Hamas Not Disarmed; Gaza Not Demilitarized, Not Cleared

RAMALLAH/CAIRO (Dispatches) -- Joyous Palestinians rushed to embrace prisoners freed under a ceasefire agreement as they arrived by bus to the occupied West Bank and Gaza on Monday.
The prisoners were released after the Hamas resistance group freed the last 20 living captives taken during the October 7, 2023 operation to retaliate Israeli atrocities.  
Under the deal, Israel is set to release 250 Palestinians convicted of serious acts as well as 1,700 Palestinians detained in Gaza since the war began, 22 Palestinian minors, and the bodies of 360 resistance fighters. 
The Israeli prison authority said it had freed nearly 2,000 largely Palestinian detainees as part of the peace deal. It said it had transferred 1,968 prisoners from several prisons to the notorious Ofer and Ktziot prisons. 
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth revealed that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu set key conditions but made major concessions and hid the truth from the public.
According to the paper, the basic conditions set by Netanyahu to end the war ensured what it described as “a complete surrender to Hamas”. However, Yedioth Ahronoth reported, “Hamas was not disarmed, Gaza was not demilitarized, and the territory was not cleared,” based on documents that were reviewed.
The paper asked, “If these conditions were essential, why did Netanyahu give them up?” An intelligence source said, “The agreement is considered successful, but the concessions are extremely deep.”
The same source, who has close contact with the intelligence community, the military establishment, and the political level, added: “The public deserves honest answers to the key remaining questions, which the regime and Netanyahu’s campaign seem to be struggling to answer.”
Ziad al-Nakhala, Secretary-General of Islamic Jihad, praised the achievement as a testament to the courage of fighters and the unity of the Palestinian people.
The success, he said, would not have been possible without the “men of the resistance” and the steadfast support of Palestinians behind the fighters on the battlefield.
“While we had hoped for better results, our people understand the balance of power and the many factors surrounding us, especially in Gaza,” he added.
Al-Nakhala reaffirmed that the resistance remains active and committed, with banners “high and unbroken,” emphasizing the pride and dignity of Palestinians who continue to stand behind the resistance.
He said the liberation of remaining
 prisoners remains a top priority for the resistance movement, concluding with a vow to continue the struggle “God willing.”
Several thousand people gathered inside and around the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, awaiting the arrival of freed prisoners, with some waving Palestinian flags and others holding pictures of their relatives.
Fighting back tears, one woman who asked to be identified as Um Ahmed said she said that despite her joy at the release, she still had “mixed feelings” about the day.
“I am happy for our sons who are being freed, but we are still in pain for all the those who had been killed by the occupation, and all the destruction that happened to our Gaza,” she told Reuters by voice note.
Freed prisoners arrived in buses, some of them posing from the windows, flashing V-for-Victory signs. They will undergo medical checks at the facility.
Earlier, about a dozen masked and black-clad gunmen, members of Hamas’ armed wing, arrived at the hospital where a stage and chairs had been laid out to welcome returning Palestinian prisoners. Loudspeakers blared songs celebrating the Palestinian national cause.
Hamas said 154 prisoners were also deported to Egypt.
In Ramallah, in the Israeli occupied West Bank, Samer Halabeya, a doctor freed from jail where he was serving a sentence for planning an attack that wounded an Israeli officer, said the prisoners had only learned they would be released long after the agreement had been signed.
“We hope that everyone gets freed,” he said as he stood next to his weeping mother.
Muhammad Al-Khatib, who had spent 20 years in an Israeli prison for killing three Zionists, said he couldn’t believe he would soon be united with his family in Bethlehem. He had last seen his two girls and two boys when they visited him 30 months ago, he said.
“We have always had hope, that’s why we continued to be steadfast,” Khatib told Reuters.
Those released do not include senior Hamas commanders or some of the most prominent figures from other factions, leading relatives of some detainees to say the deal did not go far enough.
Tala al-Barghouti, daughter of Abdallah al-Barghouti, a Hamas fighter sentenced to 67 life terms in 2004, said the agreement had left “deep pain and questions that will not end”.
The deal “sacrificed those who played the greatest role in the resistance and closed hopes of their release”, she wrote on Facebook. Her father was jailed for his involvement in a series of attacks in 2001 and 2002 that killed dozens of Zionists.