On the cold morning of February 15, 2025, hundreds of Palestinians gathered at the Ramallah Cultural Palace to receive the sixth batch of released prisoners as part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel. This group was the smallest of the prisoner exchanges, as only nine Palestinians were released into the West Bank. At noon, the white minibus marked with the Red Cross logo approached the entrance of the municipal building, and the crowd began to press forward to get closer to the vehicle.
The door opened, and a thin figure emerged. Wearing a light gray sweatshirt, head shaven, and with a light white beard, the man exiting the bus took his first breath of freedom in 23 years. His name was Amir Abu Raddaha. He was arrested by the Israeli army in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison.
Before he touched the ground, the released prisoner was lifted on the shoulders of people in the crowds. He was soon wrapped in a jacket and carried toward the inner courtyard. Hands reached out to touch him, and chants resonated as the next released prisoner came out of the bus and was carried through the crowd.
During his time in Israeli prison, Raddaha went through it all; search raids, restrictions on living conditions, hunger strikes, denial of family visitation, deliberate medical neglect, and much more that he prefers to keep to himself -especially regarding the period following October 7, 2023.
At one point, Abu Raddaha coincided with his two other brothers, Amin and Mousa, in Israeli detention, although they were separated most of the time. He lost both his parents while in prison, and his mother never got to visit him.
While most of the media coverage of the prisoner exchanges focused on Israeli captives, their names, their stories, their testimonies, and their health conditions, very little media attention has been given to Palestinian prisoners emerging from conditions that have never been worse in the history of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. Detention, imprisonment, and release is almost a rite of passage in Palestine, making up one of the most important collective experiences in Palestinian society. Palestinian prisoners appear in Palestinian art, literature, and everyday language, and they have devised special rituals of community support, celebration of release, and coping through anguish.
Since 1967, more than a million Palestinians have been detained — almost half of the male population of Palestine. A common saying in Palestine is that not a single household doesn’t have a member that was imprisoned at one point in their lives.
This is why the current prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel marks one of the most important episodes of the long story of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. Mondoweiss sat with Amir Abu Raddaha after his release in his home in al-Am’ari refugee camp in Ramallah to listen to this part of the story.
Mondoweiss: How was your life before your first detention in 1990?
Amir Abu Raddaha: I was a regular child growing up in the camp. People were very close to each other, and everybody was like family. In my house, nobody was allowed to eat unless we were all at the table. I played in the streets and began to see the difference between the refugee camp and the rest of the city. As a teenager, I worked with my brother in his metalworking shop. I first realized what the occupation was at the age of 14 during the First Intifada, and I became active in the Intifada. I was first arrested at the age of 17 and was released in 1999 at the age of 27 as part of [the wave of pardons that were part of] the Oslo Accords.
How were you arrested the second time?
Amir Abu Raddaha: In the Second Intifada, I was working in the Palestinian security forces, and I joined a cell belonging to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah. In 2002, during the Israeli invasion of Ramallah, I was besieged alongside a group of fellow fighters at the headquarters of the Palestinian Preventive Security Forces in Beitunia in southern Ramallah. We were besieged for three days while Israeli Apache helicopters opened fire at us. I prepared to die because I didn’t think that we would come out alive. But then the Israeli army threatened to bomb the building if we didn’t give ourselves up, and since there were employees and civilians in the building, we decided to surrender. Later, I was given a life sentence for taking up arms against the occupation.
How did you rethink your own life when you have a life sentence?
Amir Abu Raddaha: It is difficult to survive prison while thinking of the life you left outside, so you need to adapt. Prisoners have created their own society in jail. We had our own library, which we built through books that prisoners at the time could receive during family visits, and we had courses and classes. I used my time and continued my studies until I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in political sciences and a Master’s degree in sociology.
How were your years in prison before October 2023?
Amir Abu Raddaha: For the first three years, I wasn’t allowed to receive any visitors. I lost my mother during this period before she could visit me. A prisoner one day came from a family visit and he was whispering something to other prisoners, so I asked him what had happened, and then he told me that my mother had died. My father kept visiting me until 2008. He was losing his hearing and had a lot of difficulties visiting me, so I told him to stop coming. My sisters were the ones who visited me after that. One day, another prisoner came from a visit and brought me the news that my father had died.
