List includes top PFLP member, teen behind Jerusalem shooting

Israel frees 90 Palestinian security prisoners, who are welcomed with Hamas flags

After 3 civilian hostages released from Gaza, Israel releases inmates, mostly female, to West Bank or East Jerusalem – first of up to 1,904 Palestinians to go free in phase one of deal

Palestinian youths raise national flags along with Hamas (green) and Hezbollah (yellow) banners as they sit atop a Red Cross bus carrying dozens of security prisoners set free by Israel in the early hours of January 20, 2025, in the West Bank town of Beitunia, on the outskirts of Ramallah. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
Palestinian youths raise national flags along with Hamas (green) and Hezbollah (yellow) banners as they sit atop a Red Cross bus carrying dozens of security prisoners set free by Israel in the early hours of January 20, 2025, in the West Bank town of Beitunia, on the outskirts of Ramallah. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)

Israel released 90 Palestinian security prisoners early Monday morning, hours after Hamas released three civilian hostages Sunday on the first day of a ceasefire with the terror group in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) said in a statement.

Most of the inmates, who included terror convicts but reportedly none convicted of murder, were taken to the West Bank town of Beitunia, where a crowd of hundreds cheered and chanted and some climbed atop the lead bus and unfurled Hamas flags.

They were joined by others waving the flags of Fatah, Islamic Jihad and several other Palestinian factions, including terror groups, as well as the Palestinian flag and the flag of Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group.

The 90 Palestinian prisoners released on Monday included between 62 and 69 women, according to contradictory media reports. The IPS statement did not provide a breakdown.

According to the Haaretz daily, Israel freed 62 women — including one minor — and 28 men, including eight teenagers. The Ynet news site reported that 69 women were set free, including one minor, alongside eight male minors and 13 adult men. Similarly, the Associated Press said before the release that it had seen a list of inmates set for release that included 69 women.

Ahead of the return of the Israeli hostages, the IPS bused the first round of Palestinian prisoners to Ofer Prison in the West Bank, where Israeli security forces and Red Cross representatives verified each prisoner’s identity and performed medical checks on them before releasing them in coordination with security forces and the government.

Freed Palestinian security prisoners wave to the crowd from a Red Cross bus that drove them out of the Israeli Ofer military prison in the West Bank, as they arrive in Beitunia, on the outskirts of Ramallah, in the early hours of January 20, 2025. (Photo by JOHN WESSELS / AFP)

The prisoners include 78 West Bank residents, released at the Beitunia Checkpoint near Ofer Prison.

The remaining 12 East Jerusalem residents were transported to the city and released back to their homes from the Russian Compound detention center.

As the release was delayed by several hours, Ynet reported that Israeli security officials were blaming the Red Cross, accusing the organization’s staff of deliberately stalling the process with the purported motive of making Israel seem like it was not complying with the deal’s terms. But after a short while, the release went ahead.

Palestinian men waving Hamas (green) and Hezbollah (yellow) flags sit on top of a Red Cross bus carrying released security prisoners from Ofer military prison in the West Bank are met by a crowd of family members and friends in Beitunia, outside Ramallah, in the early hours of January 20, 2025. (Photo by John Wessels / AFP)

The deal, signed Friday, is broken into three phases. During the first, 42-day phase, Hamas will release a total of 33 Israeli hostages — women, children, and elderly, wounded, or sick men — not all of whom are alive. Israel, in return, will release up to 1,904 Palestinian security prisoners and detainees, including more than 150 terrorists convicted of murder and several serving multiple life sentences for deadly terror attacks.

The next release of hostages and prisoners is due Saturday. In just over two weeks, talks are to begin on the far more challenging second phase of the ceasefire agreement.

Members of the Red Cross at the entrance to the Ofer Prison, in the West Bank, outside of Jerusalem, from where Palestinian security prisoners were set to be released as part of a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, January 19, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

The youngest prisoner freed Monday was Mahmoud Aliowat, 15, who was convicted of carrying out a shooting attack in the City of David area of Jerusalem, wounding two people, when he was 13.

