By Ali Sawafta
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – The longest-serving Palestinian inmate in Israeli jail, revered by militants as the “dean” of their prisoners, is among more than 200 Palestinians set to be deported under the Gaza ceasefire and hostages-for-prisoners swap.
Nael Barghouti, 67, has spent 44 years incarcerated by Israel, more than any other Palestinian. Jailed in 1978 for killing an Israeli bus driver, he was freed in 2011 in a previous swap but re-arrested three years later and held ever since.
Israel has said that Palestinians who have been convicted of killing Israelis must be permanently deported if they are freed under the Gaza ceasefire agreement, and will not be allowed to return to homes in the occupied West Bank.
Barghouti is one of 217 prisoners on a list from the Israeli justice ministry, cited by the Palestinian prisoners’ association, of those to be sent abroad.
His wife Eman Nafe, herself a former prisoner who spent 10 years in Israeli jail accused of plotting a suicide attack, said she thought he might reject release if it meant being sent abroad: “I am sure he will refuse this,” she told Reuters.
There are 10,400 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, not including detainees arrested in Gaza during the last 15 months of war, according to the Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.
Under ceasefire agreement, Hamas is due to release 33 hostages in the first six-week phase of the truce, including women, children, men over 50 and ill and wounded captives.
In return, Israel will release 1,167 people detained in Gaza during the war and 737 other prisoners from the West Bank, Jerusalem or Gaza.
The first three Israeli hostages were freed on Sunday in return for 90 Palestinian detainees, though none of the most sensitive Palestinian prisoners were in that initial group.
Barghouti, who shares a common Palestinian surname with jailed political leader Marwan Barghouti, a distant relative, will learn that much has changed during his years in prison, his wife said.
He will find “that his only brother has also died, that his brother’s son was martyred, many houses have been destroyed, and many members of the family are detained,” she said.
(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Peter Graff)
