No Guarantees
In total, Israel has rearrested 229 prisoners released under the
Shalit deal (38 during the current war on Gaza), at varying
intervals, which means one in five prisoners has been rearrested at
least once.
Muntasir Zaqeq, from the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, was
arrested about 30 times, according to his brother, most recently
between 2019 and 2022. On October 9, 2023, while Zaqeq was attending
the funeral of a young man killed by Israeli army fire, he was shot
in the head by an Israeli sniper and died instantly.
Qadoura Fares, former head of the Palestinian Commission of
Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, reveals that while Israel drafts
the terms of deals and negotiates with the Palestinian resistance,
it works to find legal loopholes to allow it to rearrest released
detainees, as happened under the Shalit deal: “During the Shalit
deal negotiations, Israel was drawing up a law and a legal
justification to allow it to rearrest prisoners released in the deal
using previous information it held on them. This happened to about
60 of the released detainees, who were then arrested and had their
previous sentences and life sentences reimposed.”
In response to questions put by Paper Trail Media, Israel said it
arrested a number of ex-prisoners in 2014, following so-called
Operation Brother’s Keeper, as part of “new criminal proceedings”
for alleged “offences.” In cases where it was difficult to use
evidence against the ex-detainees, a special committee, set up under
Israeli law, reviewed “secret files” to determine whether the
reduction in their sentence should be revoked. The army said that
the committee's decisions were subject to judicial review.
The Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs
petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to review cases of prisoners
who had been rearrested and their previous sentences reimposed, on
the grounds that their arrest was a violation of a political
agreement.The court, however, rejected all such cases. Fares
saysthat they had requested the help of the mediators and guarantors
of the Shalit deal, but “none of it worked, neither the court nor
our requests. So they remained in detention until recently, when
they were released.”
Salah Hamouri, a lawyer and legal activist with the “Addameer”
organisation, is also an ex-prisoner who was released in the Shalit
deal was subjected to persecution and a forced deportation to France
after his Jerusalem ID was revoked. He says he was prepared mentally
to be arrested again. He was indeed rearrested and deported from
Palestine. He says that the occupation tries to find ways to break
every agreement, thereby sending a message to Palestinians that
“there’s nothing that can guarantee a Palestinian’s safety.” The
message is also sent to Israelis that “Israel doesn’t make
concessions and has the upper hand in determining the fate of every
Palestinian.”
Hamouri says that the Rome Charter, and the Fourth Geneva
Convention, apply to Palestinian prisoners because Palestine is a
state under occupation. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
has expressed concern about the deportation of prisoners outside of
Palestine, noting that this could constitute “forced displacement”
without free and informed consent. Hamouri believes that, in the
absence of any international guarantees of exchange deals, Israel
will continue to pressure Palestinians to submit to them.
The Palestinian human rights organisation “Al-Haq” has meanwhile
condemned what Israel refers to as targeted killings, calling them
instead extrajudicial killings. In a report published in 2006,
Al-Haq saysthat such killings “have come to symbolise Israel's
contempt for international law and the culture of impunity that
surrounds these abuses.”
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied
Palestinian Territories, posted on social media that “It is no
longer acceptable that Israel's long history of carrying out
assassinations inside and outside Palestine go unaccounted for.
Independent, transparent investigations, and accountability must be
part of the path to peace.”
Article Six of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR) states that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived
of his life” and “Every human being has the inherent right to
life.”
New Exchange Deals... Same Old Story
On January 15, 2025, Hamas and Israel signed a ceasefire agreement
in Gaza and concluded a prisoner exchange deal. The agreement came
into effect on January 19. Eight rounds of prisoner exchanges began,
with Hamas freeing 25 Israelis, eight bodies and five Thai workers.
In return, Israel released 1,777 Palestinian prisoners, including 72
women, 95 children; 275 prisoners serving life, and 295 with long
sentences; 1,000 from the Gaza Strip arrested after October 7, 2023;
and 41 prisoners released in the Shalit deal who were rearrested and
had their previous sentences reinstated after their initial release.
They included Khader Radi.
“The day before [our release], we were in hell... literally
underground in graves” saysYousef Skafi describing being in Israeli
prisons before he was released for the first time onFebruary 8,
2025, as part of the “Tufan al-Ahrar” (Flood Of The Free) deal. He
was later deported to Egypt.