The list also included, according to AP, Khalida Jarrar, 62, a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terror group that carried out attacks on Israelis decades ago, including plane hijackings.

Palestinian Parliament member Khalida Jarrar of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) attends a court session at the Israeli Ofer military base near the West Bank city of Ramallah on May 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Jarrar was accused of masterminding the 2019 bombing that killed 17-year-old Rina Shnerb at a spring in the West Bank. As part of a plea deal, Jarrar was charged with “illegal association” and sentenced to two years in prison in 2021.

Jarrar, 62, was again arrested in late 2023 and since held under indefinitely renewable administrative detention — a controversial tool enabling detention without charge that Israel uses against terror suspects in cases where disclosing the evidence against them in court could harm national security. The practice, primarily used against Palestinians, has been criticized by rights groups.

Rina Shnerb, 17, who was killed in a terror attack in the West Bank on August 23, 2019 (courtesy)

Dalal Khaseeb, 53, the sister of former Hamas second-in-command Saleh Arouri, was also on the list, which was provided by Hamas. Arouri was killed in an Israeli strike in a southern Beirut suburb in January 2024.

Also listed for release, according to AP, was Abla Abdelrasoul, 68, the wife of detained PFLP leader Ahmad Saadat who ordered the assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001 and has been serving a 30-year sentence.

Haaretz also noted the inclusion on the list of East Jerusalem residents Nawal Abed Fatiha, an Israeli citizen who in 2020 stabbed a 70-year-old Israeli man with a knife in Jerusalem, and Ibrahim Zamar, who in April 2023, when he was 15, shot two people at the entrance to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

A 2015 shooting attack in Jerusalem’s Sheik Jarrah neighborhood; Ibrahim Zamar, who carried out the attack, is to be released on January 19, 2025 in exchange for three Israeli women taken hostage by the Hamas terror group.

None of the inmates set free in the first batch have been convicted of murder, Haaretz reported. The adult men were being held for relatively minor offenses like incitement, identifying with terrorism and disorderly conduct, according to Ynet.

Almost all the hostages set for release by Hamas were abducted from Israel during the October 7, 2023, onslaught led by the Palestinian terror group, in which 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and 251 taken hostage into the Strip.

For each of the living women, children and elderly, 30 Palestinian prisoners will be released; for all nine sick hostages, 110 prisoners will be released; for each of the female IDF soldiers, 50 prisoners will be released; for hostages Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who have been held in Gaza for a decade, 30 prisoners will be released for each, in addition to 47 Palestinians released in the 2011 Shalit deal and since rearrested; and for the bodies of hostages in the first stage, Israel will release the more than 1,000 Gazan detainees.

The 33 hostages set to be returned in phase one of the Gaza ceasefire deal. Row 1 (L-R): Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, Arbel Yehud, Doron Steinbrecher, Ariel Bibas, Kfir Bibas, Shiri Bibas; Row 2: Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Danielle Gilboa, Naama Levy, Ohad Ben-Ami, Gadi Moshe Moses; Row 3: Keith Siegel, Ofer Calderon, Eli Sharabi, Itzik Elgarat, Shlomo Mansour, Ohad Yahalomi, Oded Lifshitz; Row 4: Tsahi Idan, Hisham al-Sayed, Yarden Bibas, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Yair Horn, Omer Wenkert, Sasha Trufanov; Row 5: Eliya Cohen, Or Levy, Avera Mengistu, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem-Tov (all photos courtesy)

Following the first phase of the deal, Israel and Hamas are to engage in continued negotiations over a permanent ceasefire, as the terror group releases the remaining hostages and Israel releases more Palestinian security prisoners.

It is believed that 91 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.

Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, 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 who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier killed in 2014, Oron Shaul, was recovered from Gaza in an Israeli military operation announced on Sunday.

Charlie Summers contributed to this report.

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