RAMALLAH: A bus carrying a group of Palestinian prisoners released Saturday by Israel under the Gaza ceasefire deal arrived to a cheering crowd in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, according to an AFP journalist.
Wearing traditional keffiyeh scarves, the freed prisoners were hoisted onto the crowd’s shoulders. They hugged relatives before heading to a quick health checkup, the journalist reported.
Many in the crowd waved yellow flags of the Fatah movement which dominates the Palestinian Authority, while one prisoner kissed a baby as soon as he stepped off the bus.
The Israeli Prison Service confirmed it had freed 369 prisoners from the Ofer and Kziot prisons near Ramallah and Gaza respectively, after transferring them “from several prisons across the country”.
Among those released in Ramallah Saturday was Amir Abu Radaha, who had spent more than 30 years in jail.
“I’ve returned to my family and I’ve returned anew, born again. Today is a new birthday”, he told AFP from their home in the Al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah.
Abu Radaha said that during the time he’d spent in jail no period had been as hard as the 15 months while war had raged in Gaza.
His sister expressed joy after a sleepless night.
“I kept thinking about whether Amir would be released this time or not”, she told AFP.
Unlike previous releases, the prisoners wore jackets rather than openly displaying their prison garb.
‘Grotesque gestures’
Earlier Saturday, images broadcast on Israeli public television showed Palestinian prisoners ahead of their release wearing sweatshirts featuring the prison service logo, a Star of David, and the slogan: “We do not forget and we do not forgive.”
In a statement, the Palestinian militant group Hamas condemned the Arabic slogan on the prisoners’ sweatshirts, calling it “racist” and a “flagrant violation of humanitarian laws”.
Earlier Saturday, during the release of three Israeli hostages in Khan Yunis, militants forced the captives to address onlookers in Hebrew in a choreographed release where signs carried messages in Hebrew, Arabic and English.
Elior Levy, a commentator on Israel’s public broadcaster, criticised the prison service’s use of the uniforms as “stupid and infantile”.
“This very idiotic act puts Israel in the same line as Hamas’ grotesque gestures in releasing the hostages,“ he wrote on X.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group had said Israel was to release 369 inmates in the latest exchange.
The inmates were freed in exchange for three Israelis held hostage in Gaza. It was the latest such swap under a January 19 ceasefire deal that ended more than 15 months of war ignited by Hamas’s unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
Israel had warned Hamas that it must free three living hostages this weekend or face a resumption of the war, after the group said it would pause releases over what it described as Israeli violations of the Gaza truce.
