Freed Palestinian prisoner welcomes Gaza deal

On her first day in freedom, Bushra al-Taweel was drinking her morning coffee and eagerly awaiting lunch when we arrived at the family’s apartment in Ramallah.

“There was only hummus, hummus, hummus in the prison. Now I can eat something else,” she joked.

There were hugs from family and friends in the kitchen, her mother sat at the table and watched, happy that her only daughter was finally home as a result of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, which saw Hamas begin releasing hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Israeli prisons on Sunday.

The 32-year-old journalist spent more than five years in Israeli prisons at different times.

She has always been detained without charge, most recently since March 2024, except once when she was prosecuted for a speech she gave at a mosque.

“I am a journalist,” she said, “I have the right to express myself.”

This is not the first time Bushra al-Taweel has been involved in a prisoner exchange.

In 2011, she was released along with 1,000 other Palestinian prisoners as part of a deal to free Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who had been held hostage in Gaza for more than five years.

Shortly after this deal, she was quickly arrested again by Israeli forces.

She said that during various arrests she was badly beaten, threatened to shoot her leg and put out a cigarette on her back.

In the prison, according to her, the guards humiliated her daily.

“The worst thing is that I was not allowed to wear a headscarf,” she said.

“And as soon as we entered the prison, they forced me to strip naked.”

Israel’s prison service said all prisoners were treated according to the law.

A young journalism graduate with glasses is a conservative Muslim.

On the living room wall is a photo of her father, Jamal al-Tawil, a prominent Hamas politician in the occupied West Bank.

He is the former mayor of al-Bireh village, near Ramallah. He spent more than 19 years in an Israeli prison.

I asked Bushra if she supported Hamas.

“I don’t want to be arrested again,” she said, refusing to answer.

I also asked if she sympathized with the three Israeli hostages, young women like her, who were released Sunday from more than a year of captivity by Hamas in Gaza.

“We have to go home and they have to go home,” she said.

“The hostages meant I got out. As long as there are hostages, prisoners like me will be free.”

Thirty more Israeli hostages are expected to be released in the first phase of the ceasefire agreement in exchange for around 1,800 more Palestinian prisoners.

Some of these inmates were convicted of much more serious crimes, including multiple murders.

They are likely to be deported outside Israel and the Palestinian territories to countries such as Qatar and Turkey.

But all the Palestinians released on Sunday, including several children, were convicted of relatively minor crimes.

Many, like Bushri, have never been charged at all and are being held in Israeli prisons under so-called “administrative detention,” a process strongly condemned by human rights groups.

The Israeli military says it often can’t disclose details of charges against people, even detainees and their lawyers, for security reasons to avoid revealing the identities of informants.