"It started with them handcuffing us behind our backs. When they
took the cuffs off, we were in pain for a day or two. In fact I
still feel the effects of it. We were hurt and stumbled as they
dragged us. To this day I still have marks on my hands and feet
from the handcuffs. We all got sick and lost weight. Some of us
lost 40 or 35 kilos... Then they put us in a cell, and in the
afternoon, the Nahshon buses came... They loaded us onto the
buses, beating and cursing us. Of course, as soon as I realised we
were going to the Negev, I knew I was being deported."
Recalling his last night in prison, Yousef says: “They came at
around 11 at night and left us handcuffed till 3:30 in the morning.
We were made to walk on our knees from office to office, and they
abused us brutally because they couldn't believe we were getting
out.” On his handcuffs it read “We will not forgive; we will not
forgive. The eternal people will not forget what happened. I will
hunt down my enemies and seize them.”
Yousef says what happens to prisoners released in exchange deals is
worse than their days in captivity. It’s as if the jailers are
giving these prisoners a farewell party in their own vicious way.
"We will not forgive you and our eyes will always be on you,” the
prison administration told prisoners who were released in the deal,
meaning they would be pursued constantly, even outside jail. Youssef
says that they singled out young men from Gaza and told them:
“There’s a missile with your name on it... it’s coming just for
you!”
Many of the newly released detainees who were still in the West Bank
were careful not to go outside their area for fear of being
rearrested.
Most of the prisoners released under the Shalit deal and their
families refused to speak to us when we tried to contact them,
fearing for their lives. This was especially the case after some of
these prisoners were killed, and many were arrested in their homes.
Even homes they had left were struck, killing other people.
Prisoners were targeted more than once in places they had moved to,
and their families were killed as well, according to sources we have
contacted.
There has been no response from the Israeli army to the
assassination of Abdel Aziz Salha or any of the other cases
mentioned in this report, with the exception of Fadi Dweik and
Zakaria Najib, whom it described as “senior Hamas officials.”
In its response, the army said that it only targets individuals
belonging to armed groups or those directly involved in hostile
acts, and does not target people out of revenge or as part of
tit-for-tat retaliation.
Regarding the attacks on Tel al-Sultan (the Barksat massacre) and
Shifa Hospital, the army stated that investigations had been opened
and the findings referred to the military prosecutor for a decision
on further action.
The army provided no information about the massacre in the tents at
Tel al-Sultan, while claiming that “terrorists” had been the target
in what happened at Shati camp and Shifa Hospital. It said that all
military operations were “carried out in accordance with army
directives, which require commanders to apply the fundamental
principles of the law of armed conflict, in particular the
principles of distinction, proportionality, and taking necessary
precautions.”
This Israeli practice of hunting down freed detainees is ongoing. In
the course of the latest war on Gaza, Israel arrested over 17,000
Palestinians and released 2,017 prisoners in exchange deals. As of
this report’s publication, Israel has killed four newly released
prisoners and rearrested about 35 others, indicating that the
practice continues and that more such cases are likely to follow.
Yousef Skafi and Khader Radi are both free today (as of the date
this report is published).
Caught between freedom and the fear of being free, Skafi says his
release was like “coming up from the depths of hell… from a
dirt-filled grave.” But he has no guarantee he will stay free, or
even alive.
The investigation involved collecting and following up with data
on those freed under the Shalit deal in multiple stages. This
included compiling the names of those released in the first and
second batches and comparing them with news sources and stories
from the Wafa news agency. The latter gave us details on sentences
and the conditions of release. We then monitored those who had
been rearrested and gathered information on their condition from
open sources and field investigations, and by contacting their
families. We confirmed the killings of some released prisoners
using data from the Israeli military and press reports, even
though this was difficult, given the ongoing targeting of these
individuals. The latest killings were of five men deported to Gaza
only a few days before this report was published: Amjad Abu
Arqoub, Bilal Zaraa, Riyad Asaliya, Mahmoud Abu Sariya, and
Mahmoud Ibrahim al-Dahbour.
This investigation was carried out with the support of ARIJ
This investigation was published in Arabic on the following:
