Israel Releases 26 Palestinian Prisoners, to Cheers and Anguish

Isabel Kershner; Said Ghazali; Fares Akram

Israel Releases 26 Palestinian Prisoners, to Cheers and Anguish

The New York Times

2013-08-13


A bus with freed Palestinians was thronged near the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning. (Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

Israel released 26 long-serving Palestinian prisoners late Tuesday as part of an American-brokered deal allowing the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on Wednesday.

A cheer went up as the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, escorted 11 of the prisoners into the presidential compound here after 1:30 a.m. Wednesday. The crowd, made up mainly of relatives and friends of the returning prisoners, had started to thin out but grew larger as they approached. After the official reception, they sped off to their homes around the West Bank in convoys, their pictures taped to the car windows, their horns honking.

The other 15 prisoners released by Israel went directly to their homes in Gaza.

The overnight release was widely thought here to have been timed by Israel to try to minimize scenes of celebration and news media coverage. The Palestinian public has also been somewhat apathetic over an Israeli gesture seen by many Palestinians as too little, too late.

Still, here on the Palestinian side of the divide, the prisoners, most of whom had served 20 years or more in prison for deadly attacks against Israelis, were viewed as political prisoners who had sacrificed for the cause and a potent symbol of resistance to Israeli occupation.

“For sure, they are heroes,” said Husam Sawalha, 38, the brother of a released prisoner, Hosni Sawalha, from Azmut in the northern West Bank. Husam Sawalha said that the whole village would join in a big celebration on Wednesday.

But like the visceral struggle over history, land and birthright that has made the lengthy conflict so intractable, this cause for Palestinian rejoicing was a source of deep anguish in Israel. Israel had released Palestinian prisoners before, usually in exchange for captured Israeli soldiers. This release, many Israelis said, was too painful a concession with too little in return.

“What sort of peace is this?” asked Meir Indor, the chairman of Almagor, an Israeli organization that represents victims of terrorist attacks. “The Palestinians are getting a rubber stamp from the United States and Israel to kill legitimately,” he said in an interview at the Israeli Supreme Court. The court rejected his petition to halt the release, ruling that such decisions were the government’s prerogative.

Israeli newspapers were filled this week with photographs of the victims of the prisoners to be released and of the victims’ relatives holding protests and vigils. Most Israelis view the returning prisoners as terrorists, not freedom fighters.

In 1990, when they were 16 years old, Hosni Sawalha and his cousin Muhammad Sawalha boarded a bus near Tel Aviv and began stabbing passengers, killing Baruch Heisler, a 24-year-old Israeli, and injuring others. The cousins were convicted of murder and attempted murder and were sentenced to life in prison.

Hosni Sawalha’s brother, Husam, said they had been reacting to Israeli pressure on the Palestinians, adding that Israel had confiscated land from their village for a nearby Jewish settlement.

More than 100 relatives and friends from Azmut came to greet the two men at the presidential compound. A group of young men chanted, “With our blood and souls we will redeem the prisoners,” as they danced in a circle. The mothers of the released prisoners were dressed in white, as if for a wedding.

Asked if killing Mr. Heisler, a civilian riding the bus, had been a heroic act, Nasseem Hawamdeh, a friend of the cousins from Azmut, said that Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers were also civilians.

The parents of Mr. Heisler, contacted earlier on Tuesday, declined to be interviewed. “It is decided and done now,” his mother said of the imminent release. “What will it help?”

The Palestinian leadership has long demanded the release of prisoners who were convicted of crimes committed before the Oslo peace accords of 1993 took effect. As an incentive to keep the Palestinians at the negotiating table, Israel has agreed to release a total of 104 long-serving prisoners in four stages, beginning Tuesday and continuing over the next few months.

Some of the prisoners’ relatives in Ramallah spoke of the wasted years in prison and the need for peace.

“Nations change,” said Abdel Halim Ahmed Irshaid, 80, a cousin of a released prisoner from a village near Jenin who had been sentenced to four life terms plus 45 years for his involvement in the killing of an Israeli Druze citizen and three Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. “This is one step toward ending the war between us and the Jews,” Mr. Irshaid added.

Also among those released was Yousef Said Abdel Al from Gaza, where hundreds of relatives and supporters waited to greet the freed prisoners at the Erez crossing. Mr. Abdel Al was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of Ian Feinberg, an Israeli lawyer who was bludgeoned to death with an ax in 1993 while working on a European aid project in Gaza. He was 30 and married with three children.

Mr. Feinberg had done an internship as a civilian working for the Israeli military prosecution in Gaza. Later, he was asked to work on the European project because of his good relations and contacts there.

This week, outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, where the family had joined the petition against the prisoner release, Gillian Feinberg remembered her son as somebody who had always tried to help the underdog.

Ms. Feinberg said that she had worried about his working in Gaza, but that a few days before his murder he had told her: “Ma, everybody knows me here. I’m safe.”

Ms. Feinberg said she thought the Palestinian convicted of wielding the ax would be released in one of the next phases. If the current prisoner release were coming at the end of peace talks, rather than at the beginning, she said, “then I would say it was for something.”