It is one in the morning and hundreds of people have been in the West Bank town of Beitunia for hours waiting in the cold for the 90 prisoners released by Israel, after having received three of their hostages alive in Gaza. The exchange is delayed and Israeli troops outside the nearby Ofer prison are getting closer and closer to the roundabout. When word spreads that they’re coming, the crowd runs out and soon calms down, like a teenage game.
Suddenly, everything changes. In the distance, buses with the logo of the International Committee of the Red Cross appear transporting the prisoners (69 women and 21 minors). The crowd rushes towards the vehicles, no longer able to advance a few meters before coming to a standstill again. The sky is filled with fireworks while some of the already expresses make the victory sign from inside the vehicles.
More and more young people are climbing onto the roofs of buses carrying flags of Hamas and even the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Here, today, families celebrate the return of their own, but many others celebrate the survival of Hamas during 15 months of devastating bombings in Gaza that have ended up forging this exchange. One of the chants is “The people love the Al Qasam Brigades,” the armed wing of Hamas. Another is a praise to Yahia Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attack whose death in combat in Gaza has elevated his figure among Palestinians. One color prevails on the flags: the green of Hamas.
The prisoners go down as best they can, immediately swallowed by the mass. Balkiz Isa Dar Zurob therefore takes time to find his father. Upon seeing him, she runs to join him in a long hug during which she says, “Dad, I want to see my [seis] Children, I want to see my children! “Everything is going to be okay now, daughter,” he replies.
The majority just wants that: to return home, after months in Israeli prisons, turned into hell since the Hamas attack, which generated a feeling of revenge towards the Palestinians when the far-right Itamar Ben Gvir held the portfolio responsible for prisons (National Security). Since then, dozens of Palestinians They have died behind bars. The last one, this Saturday, Mohamed Jaber, 22 years old, according to the Commission for the Affairs of Palestinian Detainees and Prisoners. He had been in administrative detention for 14 months, a tool of military justice—criticized by human rights organizations and UN agencies—through which Israel keeps thousands of Palestinians without charge or court hearing, even for years.
The prestigious Israeli human rights NGO B’tselem published a report in August in which it concluded, based on 55 testimonies, that Israel has been applying since October 2023 an “institutional and systematic policy focused on abuse and torture.” of all the prisoners”with the blind eye of the Supreme Court and the Attorney General’s Office.
In the midst of the chaos of celebrations and reunions, a few released prisoners recount their experience. Like Baraa Fuqaha, who spent six months of his 25 years of life in administrative detention in a prison that he defines as “a cemetery of the living.” “They were brutal with us. He kept us in cells for 23 hours, even 24 one day. With more than 10 dams. We had no winter clothes and only one blanket. They left the windows open and it was very cold. “That was our day to day life,” he says.
Hanan Malawan, 23, has just gotten off one of the buses and a crowd surrounds her and photographs with her cell phone. “They tried to take away our joy until the last day,” he says about his five months in prison that have just ended. “Yesterday [este sábado] we asked [a los carceleros] whether we were going to leave or not, and his response was: ‘There’s no way you’re leaving.’ And we believed it. They served us breakfast and lunch saying that we were not going out. Suddenly, they left me alone in a cell. I almost fainted from fear. After a while they asked me: Are you Hanan Malawani? He replied: ‘Yes.’ “They took me out and I was jumping for joy.” He was heading to his home in the Nablus area in the northern West Bank.
Almost everything that happens shows the low prestige of the Palestinian National Authorityespecially for its security collaboration with Israel and its low profile during the Gaza war. In fact, unlike the first exchange, he has not organized an official reception, which could have turned against him at one of its moments – if possible – of greatest internal discredit.
Especially today. A day when the general feeling is that it is the use of force (the taking of hostages by Hamas) that is bringing the prisoners back. Ahmad Hassad verbalizes it without fear. He is 18 years old and has been a bargaining chip in the two exchanges of this war. He was released in the previous ceasefire (in November 2023) and rearrested the following year. Now, he is free again. In both cases, “thanks to the Al Qasam Brigades and the fighters in Gaza, who humiliated and painfully beat Israel,” he cries. Then he points with contempt at the -few- members of the ANP security forces who guard the place: “There were clashes in Ofer [entre jóvenes palestinos y los soldados israelíes] and none of those came to protect us.” “What the resistance has done for us, no one else has done,” he adds.
Those gathered wave flags of Hamas, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and even the Lebanese militia party Hezbollah or Yemen, whose Houthi militia has launched missiles and drones against Israel. until this very Saturday. From Al Fatah, the party of ANP president Mahmud Abbas, almost none. Al Fatah spokesman Abdel Fattah Dawla, who went to the scene, downplays the phenomenon: “At the meeting of the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces committee we agreed to only fly the Palestinian flag. Then there are separate people who are free to wave whatever they want. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
There are quite a few people, but not everyone has dared to come. Several things work against the call. Ultranationalist Jewish settlers opposed to the ceasefire in Gaza are stoning cars as they pass through the area and They have burned Palestinian homes and vehicles as collective revenge. Some families of prisoners are afraid and prefer to wait for them at home. The memory of the first exchange of hostages for prisoners, in November 2023, in which Israeli soldiers fired tear gas in that same roundabout to stop the celebrations, does not help either.
They are not allowed now either. Mohamed Amer (whose daughter Jenin was released this morning in the exchange) was reminded by telephone this afternoon by an officer of the Shin Bet, the intelligence services in Israel and Palestine, who said near a bonfire that a group had lit. of young people to keep warm. “He told me: ‘I don’t want to see a Hamas flag or a celebration. “As you raise a single flag, we enter the house.”
