Israel was expected to free a total of 602 Palestinian prisoners as part of the seventh hostage-prisoner exchange but announced Saturday that it was delaying the release after Hamas completed the handover of six Israeli hostages.
Israeli officials said it would release the prisoners only after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finishes security consultations regarding the return of the remaining Israeli hostages.
No reason was given for the delay but it came amid anger over the fate of Shiri Bibas and her two small sons, whose bodies were returned this week.
Hamas criticized Israel for the ongoing delay, accusing it of breaching the ceasefire deal, and called on mediators to pressure Israel to “respect the ceasefire agreement and implement its provisions without stalling.”
Among the prisoners set to go free were 50 serving life sentences for deadly attacks against Israelis, and 60 serving long prison terms.
Nearly 100 ex-inmates are slated for deportation upon their release. An additional 11 prisoners detained before the war’s outset will be sent to Gaza, while 43 will return to their homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Of those freed, 445 are to be released back into the Gaza Strip after having been detained there following October 7.
Twenty-three minors and one woman detained in the Strip were also set to be released in exchange for the bodies of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, according to Haaretz.
Of the security prisoners to be released, 95 were Hamas members, 40 were affiliated with Fatah and 16 with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Four were identified with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, according to Al Jazeera.
After several erroneous lists circulated on social media, Hamas’s prisoners’ media office and the Palestinian Prisoners Club published the names sent to them by Israeli authorities.
An especially large number of prisoners are to be deported in this week’s release.
Ammar Zaban, a prominent figure in Hamas who headed the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades during the Second Intifada, was among the most prominent names listed for release. He lived in Nablus before his 1998 arrest and will be sent abroad.
Zaban was sentenced to 27 life terms for his involvement in numerous terror attacks, including the 1997 suicide bombing in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market, which killed 16 people.
Also set to go free is 67-year-old Nael Barghouti, of Hamas who is the longest-serving Palestinian inmate in an Israeli prison, will likely be deported upon his release.
Barghouti, who has spent a total of 44 years in Israeli custody, was jailed in 1978 for killing 27-year-old Israeli bus driver Mordechai Yekuel in his vehicle near Ramallah. After 33 years in prison, Barghouti was freed in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, but was arrested three years later and convicted on terrorism charges.
In total 47 Palestinian prisoners re-arrested after the Shalit deal were set to be freed in this exchange.
Also to be deported abroad is Abdel Nasser Issa, a founding member of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, in the West Bank and the protege of Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’s explosives engineer widely credited with pushing the terror group’s suicide bombing strategy in the 1990s.
Originally from the Balata refugee camp, Issa spent over 32 years in Israeli prisons, including 29 consecutive years, and is serving two life sentences plus an additional seven years.
Alaa al-Din al-Bazyan was previously released in 2011 and will be deported as well.
The Jerusalemite served a total of 42 years in prison for multiple terror attacks and was involved in the 2014 kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaer, and Naftali Fraenkel.
Bilal Abu Ghanem, who murdered three Israeli civilians in a combined shooting and stabbing attack on a bus in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood in 2015, will also be released and deported to Egypt.
Abu Ghanem is serving three life sentences and an additional 60 years in prison.
The engineer Dirar Abu Sisi, serving a 21-year sentence for helping Hamas improve the range of rockets used against Israel, is also to go free.
Abu Sisi went missing in Ukraine in February 2011, presumably captured by the Mossad secret service. A month later, Israel announced that he was in its custody and would be put on trial.
A court in the southern city of Beersheba convicted Abu Sisi of several “crimes against the security of the state,” an official said.
Ahead of the release, Israel Prison Service chief Kobi Yaakobi instructed guards to dress Palestinian prisoners slated for release with shirts sporting a verse from Psalms written in Arabic: “I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back until their destruction.”
Prisoners were also made to wear bracelets that read, “The eternal people do not forget. I pursued my enemies and overtook them.”
Before being released back into Gaza, jailed Palestinians in Ketziot Prison scrawled messages on cell walls that read: “We will not forget, we will not forgive, we will not kneel,” according to a Ynet report.
The messages were presumably a response to shirts that Israeli prison guards made detainees wear during last week’s handover, which bore a Star of David and the words: “We will not forget or forgive.”