In the last two years before October 7, prison conditions were deteriorating. The prison service cut off many food items, replaced the daily bread with low-quality and leftover bread, and reduced water time. Room raids were increasing, with increasingly more violent search sessions. They would take us out of the room and spend up to six hours searching every detail, including our personal things, in a room 7 meters by 4 meters.
There were administrative detainees with me in prison, and I remember Bahaa Sharawneh from Dura, near Hebron, who is still under administrative detention for the fourth or fifth renewal in a row. We had won many rights throughout the years, including our right to study in prison, to have books, to self-organize, and to have collective representation through hard struggle. There was the big mass hunger strike of 2004, then those of 2012 and 2017, and many rounds of confrontation in between. We felt that the occupation was trying to take those hard-won rights away. We felt that a big attack on prisoners was on the way, and had actually begun, and we were preparing to face it.
How did things change after October 7?
Amir Abu Raddaha: On October 7, there was news that an attack happened from Gaza and that Israeli soldiers were captured. The first thing I thought was that there was finally hope for a prisoner exchange that could get us released. Then the news began to report increasing numbers of Israelis captured; 30, then 60, and it kept going up. Then I understood that we were heading towards war.
The next day, and it was a Sunday, we began to face the reaction of the occupation’s prison services. They raided the rooms and confiscated all electronic devices. They also took all the books that we had gathered for years and threw them in the garbage, only leaving us copies of the Quran. They also suspended the yard time we previously had, and for six months after October 7, we had no yard time at all. We spent the entire time inside the rooms. They also informed us that they were not going to recognize any collective organization or prisoner representation and that each prisoner spoke only for himself.
They closed the “cantine,” or the prison store where we bought our food with the balance that our families topped up in our names to make up for the lack of food items in the prison system. It was all gone. In my cell block, we were lucky because the officer in charge allowed us to take the remaining food in the cantine before closing it for good, and that food helped us get through the first months of the war. Other cell blocks didn’t have that chance.
“I saw prisoners fainting in front of me because they hadn’t eaten enough.”
Food quality in the meals given to us dropped immediately. For breakfast, they began to bring one spoon of yogurt of less than 100 grams and a piece of bread for each person. At noon, they bring lunch for each room. The quantity is so small that every prisoner gets a share of three to four spoons of rice, and the same quantity of soup. The soup itself is just boiled water with some vegetables in it, without any flavor. It was only enough to keep us alive. I saw prisoners fainting in front of me because they hadn’t eaten enough.
The cells began to become overcrowded. In the beginning, we were six people in a 7×4 meter room [23×13 feet]. Then more detainees were brought in, and the number kept rising until we were 14 people in the same room. Fourteen men in 7 meters by 4, without being allowed out for a single minute, for six months straight. We took turns standing and walking.
We weren’t given clean clothes either, and I spent these six months with the same underwear, washing it manually. Some prisoners got scabies, and it was a horrible thing to witness. One prisoner couldn’t sleep at night because of the pain, and his skin was in such bad condition that it looked perforated. He couldn’t stand up or walk properly.
After the first six months, they began to allow us to have some yard time, and we were able to shower. However, because there was only one shower for the entire cell block, we took turns by day, so each day, six of us would shower. We also began to be given changes of clothes.
Did you know what was happening outside, especially in Gaza?
Amir Abu Raddaha: We were completely cut off from the world. We had no radio, television, or newspaper. Our source of information about what was happening outside was the prisoners who had court hearings and could talk to the lawyers, and then came back and told us the news. After the first six months, we began to be allowed to receive lawyer visits, but not family visits, and then we received more news. That’s how we learned about the raid on al-Shifa hospital or the invasion of Rafah, for example, and that’s how we knew that the number of dead in Gaza had reached 10, then 20, then 30 thousand.
How did you learn about the ceasefire?
Amir Abu Raddaha: The day of the ceasefire I was summoned for an interrogation session, and I asked the Israeli intelligence officer what the news was, and if the war was ever going to end. He told me that he didn’t know anything, and then he received a message which was obviously important news, because he reacted as such, but he didn’t tell me anything. Shortly after I was back in the cell, the news arrived in another cell and then spread that there was a ceasefire agreement. We all felt a huge relief and celebrated. Many kneeled to the floor thanking God.
