BEITUNIA, West Bank: Over three dozen Palestinian prisoners returned home to a hero’s welcome in the occupied West Bank on Friday following their release from Israeli prisons as part of a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas.
The procession of freed prisoners, some accused of minor offenses and others convicted in attacks, at a checkpoint outside of Jerusalem stoked massive crowds of Palestinians into a chanting, clapping, hand-waving, screaming frenzy.
Fifteen dazed young men, all in stained grey prison sweatsuits and looking gaunt with exhaustion, glided through the streets on the shoulders of their teary-eyed fathers as fireworks turned the night sky to blazing color and patriotic Palestinian pop music blared.
Some of those released were draped in Palestinian flags, others in the green flags of Hamas. They flashed victory signs as they crowd-surfed.
“I have no words, I have no words,” said newly released 17-year-old Jamal Brahma, searching for something to say to the hordes of jostling journalists and thousands of chanting Palestinians, many in national dress. “Thank God.”
Tears fell down his father Khalil Brahma’s cheeks as he brought his son down from his shoulders and looked him in the eye for the first time in seven months. Israeli forces had arrested Jamal at his home in the Palestinian city of Jericho last spring and detained him without charge or trial.
“I just want to be his father again,” he said.
The release of the Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails came just hours after two dozen hostages, including 13 Israelis, were released from captivity in Gaza in the initial exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners during the four-day cease-fire that started Friday.
Under the deal, Hamas is to release at least 50 hostages, and Israel 150 Palestinian prisoners, over the four days. Israel said the truce can be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed.
Although the atmosphere was festive in the town of Beitunia near Israel’s hulking Ofer Prison in the West Bank, people were on edge.
The Israeli government has ordered police to shut down celebrations over the release. Israeli security forces at one point unleashed tear gas canisters on the crowds, sending young men, old women and small children sprinting away as they wept and screamed in pain.
“The army is trying to take this moment away from us but they can’t,” Mays Foqaha said as she tumbled into the arms of her newly released 18-year-old friend, Nour Al-Taher from Nablus, who was arrested during a protest in September at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. ”This is our day of victory.”
The Palestinian detainees freed Friday included 24 women, some of whom had been sentenced to years-long prison terms over attempted stabbings and other attacks on Israeli security forces. Others had been accused of incitement on social media.
There were also the 15 male teenagers, most of them charged with stone-throwing and “supporting terrorism,” a broadly defined accusation that underscores Israel’s long-running crackdown on young Palestinian men as violence surges in the occupied territory.
For families on both sides of the conflict, news of the exchange — perhaps the first hopeful moment in 49 days of war — stirred a bittersweet jumble of joy and anguish.
“As a Palestinian, my heart is broken for my brothers in Gaza, so I can’t really celebrate,” said Abdulqader Khatib, a UN worker whose 17-year-old son, Iyas, was placed last year in “administrative detention,” without charges or trial and based on secret evidence. “But I am a father. And deep inside, I am very happy.”
Israel is now holding an all-time high of 2,200 Palestinians in administrative detention, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group, in a controversial policy that Israel defends as a counter-terrorism measure.
Since Oct. 7, when Hamas took roughly 240 Israeli and foreign citizens hostage and killed 1,200 Israelis in its unprecedented rampage through southern Israel, Palestinians have wondered about the fate of their own prisoners.
Israel has a history of agreeing to lopsided exchanges. In 2011, Hamas got Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a single captive Israeli soldier, Gilad Schalit.
A prisoner release touches Palestinian society to its core. Almost every Palestinian has a relative in jail – or has been there himself. Human rights groups estimate that over 750,000 Palestinians have passed through Israeli prisons since Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in 1967.
Whereas Israel views them as terrorists, Palestinians refer to them by the Arabic word for prisoners of war, and devote a good chunk of public funds to supporting them and their families. Israel and the US have condemned the grants to prisoner families as an incentive for violence.
“These kinds of prisoner exchanges are often the only hope families have to see their sons or fathers released before many years go by,” said Amira Khader, international advocacy officer at Addameer, a group supporting Palestinian prisoners. “It’s what they live for, it’s like a miracle from God.”
