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WEEKLY
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| Holiday hopes turn to heartache for Gazans |
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Saturday, November 28, 2009
As rumours swirled of an imminent prisoner exchange deal, Nur al-Aqel felt sure she would spend this year’s Eid-ul-Azha feast with her father, who has been in Israeli prison since 1992. But her family’s hopes dimmed when they heard he was not on the list of hundreds of prisoners whose release is sought in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier.
“Last week, we started preparing the house to receive my father and we were so excited that he might spend the Eid with us,” the 25-year-old said. “Every holiday is hard for us because of the absence of our father, but this one has been the hardest because we were tense and anxious over the reports about the prisoner exchange.”
In recent days, officials in Israel, Gaza and Egypt said Israel and Hamas were on the verge of reaching an agreement to trade Gilad Shalit, a soldier captured by Gaza fighters in June 2006, for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
The prisoner list includes the masterminds of some of the deadliest attacks and suicide bombings carried out against Israelis. Many had been sentenced to multiple life terms.
Hamas had hoped to complete the deal ahead of Eid-ul-Azha, the Muslim feast that celebrates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son Ishmael as related in the Holy Qura’an. Prisoners are traditionally freed in honour of the feast.
But the months-old talks appeared to have stalled again as officials close to the negotiations said they had been put on hold until next week. However Hamas deputy chief Mussa Abu Marzuk told AFP on Thursday that there has been “tangible progress” in the talks in a telephone interview from Damascus, where the Palestinian group’s exiled leadership is based. He gave no further details.
Walid al-Aqel, who the family says was sentenced to 16 life terms for establishing a unit of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, was at one point rumoured to be among those to be freed.
But the list of prisoners under discussion has never been released, leaving the families of the roughly 7,200 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, even those who never expected to see their loved ones freed, on tenterhooks. The list is said to include Abdelhadi Ghuneim, who killed 16 Israelis in 1989 when he drove a bus off a cliff outside Jerusalem in one of the most notorious attacks ever committed in Israel.
Umm Thair, his 38-year-old wife, said the bus plunge came the day after their first son was born more than 20 years ago.
“Abdelhadi refused to come see his son Thair the day he was born because he was afraid it would affect his resolve,” she said.
“But I am hopeful he will come back to us soon as part of the agreement and oversee his son’s engagement, so he can make up for what he’s missed.”
She has been anxiously following the flurry of rumours that a deal is close but being held up by certain names on the list, perhaps including that of her husband, who was sentenced to 16 life terms and 480 years in prison.
Israel has long had a stated policy of not releasing Palestinians with “blood on their hands”, but over the years it has released thousands of prisoners in exchange for living — and dead — soldiers and civilians.
“My nerves are shot from all the reports about the Shalit deal in recent days. Every Eid I am sad because my husband is far away from me in prison, but this is one of the hardest,” Umm Thair said.
No one from Gaza has been allowed to visit relatives in prison since Israel sealed the territory off to all but limited humanitarian aid in June 2007 following the Hamas movement’s bloody seizure of power.
But many families have been banned for a longer period because of security concerns. Umm Abdullah, 28, has not visited her husband Tawfiq Abu Naim in eight years. He was arrested in 1989 for being a member of Hamas, which remains blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Israel and the West because it is committed to the destruction of the Jewish state through armed struggle.
Umm Abdullah and their four children had been anxiously following the news. “Israel betrayed us when it changed its mind, but we put our faith in God that an agreement will be reached and he will return to us.”
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ISSN 1563-9479 
