to use “an iron fist” against attempts by Palestinians to celebrate prisoner releases. “My instructions are clear: There are to be no expressions of joy,” Ben-Gvir told the Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai and Israel Prison Service Commissioner. “Expressions of joy are equivalent to backing terrorism; victory celebrations give backing to those human scum, for those Nazis.” The restrictions on prisoners and their families even included a ban on passing out candy as part of family celebrations. Prisoners and their families were forbidden from speaking to the media, holding community gatherings, or displaying any form of celebration. Any violation of the conditions would result in a fine of 70,000 shekels (around $20,000).
As Palestinians across Gaza, the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem wait, in desperation, to learn if their loved ones will be freed as part of the deal, prisoners’ rights advocates have accused Israel of creating a state of confusion and uncertainty. “We do not trust the data published by the Israeli occupation authorities and their prison administration,” the official spokesman for the Prisoners Authority, Thaer Shreiteh, said in a statement on Friday, pointing to people on the list who had already been released. Ten of the captives to be released, he said, didn’t even have their names listed, just birthdates. “This is what we have warned against over the past few days, and we renew our call to our Egyptian and Qatari brothers to put an end to these violations and not to give the occupation authorities any space to practice any violations that create confusion in the Palestinian street and among the families of the prisoners.”
Palestinian Captives
As of December 2024, there were over 10,400 Palestinians held captive by Israel, including 320 children and nearly 90 women, according to Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer. Of these, nearly 3,400 are being held in administrative detention — which means they are imprisoned without charge or trial for up to 6 month periods that can be renewed indefinitely. Many others in prison have been charged with inciting violence, an allegation which Israeli authorities use to target “any form of solidarity or resistance,” according to Addameer. This includes sharing or liking a social media post. Addameer itself has been targeted and was one of six leading Palestinian human rights and civil society groups designated as "terrorist organizations" by Israeli authorities in October 2021.
In total, between 12,000 to 13,000 Palestinians have been detained over the course of the last 15 months. “We’ve never had this many prisoners all being held at the same time within the occupation’s prisons,” Jenna Abu Hasna, Addameer’s international advocacy officer, told Drop Site. “Almost every single household in Palestine either has a family member that is currently detained, or multiple family members that are detained by the occupation, or they know of someone that is detained by the occupation, whether it’s their neighbor or their relative from another household.”
Even more staggering is that these figures do not include the number of Palestinians detained from Gaza. Information is difficult to verify and Israeli authorities subject Palestinians in Gaza to enforced disappearance and then refuse to release any information about them. “It's been a very difficult process to get the total numbers of how many detainees there are from Gaza,” Abu Hasna said.
In response to a court filing by a number of human rights organizations, Israeli authorities recently admitted to detaining over 3,400 Palestinians from Gaza as of December 17, around 1,500 of them held in four military camps, some of which were established after Israel’s assault on Gaza began in October 2023, such as Sde Taiman, while the rest dispersed amongst other prisons. “We don't have any way of confirming these numbers so we don’t know whether or not this is actually the true number of the detainees from Gaza that are being held,” Abu Hasna said.
The abuse and mistreatment of Palestinians detainees by Israeli authorities, particularly Palestinians from Gaza being held in military camps is rampant, according to multiple reports by human rights groups and media outlets, including systematic torture, ill-treatment, sexual abuse, deliberate medical neglect, insufficient food leading to severe weight loss and malnutrition, a lack of hygiene, and the denial of visitation rights. At least 55 prisoners have died in detention since October 2023, according to Addameer.
“Torture is still very much ongoing,” Abu Hasna said. “Detainees are being subjected to brutal beatings multiple times a day, they're being subject to a starvation policy, medical neglect, and the spread of disease inside the prisons.”
“Detainees, if they are released by the occupation, they're leaving in very difficult health conditions.”
Jawa Ahmad contributed research for this article
*This article was updated to include more information on the 9 men whose release Israel sought to expedite. Hamas categorized them as military aged men, while Israel maintained they were civilians. It also was updated to include current numbers of Palestinians serving long prison sentences scheduled to be released by Israel as part of the deal.
Of course not! The Zionists are all about emasculating, reducing the Palestinians to nobodies so there's nobody to talk to. Extermination, in true Nazi style.
Not holding my breath, I'm still suspending judgment whether Trump will truly be any different regarding the genocide - or remain all rhetoric like the Biden administration since Oct 7 and just allow it to continue.
The arc of the universe (and empire) needs to do some bending here. ;(