Palestinians raise a picture of prisoner Abdullah Barghouti during a march in Ramallah demanding the release of prisoners (Al Jazeera)

Ramallah -

The Palestinian resistance in Gaza requires that the name of prisoner Abdullah Barghouti, who completed his 21st year in Israeli prisons on Tuesday, and other prisoners with high sentences, including the well-known prisoner Thaer Hammad, be included in an exchange deal with Israel to complete it.

The Barghouti family - who was bypassed by all previous deals - has high hopes for this deal, as the prisoner is not only one of those with high judgments;

Rather, he had the highest sentence in the history of Israeli prisons and occupation, reaching 67 life sentences.

His wife, Faya Barghouti, told Al Jazeera Net, "We have great hope this time. The conditions for resistance are clear, and we are all confident that they will not back down from it."

The mother of prisoner Thaer Hammad holds a picture of her son, who was sentenced to 11 life sentences (Al Jazeera)

Fluctuating hopes

As for the family of the prisoner Thaer Hammad, they know with certainty that his release will only be part of a prisoner deal in which the Palestinian resistance imposes its conditions, which is what made them experience great joy in the first days of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle.

But that changed in light of Israel's attempts to manipulate the terms of the deal, and the fear that it would refuse to release any prisoner accused of killing Israelis, according to Akram, the prisoner's brother.

Akram continued, speaking to Al Jazeera Net, "At the present time, we do not have high expectations for his release as part of the deal. In the beginning, there was talk about releasing all life-long prisoners, then talk about some of them."

Even if the deal is completed and Thaer is released, the family has a greater fear that the release will be conditional on deportation outside Palestine.

His brother says, "This would be a great injustice against the Palestinian prisoners, while the Israeli detainees return to their families and homes."

The oscillation between hope and fear that the Barghouti and Hammad families are experiencing in light of talk about a prisoner exchange deal, the terms of which could be reached before the month of Ramadan, is the case with hundreds of families of Palestinian prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment, whose number according to the institutions that follow up on prisoners’ cases reaches 579 prisoners, in addition to... 20 prisoners whose files are currently being circulated in the Israeli courts are expected to be sentenced to life imprisonment, which brings the number to about 600 prisoners.

Barghouti and Hammad

Abdullah Barghouti, who was known as the most prominent architect of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” in the West Bank during the Second Intifada, and Israel places him on the list of the most dangerous prisoners in its prisons.

During his long detention, the Palestinian prisoner was subjected to punitive measures in addition to being sentenced to 67 life imprisonment.

He is one of the few prisoners who spent an interrogation period that exceeded the period permitted by Israeli law, and lasted for 5 consecutive months.

He was then transferred to solitary confinement for 10 consecutive years, from which he did not emerge until he went on a long hunger strike.

Barghouti was deprived of regular visits. The wife says that she and her three children were able to visit him only 5 times throughout these years, while his father and mother were only allowed to visit him once, and for no more than a quarter of an hour last year.

Hammad is also one of the prisoners who are held by Israel in poor conditions and is classified as among the most dangerous. He is the owner of one of the specific operations that he carried out with an old rifle, during which 11 soldiers were killed on March 3, 2002, and it was called Operation “Eyes of the Thief.”

The occupation arrested him two and a half years after its execution, and sentenced him to 11 life imprisonment.

A pause for the families of the prisoners, including Bilal Barghouti, who was sentenced to 17 life sentences (Al Jazeera)

Probabilities of the deal being successful

The prisoners with the highest sentences in prisons after Barghouti are: prisoner Ibrahim Jamil Hamed (sentenced to 54 life imprisonments), then Hassan Abdel Rahman Salama from the Gaza Strip, who is a veteran of the prisoners, having been arrested in 1996, and sentenced to 48 life imprisonments and 20 years.

There is the prisoner Muhammad Attiya Abu Wardeh (sentenced to 48 life sentences), Muhammad Hassan Arman (sentenced to 36 life sentences), Abbas Muhammad al-Sayyid (35 life sentences and 150 years), Wael Mahmoud Qasim (sentenced to 35 life sentences and 50 years), and Anas Ghaleb Jaradat (35 life sentences). And 35 years), and Saeed Hussam Al-Tobasi from Jenin camp, facing a sentence of 31 life sentences and 50 years.

Regarding the possibility of completely liberating these prisoners within the expected deal, the head of the Commission for Ex-Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs, Qaddoura Fares, says that the resistance bears the price for their release, and Israel is well aware of this, so it seeks to escalate the attacks on the Gaza Strip through massacres, starvation, and suppression of prisoners, to put pressure on the resistance until it pays this. The price is in exchange for alleviating these attacks and not releasing the prisoners.

Regarding the form of the deal through which those with high sentences can be released, the head of the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs Authority adds, “Israel will certainly seek to deport them outside the country, and this is a negotiated matter that can be resolved.”

Qaddoura believes that the ideal solution lies in adopting the formula of the deal that was concluded in 1985, where the prisoners were given a “choice” to be released and remain inside Palestine, or deported outside it. Sometimes deportation is best for some prisoners who do not have guarantees that they will not be harmed after their release. Among them is Barghouti, who holds Jordanian citizenship.

Source: Al Jazeera