As buses full of Palestinian prisoners made the short journey from Israeli prisons to the ruins of Gaza this week, Hamas sent a triumphant message.
“We have fulfilled our promise to our freed prisoners - a pledge to their sacrifices and struggles,” the Palestinian militant group said. “The release of prisoners from enemy prisons has always been, and will remain, at the heart of our national priorities.”
To the Israelis, the buses were full of “terrorists,” some 4.000 of them exchanged during the two-year war in Gaza for almost all of the 251 hostages held by Hamas. To the Palestinians, however, the militant group had fulfilled one of its raison d’êtres — freeing its people from notorious Israeli prisons.
Most of those released were never brought to trial and were held in draconian conditions during the state of war. Many of them were mere side characters in the ongoing conflict - young people convicted for throwing stones or arrested for social media posts.
But among those included in this latest exchange are about 250 so-called “heavyweights” – hardened militants convicted of killing civilians, albeit in closed military trials with a conviction rate of 99 percent.
The ongoing pressure to release these high-profile prisoners in exchange for hostages is one of the most difficult ethical and strategic issues facing Israel. Such exchanges — described by one Israeli official as a “tradition of necessity” — have a long history, unique to the Jewish state and its enemies.
Even before the latest war in Gaza, Israel had exchanged at least 8.500 prisoners since the 1980s, according to estimates by the Financial Times, for fewer than 20 live hostages - almost all of them soldiers - as well as the remains of eight more.
This has created a perverse incentive for militants - not just Hamas - to kidnap Israelis, mostly soldiers, in exchange for their own people. This has fueled a morbid marketplace of human lives, where for every kidnapped Israeli, dozens, sometimes hundreds, of liberated Palestinians are traded.
This pattern also encourages a process in which individual Palestinians, upon leaving prison, become far more influential than they were when they entered. Israeli prisons have thus inadvertently become a kind of training ground for a new generation of Palestinian leadership.
In prisons, militants from Islamist Hamas, its nationalist rival Fatah and other Palestinian factions - from the leftist PFLP to the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad - come together: exchanging ideas, learning and awaiting their next release, while their reputations outside grow.
Prisoners have a special nickname for this phenomenon - "Hadarim University", after an Israeli prison that also has a formal university program for prisoners.
Hamas's founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and Yahya Sinwar - the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attack that started the war - came from that system.
"He who sacrifices himself for his homeland becomes our hero," said Amani Sarane of the Palestinian Prisoners' Club. "After they get out of prison, they become part of the political leadership scene."
Some of those released in exchanges earlier this year are considered icons of the Palestinian resistance. Zakaria Zubeidi, a Jenin fighter turned theater troupe leader, achieved legendary status in 2021 after he dug his way out of prison and escaped — briefly but with great public attention. Hossam Shahin, the leader of Fatah’s youth wing, became known for his hunger strikes.
In this week's exchange, Israel refused to release men known as "the biggest heavyweights," such as Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti - described by supporters as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela - and Ahmed Sadat, leader of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was imprisoned for the 2001 assassination of an Israeli minister who threatened to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
However, the Israelis released people whose search and arrest had cost their security services significant resources.
Among them is Abdel Nasser Issa, arrested in 1995, when he was 27, accused of organizing the bus bombings, after the Israeli security agency Shin Bet followed his trail from Damascus to Gaza and a small apartment in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
Issa was described as one of the founders of Hamas's military wing in the West Bank - the same Al-Qassam Brigades that Israel is fighting in Gaza - and military courts sentenced him to two life sentences and an additional seven years.
But in February of this year, three decades later, the gaunt, 57-year-old Issa emerged from an Israeli prison during a ceasefire. As a fighter, Issa had once operated from the shadows, but in prison his reputation grew, fueled by stories that the young Issa had endured Israeli torture long enough to allow one of his followers to complete a final suicide mission.
Hamas has turned him into a public symbol of Palestinian resistance. He is also seen as a possible candidate for leadership. For Israel, Issa now poses a simmering threat, a seasoned militant transformed by prison into a name that inspires potential recruits.
"Keep an eye on him," said a senior former Shin Bet official who was involved in his initial arrest. "We will. He was dangerous then. He is dangerous now."
For now, Issa is staying out of the spotlight, said a Middle Eastern official familiar with his movements. Speaking to the Financial Times from Cairo after his release, Issa called his time in prison "a very interesting and enriching experience."
“I met so many different leaders, from different parts of the Palestinian political spectrum - right-wing, left-wing, Islamist and nationalist,” he said.
He spoke politely and avoided direct answers, like other Hamas officials, referring to international law and United Nations resolutions, but refusing to talk about his role in the killings of Israeli civilians.
He denied that he posed any threat to Israelis or Jews, but acknowledged that his ideas were a threat to Zionism. “Maybe they see me, like other Palestinians, as dangerous simply because we exist,” he said. “Maybe I’m a thorn in their side because I speak about resisting the occupation.”
Israel believes that, although his fighting days are over, Issa still poses a threat from abroad, where he can help Hamas raise funds and maintain networks that train and arm militants in Lebanon, Syria and other countries, a former senior Shin Bet official said.
If Issa were to rise to the leadership role, he would be repeating a pattern that has lasted for decades. In a 1985 exchange, known as the Jibril Agreement, three Israeli soldiers were exchanged for 1.150 Palestinians - including Yassin, who later became one of the founders of Hamas.
In 2004, Israel released 450 prisoners, mostly Lebanese, in exchange for an Israeli businessman kidnapped by the militant group Hezbollah and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers. A few years later, outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan said those released then had killed at least 231 Israelis.
The exchange that haunts Israeli security services the most was the one in 2011, when Yahya Sinwar, who was serving a sentence for the murders of Palestinians he suspected of being Israeli informants, was released.
Released along with more than 1.000 Palestinians in exchange for an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, Sinwar rose through the Hamas hierarchy to become its leader in Gaza. He was ultimately the main organizer of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, in which, according to Israeli officials, 1.200 people were killed and 250 were kidnapped.
But not everyone in Israeli prisons - where thousands of Palestinians remain - is preparing for glory after a possible release. Most, according to human rights groups, are simply grateful to have survived, especially since beatings and starvation became more common after October 7.
At least 75 prisoners have died in Israeli custody since October 7, according to human rights organizations.
But for some, being in prison “creates new leaders,” says Amar Mustafa Mardi, 43, who was released in February after spending 22 years in prison for the murder of a Jewish settler in the West Bank.
Mardi said he learned a lot during his time in prison from other Palestinians, including Sinwar, Barghouti and Sadat - his cellmates and teachers. "They were like equals among us," he said. "First among equals, they taught us something new every day."
Translation: A. Š.
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