FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
BET HANINA (East Jerusalem) – Mistrust, distrust, growing sympathy for Hamas: these sum up the prevailing feelings among Palestinians released from prison in connection with the exchange for the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza. “The Israelis do not want us to make political speeches and in any case demand that no support or gratitude for Hamas be expressed in the press.” Otherwise they threaten to put me back in the cell or arrest my father Marah Bakir told us yesterday afternoon in her home in the Muslim-Christian neighborhood of Bet Hanina, part of East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel after the 1967 war.
After last-minute difficulties, Hamas appealed in the evening for people to gather in Ofer, the same prison a few kilometers from Beit Hanina where the first 39 were released two days ago. Now just as many are arriving, until recently their identities and the exact location of their release remained secret. In this round, the majority are minors accused of throwing stones at soldiers and at least six women. Israel wanted to avoid the festival by waving Hamas’ green flags. But the Islamic group is doing everything it can to push its propaganda through.
Marah is now 24 years old. In 2015, she was accused of trying to stab an Israeli soldier on the way to her high school. They shot her a dozen times in the left arm: she was 16 years old, was tried directly and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison. “I had served almost my entire sentence and was still four months away from release. In any case, I’m happy, I still have four months of life left. In Damon, the maximum security prison where I was held with 34 other Palestinian women, our existence was suspended. I was able to complete high school remotely.
But it was very difficult to communicate with the outside world, my family could only see me twice a month. But since October 7th, all visits have been suspended. Two days ago they told six of us that we needed to prepare for the prisoner exchange, which took place five hours later. As we speak, friends and relatives are coming to visit. But the father makes sure that everything happens as discreetly as possible. “The police came again this morning and reiterated that they do not want a public demonstration,” he repeats worriedly. When his daughter mentions Hamas, he is the first to silence her.
However, some students from the nearby technical college for electrical engineering speak for them. “Hamas was able to liberate Palestinians of all factions, its fighters are heroes,” they say directly. They are further evidence of the wind of militancy that is also blowing in the West Bank. Both local observers and American experts have for some time feared the opening of a new conflict front and even the beginning of the Third Intifada, as they call popular uprisings.
Last night’s gruesome murder of two men accused of spying for Israeli intelligence in the town of Tulkarem closely resembles the dynamics of the two previous intifades in the late 1980s and in 2000. The bodies of the two collaborators were dragged through the street , kicked and hung by his feet from a lamp post.