Palestinian prisoners released from jail, but not free to celebrate

RAMALLAH: Fakhri Barghouti grimaced in pain as an exultant crowd lifted him onto their shoulders next to his son Shadi, released from an Israeli jail on Saturday under a Gaza ceasefire deal.

Though Barghouti, 71, shed tears of joy at seeing his son, he was also in physical pain.

The night before, Israeli forces stormed his family home in the occupied West Bank village of Kobar, warning him not to celebrate his son´s release and assaulting him, he said. “They entered after midnight, smashed everything, took me into a side room and beat me before leaving,” Barghouti told AFP.

“I was taken to the hospital, where they found that I had a broken rib.”

Israeli forces conducted several raids on the family homes of prisoners about to be released, according to the Palestinian Prisoners´ Club advocacy group.

The military said in a statement it had “conveyed messages that celebrations and processions in support of terrorism are prohibited during the release of the terrorists”, but did not give an immediate response when asked about Fakhri Barghouti´s allegations.

Shadi Barghouti, 47, had been imprisoned since 2003 and was serving a 27-year sentence for weapons possession, membership in an illegal organisation and complicity in murder, according to Israel´s justice ministry.

In total, 183 Palestinians were released on Saturday in exchange for three Israelis held in Gaza since the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas´s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Of those released, 41 returned to the West Bank city of Ramallah, four were released in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, 131 were sent to Gaza and seven were deported to Egypt.

Shadi Barghouti, at first protected from the crowd by a wall of relatives, eventually began to talk to the crowd and reporters while hoisted on his relatives´ shoulders.

“We always dreamed that this would happen, that one day the prison director would be forced to open the gates,” he said, still in a grey prison tracksuit.

“Long live the resistance!” he shouted as he shook hands with those around him.

His father, Fakhri Barghouti, was himself released in a similar prisoner exchange, when in 2011 Israel freed 1,027 Palestinians in exchange for the return of its soldier Gilad Shalit. Fakhri Barghouti had been serving a life sentence for participating in the killing of an Israeli soldier, among other charges.

One prisoner was helped off the bus in the arms of a medic while another held his oxygen bottle.