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As is the conversation on A Gaza The ceasefire and the release of hostages were expedited, Hamas He is expected to demand the release of some of the highest-profile prisoners detained israelIncluding the most popular and potentially unifying palestinian Political figure: Marwan Barghouti,
Israel views Barghouti and others as terrorist masterminds who murdered Israeli civilians and has refused to release them in previous exchanges. But it is under increasing pressure to end the war and return the remaining 48 hostages taken in Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, about 20 of whom are believed to survive.
Many Palestinians view the thousands of prisoners held by Israel as political prisoners or freedom fighters resisting decades of military occupation.
Israel fears history will repeat itself after it released senior Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in 2011. The long-jailed prisoner was one of the masterminds of the October 7 attack and led a terrorist group before he was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza last year.
Here’s a look at some of the prisoners believed to be at the top of the list that Hamas says it turned over to mediators this week.
Marwan Barghouti
For several years, polls have shown that 66-year-old Barghouti is the most popular Palestinian political figure and suggest he would easily win a presidential election, which has not been held since 2005.
He is far more popular than Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and is seen as someone who could succeed him and potentially heal the long-running rift between Abbas’s Fatah movement and Hamas. Some have also compared him to Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years before becoming the first black president of South Africa.
Barghouti was a senior Fatah leader in the Israeli-occupied West Bank during the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, that broke out in 2000, and Israel says he masterminded the attacks that killed several people. He was arrested in 2002 and later given five life sentences. He made no defense by refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli court.
He supports the creation of a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War, which Israel’s current government and most of its political class oppose.
Abdullah Barghouti
Kuwait-born Barghouti, who had no direct ties to Marwan, was a senior Hamas bomb maker and commander during the 2000 intifada, who was implicated in several infamous attacks on Israeli civilians, primarily in Jerusalem.
In 2004 an Israeli court sentenced him to 67 life terms – the longest given in the country’s history – after he was convicted of the attacks that killed 66 people, including five Americans, and injured more than 500.
Now in his early 50s, he was convicted of making bombs used in an attack at Hebrew University that killed five Americans and four Israelis, a suicide bombing at a branch of Sbarro Pizzeria that killed 15 people, a suicide bombing at a café that killed 11 and a triple bombing on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall that killed 10 people. were killed.
While sentencing, the judges wrote that they regretted that death penalty was not an option. Israel’s only death sentence was that of Holocaust planner Adolf Eichmann in 1962.
Ahmed
The leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a small leftist faction with an armed wing, was accused of organizing the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, an ultranationalist who had called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians.
Sadat and the four PFLP activists directly involved in the assassination were eventually arrested by Palestinian police. In April 2002, a hastily convened makeshift court in then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s West Bank compound sentenced all four to prison terms ranging from one to 18 years. Sadat was not charged, with Palestinian officials saying at the time that they did not believe he was involved in the killing.
In an internationally brokered agreement that year, he was transferred to a Palestinian prison in the West Bank city of Jericho. In 2006, fearing his release, Israel raided the prison and detained him and other Palestinians. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2008. Now his age is around 70 years.
Hasan Salama
Hassan Salama, a senior Hamas terrorist, was given 46 life sentences in connection with the 1997 bombings of two passenger buses in Jerusalem and another attack that killed and injured dozens of people.
He led a series of attacks in revenge after the 1996 assassination of Hamas’ chief bomb maker, Yahya Ayyash. Salama, now aged 50, was arrested later that year.
Hamas carried out several major attacks on Israeli civilians in the 1990s, when Israel and Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization were engaged in US-brokered peace talks.
Those talks repeatedly broke down, often following attacks and over settlement expansion by Israel. There have been no substantive negotiations since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office in 2009.
Abbas Al-Sayyid
Al-Sayyid, now about 50, was a senior Hamas commander in the West Bank during the 2000 intifada and was involved in the deadliest attack of the insurgency.
He was given 35 life sentences and 100 years in prison for his role in a series of attacks, including a suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya in March 2002, which killed 30 people and injured 140 others while celebrating Jewish Passover.
That attack marked the peak of the uprising and prompted Israel to launch major military operations in the occupied West Bank.
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