14 prisoners were released against their will
During the ceasefire, 80 Israeli hostages are exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners. 14 Palestinian women are released against their will: According to their lawyers, they want nothing to do with Hamas.
More than a dozen Palestinian prisoners who were exchanged by Israel for hostages kidnapped by Hamas have apparently been released against their will. This was reported by the "New York Times". According to the report, 15 of the prisoners were women with Israeli citizenship. Most of them were arrested after the Hamas terror attacks on 7 October and accused of supporting a terrorist organization on the basis of their social media posts. None of them have yet been convicted. All but one of them refused to be released as part of the deal with Hamas. They would have preferred to defend themselves in court, as the newspaper writes following interviews with one of the women and three lawyers.
A total of 105 hostages were released by Hamas during the seven-day ceasefire, including 80 Israelis who were exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners. The swap was brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the USA. Outside of these negotiations, Hamas also released 23 Thais, one Filipino and one person with Russian and Israeli citizenship. 138 abductees are still in the hands of the terrorist organization, which murdered more than 1,200 people during its attack on Israel on 7 October.
"Worse than any punishment"
Both the Palestinian prisoners and the Israeli hostages are all minors and women. The 14 of the 15 Israeli citizens were afraid that they would now have to live with the stigma of being "associated with a group that most Israelis regard as a vile terrorist organization", according to the New York Times, citing the lawyers. Some of the women feared being attacked on the street. Shots have reportedly already been fired near a house where one of them lives. A woman who was studying computer science was expelled from her university.
One of the women was arrested for sharing a joke on the internet that apparently relativized the Hamas attack. Another shared a photo of Palestinians entering Israel from the Gaza Strip through a hole in the border fence on October 7, with the caption: "Meanwhile, the army that cannot be beaten was sleeping." Lawyer Nareman Shehadeh Zoabi from the Palestinian-Israeli civil rights organization Adalah said that the Israeli government had not asked the women or their lawyers if they wanted to be included in the deal with Hamas. It had also not responded to the lawyers' requests to keep the women out of the deal, Zoabi said.
Like the other lawyers questioned, Zoabi wanted to defend her client in court. According to her, the acts her client is accused of are "definitely within the limits of her freedom of expression". Ahmad Massalha, an Israeli-Arab lawyer representing one of the women, told the newspaper: "Being associated with Hamas is worse than any punishment a court could have imposed."
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- Despite being released as part of the peace negotiations between Israel and Hamas, several Palestinian prisoners who were originally exchanged for Israeli hostages have expressed their discontent with being associated with Hamas, citing fears of stigma and potential attacks in Israel.
- Among the released Palestinian prisoners who were swapped for Israeli hostages, 14 women, all of whom are Israeli citizens, have refused to comply with the deal and have instead expressed their desire to defend themselves in court, citing their freedom of expression as a justification for their actions.
- Following the release of the Palestinian prisoners, Hamas continued its violent actions against Israel, resulting in the abduction of over 130 individuals, many of whom remain in Hamas' custody to this day.
Source: www.ntv.de
