Israel releases 183 Palestinians after 3 captives freed in Gaza
A total of 183 Palestinians have been released from Israeli prisons and three Israeli captives have been freed in Gaza, in the fifth swap as part of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Seven prisoners have been admitted to hospitals upon arriving in Ramallah, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said as many of the prisoners describe horrific conditions in Israeli jails.
“During our six months of detention, we were completely cut off from the world, we got no information on the war in Gaza,” Mohammed, a freed prisoner who declined to share his last name, told AFP.
“The scale of the destruction shocked us, Gaza is in ruins, there is rubble everywhere.”
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society advocacy group said most of the prisoners released by Israel in the continuing ceasefire deal suffer from health problems.
“Today, after 183 prisoners were released in the fifth batch of the first phase, the prisoners’ bodies and their health conditions, and the need for some of them to be transferred to the hospital, reflected the level of atrocities that the prisoners were exposed to over the past period in the occupation prisons,” it said.
“In addition to all this, we remind you that the occupation did not stop at its crimes against prisoners, but also practised organised terrorism against their families.”
The Prisoner’s Society noted that there were still more than 10,000 prisoners in Israeli prisons, and the number did not include all the people detained in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered a negotiating team to be dispatched to Doha for talks on the ongoing Gaza truce, his office has said, following the completion of a fifth captive-prisoner swap.
“With the completion of the release phase, Prime Minister Netanyahu has instructed the dispatch of a negotiation delegation to Doha to discuss technical details of the agreement,” his office said in statement.
It added that, on his return to Israel from Washington, Netanyahu will “hold a security cabinet meeting regarding negotiations for the second phase of the hostage release deal.”
Israel’s continued “violations are threatening [to] collapse” the Gaza ceasefire deal, a senior Hamas official has told Al Jazeera, with talks yet to start on its second phase.
Hamas political bureau member and former Gaza Health Minister Basem Naim warned the deal was in danger, but said the Palestinian group did not want to return to war.
Naim said that “the Israelis are postponing the entrance of … food, medicine, and tents” into Gaza. He also accused them of killing Palestinians in Gaza despite the ceasefire.
But Naim said that “we are ready to overcome any problems and challenges in order to give this deal a chance to succeed.”