Since the Hamas attack, Israel has escalated a months-long West Bank crackdown on Palestinians suspected of ties to Hamas and other militant groups. Many prisoners are convicted by military courts, which prosecute Palestinians with a conviction rate of more than 99 percent. Rights groups say Palestinians are often denied due process and forced into confessions.
There are now 7,200 Palestinians in Israeli prison, said Qadura Fares, the director of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, with over 2,000 arrested since Oct. 7 alone.
On Friday in Beitunia, a lanky and pimpled 16-year-old, Aban Hammad, stood unmoving, looking shaken by the tumult of tears, hugs and pro-Hamas chants around him. It was his first glimpse of the world after a year in prison for throwing stones in the northern town of Qalqilya. He was freed even though he had eight months of his sentence left to serve.
He turned toward his father, wrapping him into a hug. “Look, I’m almost bigger than you now,” he said.
Palestinian families rejoice over release of minors and women in wartime prisoner swap
https://arab.news/9bkbb
Palestinian families rejoice over release of minors and women in wartime prisoner swap
- The procession of freed prisoners, some accused of minor offenses, stoked massive crowds of Palestinians into a chanting, screaming frenzy
- Fifteen dazed young men, all in stained grey prison sweatsuits, glided through the streets on shoulders of their teary-eyed fathers amid fireworks
Palestinian mother ‘destroyed’ after image used to deny Gaza starvation
- For Najjar, the fact that her family’s reunion got caught up in a misinformation campaign was devastating
MONTREAL: Palestinian-Canadian Faiza Najjar was able to leave Gaza last year, but could not bring her four adult daughters with her. She watched from a distance as food shortages in the territory worsened.
From Canada, where she lives with her six other children, Najjar pursued a months-long effort to get those she had left out of Gaza.
She finally embraced her daughters and seven grandchildren when they arrived at Toronto’s airport last month.
But when clips of the emotional reunion were posted on social media, pro-Israeli accounts mocked her physical appearance saying it disproved claims of starvation in Gaza.
“As a mother it just destroyed me,” Najjar, 50, told AFP.
Najjar did not claim that she went hungry while in Gaza.
But as recently as this past weekend a post viewed more than 300,000 times across multiple platforms ridiculed her, erroneously implying she had just left Gaza.
“Did you see what that woman looked like?” the poster said, pointing out Najjar does not look undernourished.
United Nations agencies have warned that famine was unfolding in Gaza, with Israel severely restricting the entry of aid. Images of sick and emaciated Palestinian children have drawn international outrage.
The allegation has been denied by Israel. “There is no starvation in Gaza,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month.
The ridicule Najjar faced is part of a broader trend.
Israeli anchors on the country’s right-wing Channel 14 — sometimes described as the Hebrew Fox News — have laughed at “obese” mothers, alleging they steal their children’s food.
For Najjar, the fact that her family’s reunion got caught up in a misinformation campaign was devastating.
“After all the suffering, and losing everything, and nearly dying, some people still had the heart to mock them,” she said, referring to her family.
“My daughters lived there and their children went to sleep hungry...with bombs outside their tents,” Najjar said.
Pro-Israeli commentators online also focused on her grandchildren’s apparently healthy appearance.
Najjar told AFP they received medical treatment, including renourishment, at a hospital in Jordan before flying to Canada.
Mert Can Bayar, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, said the posts targeting Najjar are “just one little piece” of a misleading online narrative.
Toronto’s Mayor Olivia Chow removed a video she had posted on Instagram in which she welcomed arriving Palestinians because of abusive comments directed at the family.
Comments on Chow’s video also cited the family’s physical appearance to broadly dismiss claims of starvation in Gaza.
X’s chatbot Grok also misidentified a 2025 AFP photo of an emaciated child in Gaza, incorrectly saying it was taken in Yemen seven years ago, fueling further claims that reports of starvation in Gaza have been fabricated.
Valerie Wirtschafter, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think-tank, said the claims were reminiscent of falsehoods that emerged weeks into the war alleging Palestinians had posed as so-called crisis actors and staged their injuries.
Wirtschafter said the hoax narrative “deflects from the real humanitarian harms that are happening right now.”
