Palestinian lifeterm security prisoners freed in hostage swap go from jail to exile

They were freed in exchange for Israeli hostages held in Gaza, but instead of going home, 154 Palestinian ex-prisoners were exiled to Egypt, where they are confined to a hotel and kept under tight surveillance.

All of them had been sentenced by an Israeli military court to life in prison on charges of murder, belonging to Palestinian terror groups banned by Israel, and other acts of violence.

But when a ceasefire took effect in Gaza earlier this month, the group was put on buses and sent to Egypt, where authorities have put them in a five-star hotel that they cannot leave without clearance.

“We were separated from our families for 20 years,” Murad Abu al-Rub, a 45-year-old who spent two decades behind bars for murder, tells AFP.

Now, he is living in uncertainty and under close surveillance, far from the Palestinian city of Jenin, where he was born.

“No Arab country wanted to take us in,” says Abu al-Rub, who was imprisoned for the killing of four Israeli soldiers in 2006.

“Nothing has changed. I still can’t see my mother or my siblings,” Abu al-Rub tells a team of AFP journalists who were able to access the hotel.

Since the US-brokered ceasefire took hold on October 10, Hamas has freed all 20 surviving Israeli hostages in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom returned to Gaza and the West Bank.

During previous truces in the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack, thousands of other Palestinian prisoners were freed in similar exchanges.

The vast majority of those with life sentences were exiled to Egypt, which has formal ties with Israel and played a key mediation role.

In Egypt, the 154 men are not free to move, and they have no work permits and no idea what comes next. The government has not issued any formal statement about their status.

Before Hamas’s October 7 attack, prisoners could study, play sports and attend daily discussion groups, he said, with inmates recounting a tradition of protest and rebellion in order to obtain these rights.

Palestinian, Israeli and international rights groups have documented similar claims of mistreatment, but Israel denies any such violations and says its prison service operates in accordance with the law.

According to the Palestinian Authority, nearly 11,000 Palestinians remain in Israeli custody, on charges related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Egypt first received 150 exiled prisoners in January, and more than eight months later, most of them are still in the same hotel, their fate undecided.

Hasan Abd Rabbo, of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, tells AFP that the men remain in Egypt with accommodation costs covered by Qatar, while talks are underway over resettlement.

He says possible destinations include Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia.