Two-hundred inmates freed by Israel in Gaza hostage-prisoner swap

Israeli authorities released on Saturday 200 inmates, nearly all Palestinian, in exchange for four Israeli women soldiers held hostage since Hamas’s October 2023 attack that sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.

Of the 200 prisoners, described by the Israel Prison Service as “terrorists”, 199 are Palestinians and one is Jordanian, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club advocacy group.

The club said 121 of them had been sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Israel Prison Service said they were convicted of committing or planning attacks against Israelis.

The majority of them were charged and sentenced for acts committed during the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising that lasted from 2000 to 2005, according to the Prisoners Club.

Of those serving life sentences, 70 have been taken to Egypt, from where they will be sent to either Algeria, Tunisia or Turkey, the advocacy group said.

Among the exiled is Mohammed al-Tous, who had been imprisoned continuously since October 7, 1985, according to data from the Israel Prison Service.

Tous, 69, is a member of Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Tous was convicted of “possession of weapons, membership in an unrecognised organisation, armed robbery and activities on behalf of an illegal organisation”, according to his prison record.

Fourteen of the prisoners were released in the Gaza Strip, and dozens in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Some of those sent to Gaza are originally from there, while others are from the West Bank but have been banned from returning there by Israel, according to the Prisoners Club.

The group said that two of the released prisoners are from the Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm, and five from east Jerusalem.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, when it also seized and annexed east Jerusalem.