(Beitunia) In the darkness of the night, phone screens glow: no one in the occupied West Bank wants to miss the triumphant arrival of Palestinian women and children released from Israeli prisons on Friday.
In total, 39 Palestinian prisoners returned to their homes, under a truce which at the same time allowed the release of 13 Israeli hostages, kidnapped on October 7 by the Islamist movement Hamas.
Under slogans, amid fireworks, in a cloud of keffiyehs, Palestinian flags and different movements including the green banner of Hamas, the released detainees embrace their families and cry in the arms of moved parents.
In Beitunia, hundreds of Palestinians celebrate the “heroes” locked up “for the freedom of all Palestinians,” says a speaker into a crackling microphone.
However, the evening began with shouts: Israeli soldiers fired tear gas canisters and the Palestinian Red Crescent recorded at least three gunshot wounds.
Further north, in Balata, the bustling refugee camp of Nablus, the large city in the north of the West Bank, the “heroes” outing also delights the crowd.
“The Brothers Who Resist”
But no one, says a speaker, forgets “our brothers who resist and hold on in Gaza, in Jenin”. This city in the occupied West Bank experienced its deadliest day on November 9 (14 deaths) since at least 2005, according to the UN, which has recorded the deaths in this territory since that date.
Because if the war has raged for seven weeks in Gaza, violence has also flared up in the West Bank. On Friday morning, a 22-year-old Palestinian man was shot dead by the Israeli army in Jericho, according to the Palestinian Authority.
Since October 7 and the bloody Hamas attack which resulted in 1,200 deaths in Israel, the majority civilians according to the Israeli authorities, and around 240 hostages, some 15,000 people have died in Gaza, according to the Hamas government. .
At the same time, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
PHOTO JAAFAR ASHTIYEH, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Under slogans, amid fireworks, in a cloud of keffiyehs, Palestinian flags and different movements including the green banner of Hamas, the released detainees embrace their families and cry in the arms of moved parents.
Palestinian NGOs say that around 3,000 Palestinians have been arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since the start of the war. They also announced the deaths of six prisoners in custody since October 7.
And in the Occupied Territories, the prison experience is one of the most shared: according to the NGO Addameer, around 800,000 Palestinians have spent time in Israeli prisons since the Israeli-Arab war of June 1967 and the start of the occupation of the Territories. Palestinians.
The prisoners’ defense organization currently lists 200 Palestinian children and 84 women in Israeli prisons, out of more than 7,000 prisoners.
East Jerusalem under surveillance
A few kilometers from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967, is experiencing an even different evening. Joy is expressed quietly, under the gaze of Israeli police officers.
“The police are at our house and are stopping people from coming to see us,” Fatina Salman told AFP. Because any celebration around the released prisoners is prohibited in Jerusalem.
His daughter Malak, 23, was arrested on the way to school seven years ago for trying to stab a police officer in Jerusalem. Incarcerated in February 2016, she was not due to be released before 2025. But this evening, she will sleep at home, in her neighborhood of Beit Safafa.
“My daughter is weak, she hasn’t eaten since yesterday,” laments Fatina Salman.
Marah Bakir does not leave her mother in the family home in the Beit Hanina neighborhood of East Jerusalem. With a jerky delivery, this 24-year-old Palestinian, eight of whom are in prison, continues interviews in front of the cameras.
PHOTO MAHMOUD ILLEAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Marah Bakir and her mother
“I am happy but my liberation came at the price of the blood of the martyrs,” she says, referring to the 15,000 deaths in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Hamas government.
Freedom “far from the four walls of the prison” is “magnificent,” she says, a flowery blue veil on her head. “I spent the end of my childhood and adolescence in prison, far from my parents and their hugs, but that’s how it is with a state that oppresses us and leaves none of us alone.”
His phone never stops ringing: relatives, friends who want to say a word as quickly as possible. Then his mother brings him a glass of water and whistles the end of the media sequence. “Sorry, let her cool down a bit.”