Deal will see release of longest-serving Palestinian inmate, who murdered bus driver

Deal will see release of longest-serving Palestinian inmate, who murdered bus driver

The longest-serving Palestinian inmate in an Israeli prison, who was already previously released as part of a hostage-for-prisoners swap but then reincarcerated for returning to terror, is among the hundreds of convicted Palestinian terrorists slated to be freed under the recent ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Nael Barghouti, 67, has spent 44 years incarcerated by Israel, more than any other Palestinian. Jailed in 1978 for killing Israeli bus driver Mordechai Yekuel, he was freed after 33 years in 2011 in a previous swap but re-arrested three years later for violating the terms of his release by again engaging in terror activities.

Yekuel, 27, a bus driver who worked driving Palestinian workers to Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan, was murdered in his vehicle near Ramallah.

Barghouti is among 200 prisoners who will be deported along with their release.

Israel has said that Palestinians who have been convicted of killing Israelis should be permanently deported if they are freed under the Gaza ceasefire agreement, and would not be allowed to return to homes in the West Bank.

Barghouti, considered a senior figure in the terror group Hamas, is one of 217 prisoners on a list from the Israeli Justice Ministry, cited by the Palestinian prisoners’ association, of those to be sent abroad.

His wife, Iman Barghouti, who spent 10 years in an Israeli prison for plotting a suicide terror attack, said he would reject release if it meant being sent abroad: “I am sure he will refuse this,” she told Reuters.

There are 10,400 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, not including detainees arrested in Gaza during the last 15 months of war, according to the Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.

War erupted on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led thousands of terrorists in an attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. During the assault, terrorists abducted 251 people as hostages to Gaza.

Hamas is due to release 33 hostages in the first six-week phase of the truce, including women, children, men over 50, and ill and wounded captives.

In return, Israel will release 1,167 people detained in Gaza during the war and 737 other prisoners from the West Bank, Jerusalem, or Gaza. Among them are hundreds of Palestinians who were convicted of deadly terror attacks on Israelis.

The first three Israeli hostages were freed on Sunday in return for 90 Palestinian detainees, though none of the most sensitive Palestinian prisoners were in that initial group.

Barghouti shares a common Palestinian surname with jailed political leader and Second Intifada terror mastermind Marwan Barghouti, a distant relative who is serving five life terms for orchestrating murders and who Israel has said will not be freed under the hostage-ceasefire agreement.

Nael Barghouti was one of 1,027 inmates released in a 2011 exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was abducted from Israel by Hamas in a cross-border attack and held captive for five years in the Gaza Strip.

Scores of Palestinians freed in that deal have since been rearrested for terror activities. Several Israelis were killed by terrorists freed in the Shalit deal. Among those freed under the deal was Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas Gaza leader who masterminded the October 7 invasion and massacre and was killed by Israel in Gaza late last year.

Many of the Shalit prisoners were rearrested after three Israeli teens, Gil-ad Shaer, Eyal Yifrach, and Naftali Fraenkel, were kidnapped and killed by a Hamas cell in the West Bank in 2014.

Barghouti, arrested in that sweep, subsequently served 30 months for Hamas membership. He completed the sentence on December 17, 2016, but was never released.

The Israel Defense Forces in 2022 said a military court had reinstated Barghouti’s original sentence on appeal, life plus 18 years.

The ruling followed an appeal by military prosecutors who argued Barghouti violated the terms of his release under the Shalit deal by possessing an unspecified large sum of money, allegedly funneled by a terror group. The appeal was also discussed earlier that year by the High Court of Justice before an appeals committee eventually ruled that Barghouti had indeed violated the terms of his release.

It is believed that 91 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.

The terror group released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.

Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014.

Source » timesofisrael.com