For the third year in a row, the return of prisoners from Israeli prisons is being celebrated in the West Bank, with fireworks, sweets and crowds in the streets, also with an abundance of green Hamas flags and headbands, especially during the first two exchanges. However, some emblems of Al Fatah, Hamas’ rival party led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, were also visible yesterday.
At Al-Manara Square in Ramallah, the arrival of the convoy carrying the 39 former Palestinian prisoners that Israel released yesterday as part of the agreement with Hamas, which in turn released 14 Israelis and three foreigners, was expected.
The Palestinian prisoners include dozens of women and minors, mostly imprisoned for crimes related to terrorism but not necessarily linked to Hamas. The concept of “terrorism” in Israel is broad, so among those released are minors who threw stones at Israeli troops, women who brandished sharp objects, a woman who tried to blow herself up with butane gas , injuring Israelis and seriously injuring themselves. They and others, the reasons for which are not always known, were detained in “administrative detention,” a controversial Israeli crime that allows indefinite detention without charge or trial.
On Saturday, the Israeli government ordered police to disrupt prisoner release celebrations with pro-Hamas chants and flags. At one point, Israeli security forces fired tear gas canisters into the crowd, AP reported. “The army is trying to take away this moment from us, but it is failing,” Mays Foqaha said as she hugged her friend Nour. al Taher, from Nablus, 18 years old, recently released. Al Taher was arrested last September during a protest outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. “This is our Victory Day,” Foqaha noted.
Analysts say Israel’s Hamas used cities across the West Bank to stage victory rallies flying green Islamist flags while the Palestinian Authority refrained from intervening.
In the early hours of Saturday, as Israel and Ramallah celebrated the return of their people, members of Hamas, which de facto rules Gaza but not the West Bank, executed two Palestinians in Tulkarem (West Bank) on suspicion of their having done so, according to reports According to Palestinian officials, international media and Palestinian social networks, Israel’s Shin Bet security service helped locate and kill three Hamas members. The two deceased were arrested a few days ago and apparently executed after the implementation of the agreement between Hamas and Israel began. A crowd then kicked the bloodied bodies and dragged them through alleys before attempting to tie them to an electricity pole.
The scenes, widely shared on social media, were reminiscent of the chaos in the occupied West Bank during the Palestinian intifadas against Israel in 1987 and 2000, each of which lasted several years. During these times of intense conflict, suspected informants were often murdered, and their bodies were sometimes put on public display.