Quiet handover of captives in Gaza City with little media coverage
At the scene of the captive release in Gaza City we witnessed, there wasn’t much in terms of celebration or even media coverage.
The handover was carried out quietly in a low-profile manner to ensure safety and organisation.
For many in Gaza City, especially displaced families who returned over the past few days, it was a deeply emotional moment. Children came out from their tents and the ruins of buildings, standing by to watch.
They waved at the Red Cross vehicles and the guards escorting the captives, wishing them well.
For Palestinians, this was a moment of truth – a sign that perhaps now they can talk about the ceasefire, about the beginning of a new chapter in Gaza, despite all the destruction, despite the majority of Gaza City – close to 75 percent of the total area – turned into ruins.
‘Every kind of torture’: Palestinian detainee recounts abuse in Israeli custody
Palestinian prisoner Shadi Abu Seed has given a harrowing account of life inside an Israeli prison after his release as part of the ceasefire deal.
“I went hungry for the past two years. I swear to God, they didn’t feed us. They kept us naked. They beat us while we were naked day and night. We were tortured,” Abu Seed said.
“Until our last day in Israeli prison, they cut us and hit us and abused us. We endured every kind of torture, emotional and physical.
“We couldn’t even sleep. They threatened us with our children. They told me they killed my children. They told us that Gaza was destroyed. I arrived here and found that everything was gone. It looked like the end of the world. Everything is different.”
Palestinians held in Israeli jails ‘tortured multiple times a day’
A recently released detainee has condemned Israeli jails as “prisons of injustice”. He told Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum that most of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are tortured more than once a day.
Inmates were fired at by Israeli troops with rubber-coated bullets and because of that, he had “deep wounds around his private parts and back”. Many detainees were also electrocuted, he added.
“We were detained in a slaughterhouse,” he said.
Speaking at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza after being freed, he said the Palestinians of Gaza remain “brave and steadfast”. “We have sacrificed a lot, but our sacrifices are too little compared to others,” the man said.
He thanked “God, the Palestinian people, and the resistance fighters in Gaza” for securing his release.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader says remaining detainees a priority
Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Ziad al-Nakhalah has released a statement on the ceasefire agreement.
Here are some of his translated comments:
- What has been achieved today would not have been possible without the men of the resistance and the bravery of the fighters on the ground.
- We had hoped for better results, but our people are not far from realising the balance of power and the many factors that have surrounded our people in Gaza in particular.
- The rest of our brave prisoners are a priority for the resistance.
