“We faced death inside prisons, and today we were born again,” recently-released prisoner Haitham Jaber said, summarising his lengthy ordeal in Israeli occupation prisons, where he was imprisoned for over 20 years and endured terrible conditions such as torture, medical neglect, and ongoing violations of prisoners’ rights.
In the midst of growing violations since the Israeli invasion of Gaza began in October 2023, two prisoners, Ali Farajallah and Ashraf Nofal, were released yesterday along with Jaber as part of the third round of the exchange agreement between the occupation and Palestinian resistance factions. This exchange reveals graphic chapters of the prisoners’ suffering.
Haitham Jaber, who was held captive for 23 years, says that the way inmates were treated during the occupation was “less than the treatment of animals,” with the prison administration using “the ugliest forms of oppression and humiliation” against them. “Our fellow prisoner Thaer Abu Asab was martyred in the cell I was in, and we were not even permitted to say goodbye to him,” Jaber stated.
“Since the start of the war, the conditions in prison have gotten worse,” Jaber continued. There were systematic torture, deprivation of food and medicine, and insults that no human being can bear.”
From death to life
Ali Farajallah, a prisoner who was held captive for 20 years, compared his release to “returning to life again,” but he also talked about how painful it was to leave behind his fellow inmates.
According to him, Israeli prisons are like death without life. We were in excruciating pain, and freedom was only a far-off dream.
Farajallah lost his parents and older brother during his years in captivity, and he was not even permitted to say goodbye to them. I could not believe that I would be released after these long years,” he said, describing the final hours before his release as “the most difficult ever,” adding, “I was between joy and fear.”
Reuniting after a 24-year absence
As he embraced his son, who he discovered to be a young man taller than him, Ashraf Nofal, a ex-prisoner, said that “time stopped” during their first encounter after 24 years of imprisonment. “Today is my new birth, and I used to live in a cemetery. I did not think I would see my son at this age, and I did not even have the opportunity to touch his hands when he was a child,” Nofal says.
Nofal, who received a 40-year prison sentence and served 24 of those years, called Israeli prisons “stations of struggle where prisoners live amid daily suffering,” adding that since the last attack on Gaza, conditions have gotten worse and the cells have become “systematic torture centres.”
In addition to severe punitive measures like solitary confinement and the denial of basic rights, human rights organisations have reported systematic torture and deprivation of food and medical care for Palestinian prisoners in prisons since the Israeli aggression on Gaza began on October 7, 2023.
Nofal emphasises that what is occurring inside the prisons is “a war crime that requires international accountability” and claims that the occupation purposefully “tortured the prisoners in an unprecedented manner” by reducing the amounts of food to a minimum, removing blankets and winter clothing, and preventing family visits.
In exchange for the release of three Israelis and five foreigners by the resistance groups in Gaza, 110 Palestinian prisoners, including children and those serving lengthy sentences, were released in the third phase of the exchange agreement.
Thousands of prisoners continue to endure various forms of oppression and violations in their cells while the released inmates rejoiced in their freedom.
Amidst human rights calls to hold the occupation accountable for its continuous violations of Palestinian detainees’ rights, the prisoners’ file is growing increasingly complex due to the escalation of Israeli crimes in the ongoing war.
