Hamas publishes names of Palestinian prisoners set for release from Israeli jails
Hamas has published the names of Palestinian prisoners expected to be in the first batch released from Israeli jails on Friday. The list consists of 39 names, including 24 women and 15 minors, with the majority of the people on the list hailing from the occupied West Bank. CNN previously reported the numbers on the list.
The prisoners are being moved from two jails — Damon and Megiddo, both southeast of Haifa – and driven to the Ofer prison, south of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, for final checks by the Red Cross, an Israeli official told CNN Thursday.
According to Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs, around 8,300 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in Israeli jails. More than 3,000 of them are being held in what Israel calls “administrative detention,” which means they are being held without knowing the charges against them, and without an ongoing legal process.
Israel has stepped up its arrests since Hamas’ attacks on October 7, with up to 2,070 arrests documented in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in that month alone, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, a non-governmental organization dedicated to addressing the concerns of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. This figure includes 145 children and 55 women.