Israel’s offensive has killed at least 61,430 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, figures the United Nations deems reliable.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Forty-nine of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
When Najjar left Gaza last year, her daughters — all in their 20s — did not have Canadian citizenship.
With the family separated, she lived with crippling fear at the prospect of receiving word that they had been killed.
While her daughters now have citizenship and are in Canada with their children, her sons-in-law remain in Gaza, where the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification says “widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths.”
“I just want the world to know the crisis is real,” Najjar told AFP. “Denial is deadly.”
Israel rejects UN allegations that its forces have sexually abused detained Palestinians
- The secretary-general said these should include investigations of credible allegations, clear orders and codes of conduct for military and security forces that prohibit sexual violence, and unimpeded access for UN monitors
UNITED NATIONS: The UN chief warned Israel that the United Nations has “credible information” of sexual violence and other violations by Israeli forces against detained Palestinians, which Israel’s UN ambassador dismissed as “baseless accusations.”
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a letter to Ambassador Danny Danon that he is “gravely concerned” about reported violations against Palestinians by Israeli military and security forces in several prisons, a detention center and a military base.
Guterres said he was putting Israeli forces on notice that they could be listed as abusers in his next report on sexual violence in conflict “due to significant concerns of patterns of certain forms of sexual violence that have been consistently documented by the United Nations.”
Danon, who circulated the letter and his response Tuesday, said the allegations “are steeped in biased publications.”
“The UN must focus on the shocking war crimes and sexual violence of Hamas and the release of all hostages,” he said.
Danon was referring to the militant group’s surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, where some 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage. Israeli authorities said women were raped and sexually abused.
The Hamas attack triggered the ongoing war in Gaza, which has killed more than 61,400 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters or civilians but that about half were women and children.
Danon stressed that “Israel will not shy away from protecting its citizens and will continue to act in accordance with international law.”
Because Israel has denied access to UN monitors, it has been “challenging to make a definitive determination” about patterns, trends and the systematic use of sexual violence by its forces, Guterres said in the letter.
He urged Israel’s government “to take the necessary measures to ensure immediate cessation of all acts of sexual violence, and make and implement specific time-bound commitments.”
The secretary-general said these should include investigations of credible allegations, clear orders and codes of conduct for military and security forces that prohibit sexual violence, and unimpeded access for UN monitors.
In March, UN-backed human rights experts accused Israel of “the systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence.”
The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said it documented a range of violations perpetrated against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys and accused Israeli security forces of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian detainees.
At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at the UN Human Rights Council, which commissioned the team of independent experts, as an “anti-Israel circus” that “has long been exposed as an antisemitic, rotten, terrorist-supporting, and irrelevant body.” His statement did not address the findings themselves.
How Israeli raids, settler violence and annexation plans are driving the West Bank toward crisis
- UN agencies warn of escalating violence in the West Bank, including unlawful killings, injuries, and mass displacement of Palestinians
- Planned settlement expansion could split the occupied territory, undermine a contiguous Palestinian state, and violate international law
LONDON: While global attention remains focused on the war in Gaza, the occupied West Bank has been sliding deeper into crisis, largely out of sight. Israeli military raids and settler violence against Palestinians have escalated sharply, intensifying tensions across the territory.
The UN Human Rights Office has warned of growing settler violence “with the acquiescence, support, and in some cases participation of Israeli forces.”
In a July 30 statement, the UN agency described “a pattern of the use of unnecessary and disproportionate force that resulted in the unlawful killing and injury of Palestinians” in the West Bank.
The report further alleged that Israeli authorities are pursuing a wider strategy of displacement and annexation — claims the government rejects, insisting instead that its actions are a response to security threats posed by Palestinian militants.
“State policy and legislative actions appear aimed at emptying certain areas of the West Bank of the Palestinian population, advancing the settlement enterprise, and consolidating the annexation” of large parts of the territory, the statement added.
That warning was followed almost immediately by a significant political development, as Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Defense Minister Israel Katz publicly declared that the current moment offered an opportunity to annex the West Bank — a move long opposed by much of the international community.
“Ministers Katz and Levin have been working for many years to implement Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” their offices said in a joint statement on July 31, using the biblical name for the West Bank. “At this very moment, there is a moment of opportunity that must not be missed.”
