From right, prisoners Ahmed Saadat, Abbas al-Sayyid and Ibrahim Hamed (agencies)

During the prisoner exchange deal "Wafa al-Ahrar" between the Islamic Resistance Movement "Hamas" and the Israeli occupation in 2011, under which 1027,40 prisoners were freed in exchange for the release of soldier Gilad Shalit, the occupation refused to release a list of about <> prisoners and classified them as dangerous.

Throughout their detention, these forty remained outside the scope of negotiations and the occupation insisted on not removing them under any circumstances.

But Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which began on October 250, in which the resistance captured about <> Israelis, restored hope to the prisoners and their families, and brought the idea of freedom from captivity closer to realization, even for those with high sentences. Among them are the names of the three elder prisoners, Abbas al-Sayyid, Ahmed Saadat, and Ibrahim Hamed.

Two buses of soldiers for the master

Before the Wafa al-Ahrar deal, Ikhlas reported that prisoner Abbas al-Sayed's wife Ikhlas reported that a relative had told her with a serious joke, "Your husband needs two buses of Israeli soldiers to be freed from prison."

Al-Sayed is sentenced to 36 life imprisonment and 200 years after being arrested on 8 May 2002, and accuses him of responsibility for carrying out a number of qualitative and painful operations, which resulted in the death of hundreds of deaths and injuries in the ranks of the occupation.

Um Abdullah remembers this article today, when the resistance in Gaza has dozens of captured Israeli soldiers and officers, and her husband's words float in her mind, in which he said, "He will be liberated hopefully and will go to his hometown of Tulkarm, and the first thing he will do there is to visit the cemetery."

His wife says, in her speech to Al Jazeera Net, she has not seen it before with such complete certainty of liberation, "has never been optimistic like this, even when negotiating Shalit and Golden and Aaron," and then adds heartburn enveloped by longing and enthusiasm: "We and God are waiting for him."

Al-Sayed was not freed in the Shalit deal, nor did he hope of breaking free in another deal that was being negotiated and the occupation was stalling in making it, after Hamas captured Israeli soldiers Hadar Golden and Aaron Shaul in the "food storm" war on the Gaza Strip in 2014.

His wife says, "I do not hide that from the day he started talking about the releases, my feelings were calm and stagnant," but she adds, "But when I began to see the buses of prisoners and cubs, and the joy of their families with their liberation, I began to draw with my imagination the scene of Abu Abdullah's reception, a strange feeling, but at the same time there is reassurance and joy that his liberation is very close."

Saadat. Head to head

Among the forty "dangerous" for Israel is a man about whom the saying "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and head for head" has been preserved, namely the secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmed Saadat.

This was his statement in a letter addressed to the Abu Ali Mustafa Martyr Brigades, the military wing of the Front, in the forties of the martyrdom of Secretary-General Abu Ali Mustafa, who was assassinated by Israeli warplanes while he was in his office on August 27, 2001.

About two months later, on October 17, a group from the Popular Front (PFLP) carried out the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi in a hotel in the occupied city of Jerusalem.

Sa'dat was held in PA prisons from January 15, 2002 to March 14, 2006, before being arrested by Israeli forces and sentenced to 30 years in prison for heading the Israeli-banned Popular Front group.

Constant caution

His wife Abla told "Al Jazeera Net": "He does not talk much, especially in such situations, and when we were very optimistic in the days of Shalit, he used to say do not be optimistic, he is always cautious," but "this time is different by all standards, the presence of Israeli prisoners in this quantity and type is different," she says.

"We were optimistic about a big deal from the beginning, from the number of those captured, it was just Shalit and more than a thousand prisoners came out, let alone when they have more than 100," she said.

Optimism increased with the completion of the exchange deal, which included women and children in Israeli prisons in exchange for the release by the resistance of children and civilian women detained in Gaza during the truce period.

His wife quoted one of the recently freed prisoners as saying that "the prisoners are optimistic" that a major exchange will happen.

Longest security file

Ibrahim Hamed, commander of the Qassam Brigades in the West Bank during the second intifada, is the author of the longest security file of 12,54 papers, translated into <> life sentences.

The occupation accuses him of responsibility for a series of qualitative operations that have caused dozens of Israeli deaths and injuries.

Convey his son on the feeling of his father, he says to Al Jazeera Net "practically the father was optimistic by October 7, we were receiving saying that hopefully soon will be with us."

Ali added that the Al-Aqsa flood operation increased his sense of liberation, not only at the level of prisoners, but "at the level of the liberation of Palestine."

Ibrahim Hamed had published an article in the Journal of Palestine Studies 11 days before the "Al-Aqsa Flood", entitled: "On Rehabilitating the Liberation of Palestine," in which he conducted a comprehensive scientific review of the political tracks that deviated from the national compass such as the Oslo Accords.

He called for what he called "a return to roots and springs" and an "original consensus" with the goal of "liberating Palestine."

Asma, the wife of prisoner Ibrahim Hamed, likes her son Ali to describe her as "a woman of iron, beautified with patience and strength": "My mother's vision from the beginning was that the war would end with a big deal ... The truth is that her optimism has never diminished."

Thus, the "Al-Aqsa flood" opened the personal and political horizon of the prisoners, and the idea of liberation from the occupation prisons became valid.

On both sides of the liberation road, which seemed possible this time for prisoners with high sentences, the families of the prisoners stand waiting for the passage of their relatives, husbands, fathers and brothers.

Source : Al Jazeera