Israel on Saturday released 200 Palestinian prisoners, including 121 serving life sentences for terror attacks that have killed dozens, in return for four female soldiers held by Hamas, according to two lists published by the terror group.
Hamas’s list of life-term prisoners showed that 70 of them would be exiled from Israel and the West Bank. Egyptian media reported that Israel had delivered them to Egypt via Gaza’s Rafah Border Crossing after Hamas released Naama Levy, Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa and Liri Albag.
None of the other Palestinian prisoners were set to be exiled, according to Hamas’s list of non-life-term prisoners.
Crowds of Palestinians erupted in joy as they welcomed dozens of prisoners who arrived in Ramallah aboard buses, an AFP journalist reported.
Stepping off the buses in gray tracksuits, many prisoners were raised onto the shoulders of people waiting, while others walked through the crowd.
In the first, 42-day phase of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, Israel is expected to release up to 1,904 Palestinian prisoners, including 737 serving life terms, in return for 33 Israelis held captive in Gaza.
Saturday’s release is the second under the ceasefire, after Sunday saw Hamas free three civilian women in return for 90 Palestinian prisoners — mostly women and minors.
The lists Hamas published Saturday showed that three members of the so-called Silwan Squad were slated for release, all of whom were said to be headed for exile: Wael Qassam, Wissam Abbasi and Muhammad Odeh.
The Silwan Squad, named for its members’ East Jerusalem neighborhood, killed 35 people and wounded hundreds in five bombings across Israel between March and June 2002, at the height of the Second Intifada.
The squad’s fourth member, Alaa Abbasi, was not among the 737 life-term prisoners Israel said it would release in the hostage deal’s first phase. At 60 life sentences, he is serving the longest prison term of the four.
Another prisoner listed as going into exile was Samer Al-Atrash, a member of a Hamas cell that killed seven people on a Jerusalem bus in May 2003. Al-Atrash is one of a handful of prisoners up for release who hold Israeli citizenship.
According to the list, Israel will also exile Mohammed al-Tous. Arrested for murder in 1985, Al-Tous, 69, has spent the longest continuous period in Israeli detention of any Palestinian prisoner. He is a member of the Palestinian Authority’s ruling, secularist Fatah movement.
Another Fatah prisoner said to be freed is Yasser Abu-Bakr, a native of the West Bank’s Jenin, who will not be exiled. Bakr was sentenced in 2004 to a cumulative 115 years in jail for arming a terror cell that shot up a Netanya hotel lobby in March 2002, wounding some 50 people and killing a nine-year-old girl. The cell’s members also killed two police officers and a civilian bystander in subsequent shootouts.
Among the prominent terrorists slated for release later in the deal are Zakaria Zubeidi, the former Jenin commander of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and Mahmud Abu Varda, who is serving 48 life sentences for masterminding multiple terror attacks, including a 1996 bombing on a bus in Jerusalem that killed 45 people.
Most of the prisoners on the lists published Saturday hail from Hamas itself. Others belong to Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and one of two Marxist factions: the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
One life-term prisoner was listed as having no affiliation — a 15-year-old arrested on November 2, 2023, whose crime was not detailed. Another 15-year-old, arrested the same day, appeared on the list of non-life-term prisoners, also without affiliation. They were the only two minors on the Hamas list.
Except for the two minors, all prisoners are listed as having been arrested before October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
It is believed that 87 of the hostages remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas has so far released seven hostages during a ceasefire that began in January. The terror group released 105 civilians during a week-long truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza earlier this month.
Agencies contributed to this report.