{"id":28746,"date":"2025-02-27T16:39:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T13:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.hamsonews.com\/over-600-palestinian-prisoners-freed-as-first-phase-of-gaza-deal-concludes\/"},"modified":"2025-02-27T16:39:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T13:09:41","slug":"over-600-palestinian-prisoners-freed-as-first-phase-of-gaza-deal-concludes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/over-600-palestinian-prisoners-freed-as-first-phase-of-gaza-deal-concludes\/","title":{"rendered":"Over 600 Palestinian prisoners freed as first phase of Gaza deal concludes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en.hamsonews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/5400644.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"item-text\">\n<p class=\"summary\">More than 600 Palestinian detainees were freed on Thursday from Israeli jails in the final batch of the first phase of the Israel-Hamas captive exchange and ceasefire deal.<\/p>\n<p>This follows several delays by Israel in the release of more than 640 prisoners, according to figures from the Palestinian Prisoners&#8217; Society (PPS) and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, which was originally scheduled for Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Around 450 of them were released to Gaza, with several needing immediate medical care upon arrival and were administered into the European Hospital in\u00a0Khan Younis, in the south of the besieged enclave.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More than 15 prisoners serving life sentences or long-term sentences were among those released,\u00a0including 40 freed to the West Bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Some prisoners who were\u00a0handed life sentences were also exiled as part of a group of 97 who were sent to Egypt, including the longest-serving political prisoner in the world,\u00a0Nael al-Barghouti.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Their release took place as Hamas handed over four bodies of Israeli captives to the Red Cross.<\/p>\n<p>Israeli authorities confirmed their identities to be Itzik Elgarat, Ohad Yahalomi, Shlomo Mantzur and Tsahi Idan.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the joy felt across the occupied West Bank and Gaza, many freed detainees showed signs of distress, abuse, starvation and medical negligence in Israeli-run prisons and detention centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A number of them received medical attention not long after their release.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In one clip, a former detainee in a bus entering the Gaza Strip\u00a0warned\u00a0about the condition of those remaining in prison, shouting:\u00a0\u201cPrisoners [inside Israeli jails] are in danger. Save them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a different\u00a0clip, the same Palestinian man describes the torment they\u00a0endured.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We couldn&#8217;t sleep, we were exhausted. They tortured us in the Israeli prisons. They tortured us and broke us. We couldn&#8217;t eat,&#8221; he says, adding that they had been kept waiting in the buses since 7am.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Another\u00a0Palestinian man described his detention as akin to the horrors of Nazism and hell.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were in hell, and we came out of hell,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>One case of serious health complications upon release was that of\u00a0Kazem Zawahreh, who had been in a coma for months. He was immediately transferred to a medical facility in the West Bank, according to local reports.<\/p>\n<p>Other clips showed freed captives unable to walk due to their injuries, including those who had undergone\u00a0amputations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Rampant torture has been recorded in civilian and military detention facilities across Israel in recent months, resulting in the deaths of at least 60 known Palestinians since 7 October 2023,\u00a0among them are at least 39\u00a0from Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>The latest victim was 34-year-old\u00a0Raafat Adnan Abdul Aziz Abu Fanouneh, who was taken captive from Gaza, according to the General Authority of Civil Affairs, the Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, and the PPS.<\/p>\n<p>The exchanges on Thursday marked the final swaps agreed upon between Israel and Hamas as part of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, which is due to end on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Discussions for the second phase, involving the release of more Palestinian and Israeli captives, were scheduled earlier this month, but no progress has been made so far.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tehrantimes.com\/news\/510295\/Over-600-Palestinian-prisoners-freed-as-first-phase-of-Gaza-deal\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than 600 Palestinian detainees were freed on Thursday from Israeli jails in the final batch of the first phase of the Israel-Hamas captive exchange and ceasefire deal. This follows several delays by Israel in the release of more than 640 prisoners, according to figures from the Palestinian Prisoners&#8217; Society (PPS) and the Commission of &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8596,29,28,3460,159],"class_list":["post-28746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-600-palestinian","tag-gaza","tag-international","tag-torture","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamsonews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}