The statement did not explain why now is the right opportunity, but it came on the heels of recent announcements by Western governments, including France and the UK, that they are prepared to recognize a Palestinian state.
Just two days earlier, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the UK would recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September unless Israel moved to end the crisis in Gaza, commit to a ceasefire, and revive a two-state solution.
“There is an understandable focus on Gaza given the genocide that is going on, the horrific amount of destruction, loss of life, the starvation of a civilian population,” Chris Doyle, director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding, told Arab News.
“Of course, that is far, far worse than anything that is currently happening in the West Bank.” But, he warned, the difference in scale does not diminish the danger.
“I think what is scary about the West Bank is that many Palestinians there feel that they are next — that what has happened in Gaza will be happening to them.”
That fear is not unfounded.
“We’ve already seen an uptick in Israeli military operations, particularly in the north of the West Bank, inside refugee camps,” said Doyle.
“We’ve seen demolitions at record levels, record levels of settler violence, all helped by the Israeli military, and the forced displacement of so many communities.”
He added that ultra-nationalist elements within the Israeli government, “particularly those who are really engaged with the ultra-nationalist settler movement,” are “doing everything they can to exploit the situation in Gaza to push forward with their plans in the West Bank.”
That concern is echoed by Israeli rights group B’Tselem, which warned in July of “clear and imminent danger that the genocide will not remain confined to Gaza.”
In its report, titled “Our Genocide,” B’Tselem warned that the assault on Gaza is inseparable from escalating violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and within Israel.
Indeed, violence in the West Bank has spiked since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza, and escalated further after Israel launched Operation Iron Wall on Jan. 21, which the Israeli government says is aimed at tackling militant groups in the territory’s north.
International monitors, including the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Human Rights Watch, say the campaign has become increasingly indiscriminate, killing numerous noncombatants, including children.
Save the Children reports at least 224 children were killed by Israeli forces or settlers between January 2023 and early 2025. OCHA says that from Oct. 7, 2023, to mid-July 2025, some 968 Palestinians — including 204 children — were killed in the West Bank.
Civilians killed during this period include foreign nationals, such as Palestinian-American Khamis Al-Ayyad, whose family is seeking an investigation into his death in a settler attack on July 31.
UN figures show around 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced — the largest such movement since the 1967 war — most of them from three refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarem.
Settler violence and military-imposed access restrictions have uprooted more than 2,200 more.
INNUMBERS
• 40k Palestinians forcibly displaced from northern West Bank from January through June.
• 2.2k+ Displaced by settler attacks and access restrictions during the same period.
• 6,463 Displaced by Israeli home demolitions between Oct. 7, 2023, and May 31, 2025.
(Source: OCHA)
House demolitions are also climbing. A new directive by the Israeli Civil Administration allows the military to raze Palestinian structures and expel around 1,200 residents from long-inhabited areas.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned such actions could constitute “forcible transfer, which is a war crime.”
The UN agency said in late June that such actions “could also amount to a crime against humanity if committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.”
Israel says demolitions target unpermitted buildings, though Palestinians and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs note that such permits are nearly impossible to obtain.
In June, the UN recorded the highest monthly injury toll from settler attacks in over 20 years. OHCHR counted 757 such attacks in the first seven months of 2025 — a 13 percent rise compared to the same period last year.
UN General Assembly President Philemon Yang called these developments “a critical moment in the long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
On July 28, he warned that “while the situation in Gaza is dramatic, we must not lose sight of the deeply concerning and equally urgent situation in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
Indeed, on Aug. 6, the Israeli government discussed building thousands of new housing units in the E1 area, east of occupied East Jerusalem. The project would link the Ma’ale Adumim settlement to Jerusalem, effectively bisecting the West Bank and isolating Palestinian communities.
“Not only would implementing the E1 doomsday settlement project split the West Bank into north and south, but also cement the separation of Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, as well as displacing around 12,500 Palestinians,” said Doyle.
“All of this, therefore, amounts to an extremely serious situation in the West Bank, which already exists under a regime of apartheid, where Israeli Jewish citizens of the State of Israel in settlements enjoy superior rights to Palestinians who are their neighbors.”
