Israel to free 110 Palestinian prisoners in latest Gaza ceasefire exchange

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society says that 110 Palestinians will be released from Israeli prisons today in the third phase of a ceasefire and captive exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.

Eight captives will also be released by Hamas and other Palestinian groups, including five Thai nationals and three Israelis.

Most of the freed Palestinians are expected to arrive in the Radana area of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank at approximately 12pm local time (10:00 GMT), the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said.

This will not include 20 prisoners who will be sent into exile outside Palestine. The prison advocacy group also published a list of the names and ages of the prisoners to be released, which included at least 30 children.

Among the names included on the list is Zakaria Zubeidi, 49, a prominent former Palestinian resistance fighter and theatre director whose dramatic jailbreak from an Israeli prison in 2021 thrilled Palestinians and stunned security officials in Israel.

Zubeidi once led the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is affiliated with the Fatah party that controls the Palestinian Authority (PA), and was active during uprisings against Israeli occupation between 2000 and 2005, The Associated Press reports.

In 2019, after Zubeidi had already served years in Israeli prisons, he was arrested again.

But in 2021, he and five other prisoners tunnelled out of a maximum-security prison in northern Israel, an escape that helped solidify Zubeidi’s image among Palestinians as a folk hero.

He and the five other escapees were recaptured later.

In 2006, Zubeidi established The Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp – his home in the north of the occupied West Bank – to promote cultural resistance to Israel.