GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 473

A Puzzling Deal

90 Dangerous People

All the attention is being given to the three women hostages being freed on Sunday and rightfully so. But lost in all this joy is that 90 terrorists prisoners were also freed from prison as we read in a report from The Times Of Israel:

Israel released 90 Palestinian security prisoners early Monday morning, hours after Hamas released three civilian hostages Sunday on the first day of a ceasefire with the terror group in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) said in a statement.

Most of the inmates, who included terror convicts but reportedly none convicted of murder, were taken to the West Bank town of Beitunia, where a crowd of hundreds cheered and chanted and some climbed atop the lead bus and unfurled Hamas flags.

They were joined by others waving the flags of Fatah, Islamic Jihad and several other Palestinian factions, including terror groups, as well as the Palestinian flag and the flag of Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group.

It’s unclear what the mix of prisoners was although the majority were female:

The 90 Palestinian prisoners released on Monday included between 62 and 69 women, according to contradictory media reports. The IPS statement did not provide a breakdown.

According to the Haaretz daily, Israel freed 62 women — including one minor — and 28 men, including eight teenagers. The Ynet news site reported that 69 women were set free, including one minor, alongside eight male minors and 13 adult men. Similarly, the Associated Press said before the release that it had seen a list of inmates set for release that included 69 women.

The agreement allowed the prisoners to go back to where they were from:

Ahead of the return of the Israeli hostages, the IPS bused the first round of Palestinian prisoners to Ofer Prison in the West Bank, where Israeli security forces and Red Cross representatives verified each prisoner’s identity and performed medical checks on them before releasing them in coordination with security forces and the government.

The prisoners include 78 West Bank residents, released at the Beitunia Checkpoint near Ofer Prison.

The remaining 12 East Jerusalem residents were transported to the city and released back to their homes from the Russian Compound detention center.

Israel didn’t delay the release although they think the Red Cross tried to make it seem they did:

As the release was delayed by several hours, Ynet reported that Israeli security officials were blaming the Red Cross, accusing the organization’s staff of deliberately stalling the process with the purported motive of making Israel seem like it was not complying with the deal’s terms. But after a short while, the release went ahead.

More Prisoner Details

As we know, the deal is broken down into three phases with around a third of the hostages to be let go, but a great deal of terrorists will also be let out, a dangerous prospect for the Israelis whose communities they are being sent to:

The deal, signed Friday, is broken into three phases. During the first, 42-day phase, Hamas will release a total of 33 Israeli hostages — women, children, and elderly, wounded, or sick men — not all of whom are alive. Israel, in return, will release up to 1,904 Palestinian security prisoners and detainees, including more than 150 terrorists convicted of murder and several serving multiple life sentences for deadly terror attacks.

On Saturday more such criminals will be released back into Israel’s streets, but shortly into the deal, negotiations are slated to begin, talks I personally feel will see this deal fall apart:

The next release of hostages and prisoners is due Saturday. In just over two weeks, talks are to begin on the far more challenging second phase of the ceasefire agreement.

Those already released are not simple civilians, but enemies of Israel who were in prison for crimes worthy of incarceration:

The youngest prisoner freed Monday was Mahmoud Aliowat, 15, who was convicted of carrying out a shooting attack in the City of David area of Jerusalem, wounding two people, when he was 13.

Another criminal was a repeat offender showing us that there is good reason that those released will most likely go right back to doing what got them sentenced in the first place:

The list also included, according to AP, Khalida Jarrar, 62, a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terror group that carried out attacks on Israelis decades ago, including plane hijackings.

Jarrar was accused of masterminding the 2019 bombing that killed 17-year-old Rina Shnerb at a spring in the West Bank. As part of a plea deal, Jarrar was charged with “illegal association” and sentenced to two years in prison in 2021.

Jarrar, 62, was again arrested in late 2023 and since held under indefinitely renewable administrative detention — a controversial tool enabling detention without charge that Israel uses against terror suspects in cases where disclosing the evidence against them in court could harm national security.

Others released were hardly saints, either:

Also listed for release, according to AP, was Abla Abdelrasoul, 68, the wife of detained PFLP leader Ahmad Saadat who ordered the assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001 and has been serving a 30-year sentence.

The report went on to tell us that most of this crop of prisoners were in prison for smaller crimes:

None of the inmates set free in the first batch have been convicted of murder, Haaretz reported.

The part of this deal the upsets me is how many prisoners are released for each hostage:

For each of the living women, children and elderly, 30 Palestinian prisoners will be released; for all nine sick hostages, 110 prisoners will be released; for each of the female IDF soldiers, 50 prisoners will be released; for hostages Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who have been held in Gaza for a decade, 30 prisoners will be released for each, in addition to 47 Palestinians released in the 2011 Shalit deal and since rearrested; and for the bodies of hostages in the first stage, Israel will release the more than 1,000 Gazan detainees.

Many people are lauding this deal and Trump’s Middle East envoy for getting it done. But how this deal makes sense if it only sees a third of the hostages getting out for the over 1,000 criminals who most likely join the Hamas army of terrorists in attacking Jews is puzzling. And disappointing, really. I expected more from Trump and his team. I pray he does better now.