The E1 plan, stalled since 2021 under US and EU pressure, envisions building more than 3,000 homes to the east of Jerusalem and is widely seen as a death blow to a future contiguous Palestinian state.
In a joint statement in July, 31 Western nations, including the UK and France, announced their “strong opposition” to the project, calling it “a flagrant breach of international law” that would “critically undermine the two-state solution.”
However, the international community should be doing far more, said Doyle.
He warned that the escalating situation in the West Bank “does point to a fundamental failure of the international community, not just over the last 21-22 months, but actually over decades, to put an end to the settlement project — to reverse it.
“All of this, of course, has now been ordered by the International Court of Justice that says that Israel must withdraw from the settlements and pay reparations. And it is incumbent upon international actors to back that up and to take action to ensure that they are in no way complicit with Israel’s regime of occupation.”
The ICJ ruled in July 2024 that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem is illegal under international law. It found that Israeli settlements and use of natural resources in the occupied Palestinian territories are unlawful.
The court ordered Israel to end its occupation, dismantle settlements, provide full reparations to Palestinians, and facilitate the return of displaced people.
With the West Bank facing ever-increasing violence, mass displacement, and aid restrictions, the question looms: Will the world act to prevent it becoming another Gaza?
Israel expands Eli settlement, further fragmenting Palestinian territory in occupied West Bank
- Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission says aim of the expansion is to separate the central West Bank from its northern region
- The settlement, located north of Ramallah on Highway 60, is built on land that belonged to Palestinians from the villages of Al-Sawiya, Al-Lubban and Qaryut
LONDON: Israeli authorities have approved plans to transform several large illegal outposts around the Eli settlement in the occupied West Bank into neighborhoods that expand the colony, the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission said Tuesday.
The settlement, located north of Ramallah on Highway 60, was built on lands that belonged to Palestinians from the villages of Al-Sawiya, Al-Lubban and Qaryut.
Muayyad Shaaban, the head of the commission, said the aim of the expansion was to separate the central West Bank from its northern region by creating “a colonial bloc” between the cities of Ramallah and Nablus.
Israel intends to build 50 housing units in a 0.86 hectare area inside Eli, plus 650 housing units in large illegal outposts east of Eli as part of two expansion plans covering a total area of 63.8 hectares.
In July, Israeli authorities reviewed 39 settlement plans, 34 in the West Bank and five in Jerusalem. They approved 22, one of them in Jerusalem, containing a total of 4,492 housing units.
Shaaban said Israel continues “to impose facts on the ground, on Palestinian soil, which will fragment the Palestinian territory and impose a system of isolated enclaves to eliminate the possibility of a future Palestinian state.”
He added that such serious violations by Israel not only infringe on the rights of the Palestinian people but also contravene international law and resolutions, the Wafa News Agency reported.
Denmark to participate in aid airdrops over Gaza
- UN-mandated experts have warned that Gaza is slipping into famine while international organizations have for months condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on aid distribution in Gaza
COPENHEGEN: Denmark will take part in airdropping humanitarian aid over Gaza, in an operation coordinated by Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, Danish media reported Tuesday.
“We have decided to participate in an airdrop over Gaza,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told public broadcaster DR.
“There is currently an open window until the end of August, during which Israel has allowed access to its airspace,” he added.
He noted that the method was “by no means an optimal way to deliver emergency aid.”
“It is a kind of emergency solution but it is also where we are now,” the minister said.
The United Arab Emirates and Jordan had requested Denmark’s assistance, news agency Ritzau reported.
The supplies will be dropped from a C-130 aircraft that will fly over the Gaza Strip once or twice before August 22, according to Lokke, who did not give details about the size of the Danish contribution.
Concern has escalated about the situation in the Gaza Strip after 22 months of war, which started after Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out a deadly attack against Israel in October 2023.
UN-mandated experts have warned that Gaza is slipping into famine while international organizations have for months condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on aid distribution in Gaza.
Western countries, including Britain, France and Spain, have recently partnered with Middle Eastern nations to deliver humanitarian supplies by air to the Palestinian enclave.
