A crowd gathers around a bus carrying Palestinian prisoners who were released from an Israeli prison as part of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas as it arrives to Ramallah on Monday.Mahmoud Illean/The Associated Press
Bassem Khandaqji was among the many struck by joy this week after the last living Israeli hostages were released from Gaza.
“I feel happiness for them,” he said.
For Mr. Khandaqji, it was a feeling rooted in shared understanding. He, too, was set free this week – one of nearly 2,000 Palestinians released by Israel as an opening act in a fragile ceasefire.
Here's what you need to know about Gaza and the Israel-Hamas war, including the ceasefire deal, the toll of the war so far and what comes next.
But where the Israeli hostages returned home to the embrace of loved ones, Mr. Khandaqji is now living in a hotel in Cairo, after he was deported to Egypt. His family, meanwhile, has been blocked by Israeli authorities from leaving their Nablus home in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to see him.
“They are fighting to keep me and my mother from hugging,” he told The Globe and Mail in an interview Wednesday.
Palestinians in Gaza City voiced their struggles on Wednesday, days after a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas came into effect.
Reuters
Mr. Khandaqji, 42, has spent half his life behind Israeli bars. A journalist and author, he was arrested in 2004, convicted of masterminding a suicide bombing and sentenced to life in prison. He continued to write while incarcerated, including A Mask, The Color of the Sky, a novel that won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction last year.
But everything changed two years ago, he said, as Israel waged war on Gaza after the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed nearly 1,200. He described how prison conditions that had allowed him to pursue graduate studies changed dramatically.
He and other Palestinians lost access to books, to television and to radio. Both the quality and quantity of food became far worse. He lost 30 pounds, emerging from prison at 130 pounds, and now wears clothing sized extra small.
“It’s hell. Really. It’s hell,” he said.
“They starved us inside the prisons. They are using a new kind of biopolitics – they decided to fight us with food.”
He counted a half-dozen beatings in the past two years, the last just prior to his release. He was punched in the chest with steel-reinforced gloves, which he believes broke one of his ribs.
“I can’t breathe very well,” he said. “This is the price of my freedom.”
One Palestinian prisoner is embraced by a woman relative upon arrival at Ramallah Cultural Centre in the West Bank on Monday.ZAIN JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images
The Israel Defense Forces has said it “completely rejects accusations of systematic abuse of detainees,” adding that it investigates and punishes detention facility staff when necessary.
The joint release of detainees this week has provided a new moment for people on both sides of the fractious Middle East to describe cruelty that has, up until now, occurred out of sight.
In Israel, families of the 20 men released this week by Hamas have begun to describe what their family members endured. One man, Avinatan Or, was held alone, losing roughly a third of his body weight, Channel 12 reported. The broadcaster reported that former soldier Matan Angrest endured “very severe torture,” beaten badly enough to lose consciousness, according to his mother, Anat Angrest. She said her son had spent months in dark tunnels, fed lies about the state of the conflict with Israel as well as about his own grandparents, who he was falsely told were dead.
Another hostage, Omri Miran, was allowed to cook, and spent most of his days playing cards with his captors, his brother Nadav told Ynet news.
Party producer Elkana Bohbot, who helped to organize the Nova festival attacked by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023, “endured abuse and tremendous suffering,” culminating in being served large amounts of food in the weeks prior to his recovery “so that he would look somewhat better for the world to see,” his wife, Rivka Bohbot, said this week.
Released hostage Avinatan Or arrives at the site of Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, Israel, on Monday.Stoyan Nenov/Reuters
But his return, she said, had been restorative, especially his reunion with his son, Reem.
“The embrace between them – the moment when Elkana, despite being so weak, couldn’t restrain himself and lifted Reem up to hold him tight. My child got his father back, and as a mother, I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
For Mr. Khandaqji, emerging from prison has felt like being granted a new existence.
“I feel like I am just living inside of a dream. And sometimes I am afraid to close my eyes, because if it’s a dream maybe I will be back in prison.”
Israeli prisons and detention centres continue to hold roughly 10,000 Palestinians, according to data collected by the Palestinian Prisoners Society, a Ramallah-based NGO.
The deterioration in their conditions began when hard-liner Itamar Ben-Gvir became Minister of National Security and worsened with the start of the war, said Amjad Al-Najjar, director-general of the prisoners society.
“That was the turning point,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
Israeli military vehicles wait at the entrance of Ofer Prison ahead of the expected release of Palestinian prisoners on Monday near Ramallah, West Bank.Getty Images/Getty Images
Mr. Ben-Gvir has praised prison guards for forcing inmates to their knees and ordered carceral facilities to display photos of Gaza’s destruction. “This is what they should see. Maybe each one of them can see their home here,” he said in August. Inmates have been photographed in T-shirts with the Star of David, and Mr. Ben-Gvir has advocated for legislation allowing detainees to be executed with a shot to the head.
Family visits were no longer allowed. Prisoners were kept from meeting with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Visits with lawyers were initially barred, then reinstated.
The few amenities of prison life were also cut off. Canteens were closed. Bottled water was provided in such limited quantities that prisoners were forced to drink toilet supply water. Sleeping mats have been taken away. “You’re not even allowed to have a plastic cup,” Mr. Al-Najjar said. Prisoners are provided a single set of underwear, and no detergent to wash it. Scabies has spread.
Mr. Al-Najjar said conditions are worse than they were before a 1992 prison strike that he himself participated in, in what became a successful bid to demand access to media and better food.
In the past two years, he said, 78 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons. Female prisoners have reported sexual harassment. Several dozen male prisoners have reported being raped, including with batons, said Aya Shreiteh, who oversees archival and documentation work at the prisoners society.
Vehicles move outside the Israeli military prison Ofer on Monday.Ammar Awad/Reuters
Those released, meanwhile, have reportedly been told by Israeli authorities not to celebrate, a command whose seriousness has been underscored by late-night raids of family homes in the West Bank this week.
The treatment described by the prisoners society and Mr. Khandaqji closely aligns with testimony provided by previously released Palestinians, some of whom told the BBC earlier this year about sexual abuse, the administration of electric shocks and even being dunked in chemicals and set on fire.
Mr. Khandaqji said one of the greatest hardships of the past two years was the banishment of pens and paper, alongside the removal of other comforts. No longer could he bring novel characters to life or write poetry.
Instead, he turned his imagination into a theatre and a classroom. “The only thing I had was my mind,” he said. One day, he would commit himself to mental study of Hebrew. Another day, to English. Another to history – of colonialism, of French literature.
All the while, he thought about his next novel, a story about a close friend killed in prison during the first days of the war. Now that he’s free, he will commit it to paper.
“There were no humane conditions inside and they didn’t allow me to write, to document the situation,” Mr. Khandaqji said. “So I tried to write in my head and in my mind. And I succeeded.”