We had no information about the names of those who were going to be released. There was a first round of prisoners being exchanged, and we all had high expectations. A week later, the officer in my cell block came to our room and told me to gather my things. I asked him if I was being transferred to another prison. He said no and then asked me not to ask any more questions. There were five more in the same cell block who were informed in the same way, and we all understood we were the next batch of released prisoners. I said goodbye to my roommates, gathered the little clothes I had, and left with the guard.
How did you feel in that moment?
Amir Abu Raddaha: I didn’t feel the way I thought I would. My sadness and anguish for leaving the others behind in these conditions was much greater than my joy of leaving prison. They all told me to keep advocating for them, at least to ease the conditions of their detention.
What was the release process like?
Amir Abu Raddaha: First, we were taken to the Rimon prison in the south. There, we were strip-searched. They took all our clothes and gave us jail overalls. Then they put us in a waiting room where I met prisoners from other jails, and we chatted a little before we were led to a bus. Neither I nor anyone else from the prisoners knew for sure that we were being released, so we began to take guesses. I have been transferred many times to and from the Rimon prison, so I knew the way almost by heart. I told the other prisoners that if the bus turned left, then it was taking us to the Naqab desert to the prison there. But if it turns right, then we’re going to Ramallah. Fortunately, it went right.
“The interrogator showed me video footage of the destruction of Gaza and told me that it all was our fault, we, the prisoners. I asked how it could be my fault if I was in prison for twenty years, and he replied that all those people died just so that we could be released.”
As we approached Ramallah, the weather became increasingly cold, and we had nothing on us but the jail overalls, and as we approached Ramallah it got colder, and we began to shake. Then we arrived at the Ofer prison, outside of Ramallah. I was interrogated again there, and the interrogator showed me video footage of the destruction of Gaza and told me that it all was our fault, we, the prisoners. I asked how it could be my fault if I was in prison for twenty years, and he replied that all those people died just so that we could be released. I told him that I didn’t kill those people and that his government did.
Then I was taken to a medical check-up and was put in a room, which was my final station before being released. I stayed there for 18 days, from January 29 to February 15, waiting for my turn. Two other batches were released before me, and we began to worry that the ceasefire deal might have collapsed, but a prison guard told us that we shouldn’t worry and that if we made it this far we would be released.
“Before leaving, the prison guards gave us gray sweatshirts with an inscription on it that said, ‘We do not forget, we do not forgive.’”
Finally, one morning, the deputy director of the Ofer prison came and called on the names of seven of us, and we were taken to another waiting room for several hours until the Red Cross employees came. Then the guards brought us breakfast. The Red Cross took all our personal information, and from that moment on, we were no longer in the custody of the occupation army, but in that of the Red Cross. Before leaving, the prison guards gave us gray sweatshirts with an inscription on them that said, “We do not forget, we do not forgive,” and took off our handcuffs. I told the prisoners with me that these were the last handcuffs we would wear. Then we got on the Red Cross bus, which began to drive us to Ramallah.
What was the atmosphere on the bus?
Amir Abu Raddaha: In the bus we felt like little boys on a school trip, excited and almost in disbelief. I was counting the seconds, and everybody was talking at the same time. When we arrived at the Ramallah Cultural Palace, I was the first one to leave the bus. I was free for the first time in more than twenty years. My family didn’t recognize me, and my sister fainted when she saw me because she didn’t recognize me.
How are you adapting to your new life so far?
Amir Abu Raddaha: The first night at home, I didn’t sleep. I stayed awake, trying to fathom the fact that I was not in jail. I couldn’t believe that I had my head on a pillow, which I had been deprived of for a year and a half. It was a strange feeling to be able to shower freely the next morning, not to have to stand for count, and to see my little nephews instead of jailers.
I still struggle to get accustomed to it. I also think of the prisoners that I left behind. Not a day goes by without me thinking of them, and of what they are going through right now.
The bittersweet taste of freedom: an interview with a former Palestinian prisoner