Hamas says it will fully commit to implementing the terms of the ceasefire agreement which will see the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli authorities released 90 Palestinians from the Israeli Ofer military prison at about 1.30am local time on Monday.
The release came a day after Hamas released three Israeli captives from Gaza, on Sunday, the first day of the ceasefire deal.
The freed Palestinians included politician Khalida Jarrar and journalist Rula Hassanein.
Several of them described the difficult conditions in Israeli prisons, including lack of medical care and solitary confinement.
Among the 90 released prisoners were women from East Jerusalem, and minors.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas noted that a complete fiasco was imposed on the Zionist regime, the United States and Britain, which was ‘a great disappointment for the criminal (Israeli prime minister Benjamin) Netanyahu.’
Bara’a al-Fuqha, 22, hugged her family as she stepped off the Red Cross bus and into the sea of cheering Palestinians welcoming them.
A medical student at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem before her arrest, she spent six months in Damon Prison.
She was held under administrative detention – a policy of indefinite imprisonment without formal charge or trial that Israel uses against Palestinians.
Al-Fuqha said her conditions in the Israeli prison were ‘terrible’ with access to food and water limited.
‘It was like, when we tried to hold our heads high, the guards would do their best to hold us down,’ she said.
‘Thank God I am here with my family, I’m satisfied. But my joy is limited because so many among us Palestinians are being tortured and abused. Our people in Gaza are suffering. God willing, we will work to free them, too.’
Gaza’s civil defence service called on Arab and foreign civil defence authorities to urgently provide technical and human support to help in its rescue and relief efforts in the war-torn Palestinian territory.
In a news conference on Monday, the civil defence highlighted its need for rescue, firefighting and ambulance vehicles and equipment in order to retrieve the bodies of martyrs from under the rubble of thousands of destroyed buildings and homes.
They pointed out that the Israeli occupation army had killed 99 of its members, injured 319 others and kidnapped 27, including four of its senior officials in northern Gaza.
The civil defence also said that the Israeli army bombed most of its facilities and vehicles during the war.
The Hezbollah armed Lebanese group congratulated the Palestinian people and their resistance against Israel along with all forces that support Gaza for a ‘great victory’ achieved in the ceasefire deal.
Hezbollah called it ‘the culmination of legendary and historic steadfastness’ over more than 15 months of war, saying in a statement that it is ‘an example to be followed in confronting the Zionist-American aggression against our nation and our region’. They stated:
- This again proves that resistance is the only option capable of deterring the occupation and defeating its aggressive plans.
- The agreement was a political victory which was added to a military victory, indicating that Israel was unable to achieve its war goals.
- The United States is a full partner in the crimes and genocide committed by the enemy against the Palestinian people.
- We salute the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, along with our brothers in Yemen.
- Hezbollah expresses its pride and honour in this blessed victory, and it was a partner in achieving it through the steadfastness and sacrifices of the resistance and people of Lebanon.
Mustafa Barghouti, general-secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, said Israel will be under pressure to free senior Palestinian politicians held in prison if it wants to secure the release of high-ranking military officials captured by Hamas.
‘This will have a useful impact because those leaders are some of the ones very much for Palestinian national unity.
‘A person like Marwan Barghouti, who is a friend of mine, would be very conducive to pushing our efforts towards national unity, especially because he’s from Fatah,’ he said.
‘The big question is whether they’ll be able to stay in Palestine or be forced to leave.
‘As you can see, Israel is forcing so many people to be deported, which is like adding insult to injury.
‘Not only are they holding and torturing them in prison for a very long time, in addition they deport them out of their country.’
Barghouti said national unity should not be just negotiated between Fatah and Hamas but all Palestinian groups, followed by national democratic elections that haven’t been held in more than 20 years.
Hamas issued a new statement on the release of the Palestinian prisoners as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal.
Here are some of its key points:
- We congratulate our people, our nation, and the free people of the world on the liberation of the first batch of our female and male prisoners from the occupation’s prisons.
- Scenes of joy among our people as they raise the victory sign while receiving the prisoners confirm once again the popular support for the resistance and highlight its firm position in their conscience.
‘• The huge crowds of our people who came out to receive the liberated prisoners, despite the repressive measures of the occupation, are a declaration of defiance against the occupation, and an expression of their thirst for freedom and the liberation of the land and holy sites.
‘
- The pictures of the three female prisoners being handed over to the enemy showed them in full physical and psychological health, while our male and female prisoners showed signs of neglect and exhaustion, which embodies the great difference between the values and morals of the resistance and the barbarism and fascism of the occupation.
‘• We stand in these historic moments in reverence and appreciation for the sacrifices of our great people in Gaza and our victorious resistance.’
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has trucks waiting in Jordan and Egypt as well as the occupied West Bank loaded with food, water, tents, and medical supplies.
Spokeswoman Nebal Farsakh said there are no firm numbers on how many trucks have entered the Gaza Strip, but said the organisation is coordinating with the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, the Egyptian Red Crescent, and Jordanian Red Crescent.
She said healthcare is a priority after most of it ‘collapsed’ because of the 15-month war.
‘The medical supplies and medications, these will be going to support the work of the Palestine Red Crescent at our hospitals and medical points in addition to a new field hospital we are currently establishing in Gaza in order to support the people there, especially as the healthcare system in northern Gaza has collapsed,’ Farsakh said, speaking from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
‘The majority of hospitals were taken out of service, and now there’s expectation that thousands of families will be going back to Gaza City and the north, and we need to be prepared to provide healthcare services for the displaced families there.’
The Yemeni Ansarullah resistance movement congratulated Palestinians on the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire deal, reaffirming its unwavering support for the oppressed nation and its resistance front.
‘With faith and confidence in the promised divine victory, we reiterate Yemen’s unfaltering support for Palestine and its resistance,’ the group said in a statement on Monday.
It added: ‘Yemen will closely follow up on the full implementation of the agreement and its details, and will resolutely confront any possible escalation of aggression by the Zionist regime.’
The Ansarullah movement described the implementation of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, as part of which 90 Palestinian prisoners were freed from Israeli jails, as the fruit of resilience in the face of the 15-month-long genocidal war and brutalities by the Israeli military.
‘The genocidal war, launched by the Zionist regime, was waged with the full complicity of the United States and the unlimited support of Western European countries,’ the Yemeni group stated.
It lauded the Gaza ceasefire deal and the release of the first group of Palestinian prisoners, which was achieved through sacrifices of the local Palestinian population, as a historic achievement.
‘Palestinians have recorded an epic saga of patience and resilience. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood proved that we are facing a tyrannical and bullying enemy, which only understands the language of force and cannot be deterred by any means other than the language it comprehends,’ Ansarullah pointed out.
It underlined that the martyrdom of the late secretary-general of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the political bureau of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, Ismail Haniyah, and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar helped the attainment of this great achievement.
