Israel releasing 369 Palestinian prisoners, including 36 serving life terms for terror
Freed detainees dressed in shirts with blue Star of David, writing in Arabic saying we ‘won’t forgive or forget,’ which Gazans then burn; 25, including Ahmed Barghouti, to be deported
The Times of Israel
Feb 15, 2025
The Israel Prison Service dresses Palestinian prisoners set for release in shirts featuring its logo, a Star of David and the sentence in Arabic: 'We will not forget or forgive,' February 15, 2025.
Israel began releasing more than 300 Palestinian security prisoners, including three dozen serving life sentences for terror killings, after Hamas released Israeli hostages Sagui Dekel-Chan, Iair Horn and Sasha Troufanov on Saturday as part of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal.
According to the Hamas-linked Prisoners’ Information Office, 369 Palestinians were set to be released, including 333 Palestinians who had been detained in Gaza during the war and 36 terrorists who had been serving life sentences, including for multiple murders.
The prisoner release was the largest so far in the ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas.
In an apparent reaction to Hamas dressing released hostages in prison garb and handing them “gifts” of Palestinian paraphernalia, the Israel Prison Service dressed the Palestinian detainees in shirts bearing a blue Star of David, the Shin Bet logo and, in Arabic, the phrase: “We will not forgive or forget.”
The prisoners were also said to have been given a Shin Bet-themed wristband and shown a film about the destruction in Gaza.
About an hour after the hostages were returned to Israel, live footage showed the first bus of Palestinian prisoners leaving the Ofer Prison for Ramallah in the West Bank, where a crowd of enthusiastic supporters received them.
Alighting the bus, most Palestinian prisoners appeared to wear keffiyehs or overcoats, which hid any Israeli insignia from view.
More buses full of prisoners pulled out of an Israeli prison in the Negev desert heading toward Gaza, where videos showed Palestinians burning the shirts that Israel dressed the prisoners in.
The 333 Gazans were being returned to Gaza. Of those serving life sentences, 10 were sent to the West Bank and one to East Jerusalem. Another 25 were being deported to Gaza, or abroad, via Egypt.
In the current first phase of the deal, Israel has agreed to release some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, including over 270 serving life sentences, in return for 33 Israeli women, children, civilian men over 50 and those deemed “humanitarian cases.”
With the release of Saturday’s hostage release — the sixth of the current deal — Hamas has freed 20 Israeli captives, and another five Thai captives, in the deal so far.
Dekel-Chen, Horn and Troufanov were abducted from their homes in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel and killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians slaughtered in acts of horrendous brutality, and took 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
They sent suicide bombers
Among the life-term Palestinian security prisoners released Saturday are Ahmed Barghouti, Ahmed Abu Hader, Bacher Najjar and Shadi Abu Shakhdam, all of whom carried out prominent terror attacks during the 2000-2005 Second Intifada.
Barghouti, a senior official in Fatah — Hamas’s secularist rival — was serving 13 life sentences for several terror attacks, including dispatching suicide bombers, in Jerusalem, which killed 12 Israelis and wounded dozens. He will be deported abroad via Egypt.
He was arrested alongside Fatah terror chief Marwan Barghouti in 2002. Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms for orchestrating the murders of Israelis, is not slated for release in the deal’s first phase.
Abu Hader was serving 11 life sentences for a shooting attack that killed six Israelis at an event hall in Hadera. He was also convicted of planning a terror attack at the Sheba Medical Center.
Najjar was serving six life sentences for a shooting attack that killed four Israelis, including a 9-year-old child, at an interchange in the southern West Bank.
Abu Shakhdam, of Fatah, was serving six life sentences for involvement in a 2002 suicide bombing at Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market. The attack killed six people and wounded more than 80.
Brothers Hassan Aweis, 47, and Abdel Karim Aweis, 54, from the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, were also freed Saturday after nearly 23 years in prison.
Hassan Aweis — sentenced to life in 2002 on charges of voluntary manslaughter, planting and explosive device and attempted murder, according to the Justice Ministry — was among the few released prisoners welcomed by joyous crowds in Ramallah. He was involved in planning attacks during the Second Intifada for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade.
Abdel Karim Aweis — sentenced to the equivalent of six life sentences for throwing an explosive device, attempted murder and assault, among other charges, according to the Justice Ministry — was transferred to Egypt for deportation.
An intelligence officer with the Palestinian Authority police, Aweis has recalled turning to violence as the 1993 Oslo Accords that launched the Israeli-Palestinian peace process unraveled. He became a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, organizing shooting attacks on Israeli settlers driving West Bank roads and later dispatching suicide bombing missions within Israel.
Seventy of the hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023, remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas has so far released 24 hostages — 19 Israeli civilians and female soldiers, and five Thai nationals — during a ceasefire that began in January. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued alive by troops, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli 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, Hadar Goldin, who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, Oron Shaul, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
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