The three hostages are now back in Israel, whilst dozens of Palestinians who had been held in Israeli prisons have now returned to the West Bank.
Hamas released Eli Sharabi, Ohad Ben Ami and Or Levy on Saturday morning, three men who had been captured during the 7 October 2023 incursion into southern Israel which sparked the war in Gaza.
The three were paraded in front of a crowd in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Saturday morning under the spotlight of the world’s media, before being handed over to the International Red Cross.
They were then handed over to the Israeli army inside Gaza who drove them back home to Israel.
Sharabi was taken captive from Kibbutz Beeri, a communal farm that was one of the hardest hit in the Hamas attack. His wife, Lianne, and their teenage daughters were killed by militants.
Father of three Ben Ami was taken hostage from the same community, where he was the kibbutz accountant. His wife, who was also captured, was released during a brief ceasefire in November 2023.
Levy, a computer programmer from the city of Rishon Lezion, was pulled by militants from a bomb shelter near the Nova music festival in southern Israel. His wife was killed during the attack.
Hamas released a statement saying: “Our resistance has adhered to human values and the provisions of international humanitarian law in its treatment of prisoners, and has made great efforts to preserve their lives despite the Zionist bombing.”
However Israel accused Hamas of maltreating them. Israel President Isaac Herzog posted on X:
“The whole world must look directly at Ohad, Or, and Eli – returning after 491 days of hell, starved, emaciated and pained – being exploited in a cynical and cruel spectacle by vile murderers.”
Hamas has so far released 21 hostages, including five Thai citizens captured in Israel during the attack.
Dozens of Palestinian prisoners freed
In return, Israel began releasing 183 Palestinians from their prisons, bussing them back to Ramallah in the West Bank.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since it seized the Palestinian territory in 1967.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said four hostages who were in poor health were taken to hospital in Ramallah.
The terms of the deal’s first six-week phase call for Hamas to gradually free a total of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem, Israel was holding 9,440 Palestinians in either detention or prison in June 2024.
ADVERTISEMENTNearly every Palestinian has a friend or family member who has been jailed by Israel at some point, for militant attacks or lesser offences like rock-throwing, protesting or membership in a banned political group. Some are held for months or years without trial in what is known as administrative detention, which Israel says is needed to prevent attacks and avoid sharing sensitive intelligence.
Eighteen of those released on Saturday had been sentenced to life and 54 were serving long sentences for their involvement in deadly attacks against Israelis. Seven of those convicted of the most serious crimes will be transferred to Egypt ahead of further deportation.
Among those being released are 111 Palestinians who were rounded up after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, which triggered the war. They had been detained without trial.
Here’s a look at some prominent Palestinian prisoners released since the truce went into effect on Jan. 19.
ADVERTISEMENTAbu Shakhdam was sentenced to the equivalent of 18 life sentences over his involvement in Hamas attacks that killed dozens of Israelis during the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, between 2000 and 2005.
Among the most infamous of those attacks was a double suicide bombing that blew up two buses in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba in 2004, killing 16 Israelis, including a 4-year-old, and wounding over 100 others. In interviews with Arabic media, he described his militancy as a desire for revenge stemming from his brother’s killing by Israeli security forces in 2000.
Abu Shakhdam was on the run for weeks before his arrest in his hometown of Hebron in the West Bank in November 2004, following a gunfight with Israeli security forces in which he was shot 10 times.
Al-Tawil, 61, a prominent Hamas politician in the occupied West Bank, has spent nearly two decades in and out of Israeli prison, in part over allegations that he helped plot suicide bombings.
ADVERTISEMENTMost recently, the Israeli military arrested al-Tawil 2021, saying that he had participated in violent riots and mobilised Hamas political activists in Ramallah, the seat of the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority and Hamas’ main rival.
He had been held without charge or trial since then. After his arrest, he went on hunger strike for more than three weeks to protest his administrative detention.
During one of al-Tawil’s stints in Israeli prison in the early 2000s, he ran a successful electoral campaign from custody to become mayor of Al-Bireh, a West Bank town abutting Ramallah.
U.S. court documents from 2007, filed by the families of Israelis killed during the second intifada, show that al-Tawil had served for years as chairman of Al-Islah Charitable Society, a front organisation to raise money for Hamas. The case accused al-Tawil of recruiting a Hamas militant to carry out a 2001 suicide bombing that targeted a crowded pedestrian mall in Jerusalem, killing 11 people.
ADVERTISEMENTTrump’s “real estate transaction” Gaza plan
The releases came as US President Donald Trump continued to talk up his widely criticised proposal to move all Palestinians out of Gaza and redevelop the Strip as an international travel destination.
The idea, which Trump characterised as a “real estate transaction,” has been roundly rejected by the region’s Arab governments and by Palestinians themselves, who say forcing them from their homes would constitute ethnic cleansing.
But Trump insisted on Friday that his idea “had been very well received.”
After calling originally for “permanent” resettlement of the Palestinians, his newest comments left the question of duration unresolved.
ADVERTISEMENT“We don’t want to see everybody move back and then move out in 10 years” because of continued unrest, he said.
Israeli forces have withdrawn from most of Gaza, as specified by the ceasefire agreement, but remain in border areas.
The military has warned Palestinians to avoid areas where troops are operating and has opened fire on people accused of violating the terms of the agreement.
Negotiators have yet to agree on terms for the deal’s second phase, in which Hamas would release dozens more hostages in return for more prisoners and a lasting ceasefire.
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