In Balata refugee camp, on the outskirts of the Palestinian city of Nablus, Um Husam stood stoically in an ornate wine-coloured outfit, a keffiyeh wrapped around her shoulders, as female relatives danced nearby.
The 63-year-old was waiting for the return of her son, 41-year-old Tariq Assi, who had just been released from Israeli prison after more than two decades of incarceration.
Over those years, Um Husam said, visits were highly restricted: she saw Assi only “a few times,” and they sometimes spoke on the phone. It was a period of “pain and sadness”.
Upon his release, Assi was dropped off at an Israeli checkpoint close to the southern West Bank city of Hebron at around 4pm. Relatives picked him up, bringing him first to a hospital in Ramallah for a check-up, then to his uncle’s home for a shower and to a barber for a haircut, in preparation for the big reunion. “I spoke to him today. I still don’t believe that I spoke to him when he’s free ... I won’t believe it until he is in my arms,” Um Husam said. “I’m very happy; you can’t describe it in words.”
RM Block
Of her six sons, four had spent time in jail: another was expected to be released three months later. She kissed her hand and touched the ground. “God blessed me that my son will come out. I hope all mothers will feel the same feeling ... I hope all the mothers in Palestine will feel it.”
“The prisoners’ movement is the compass that guides our struggle,” wrote long-time Palestinian prisoner and political leader Marwan Barghouti in 2017.
A 2024 report by Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem said: “Israel has incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from all walks of life over decades, as a way of undermining and unravelling the social and political fabric of the Palestinian population. The scale of the project speaks for itself: according to various estimates, since 1967, Israel has imprisoned over 800,000 Palestinian men and women from the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, which accounts for about 20 per cent of the total population and about 40 per cent of all Palestinian men.”
This leads to a “cycle of suffering ... felt by relatives, friends, acquaintances and the entire community ... The scale of Israel’s incarceration project means there are hardly any Palestinian families without a family member who has been through the Israeli prison system.”
Thousands of Palestinians have been released this year as a result of ceasefire agreements between Israel and Hamas. Many were originally detained without charge or trial, though others were serving long sentences after being found guilty, by Israeli courts, of carrying out or planning violent attacks on Israelis. A number of those released were deported to other countries. Some Palestinian families said they were threatened and warned not to celebrate releases, with Israeli security services saying the events encouraged support for violence.
Assi was imprisoned for challenging Israeli forces to a confrontation after his cousin was killed, according to a relative (Israeli authorities did not respond to a request for further information). He was released when his sentence ended, rather than in a prisoner swap. Hundreds of people gathered in Balata, where he comes from, to welcome him home. In 2023, more than 33,000 residents were registered as living in Balata – an area spread across a quarter of a square kilometre. Assi’s picture was placed at the camp’s entrance.
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He eventually emerged from a vehicle looking gaunt, a keffiyeh around his neck. Assi was carried and led through Balata’s narrow streets to his mother, who hugged him tight as his father stood close and his sister cried. Bunting covered with Palestinian flags hung above them while a flag with the logo of Fatah, the movement that controls the Palestinian Authority (PA), had been draped nearby. A stage was erected especially. “People in prison are going through hell,” Assi said into a microphone. “Thank you for welcoming me back home. Forgive me for not being able to speak properly.” Assi’s niece read a poem. After midnight, the crowd were served mansaf – chicken and rice – accompanied by yoghurt and fizzy drinks.
Balata was once regarded as a centre of armed resistance, but residents say many of those involved aged out of it, or were killed or imprisoned. Part of the shift also relates to the role of the PA, which controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Many Palestinians see the PA as ineffective and corrupt, accusing it of operating on behalf of Israel, including by acting against armed Palestinian groups. Nablusi governor Ghassan Daghlas – who was personally in attendance at the celebration for Assi’s release – told me he supports peaceful resistance, but “if you’re going to wage a war without any support you’re going to fail ... We don’t want what happened in Gaza to happen here”.
While Israel calls them “terrorists”, many Palestinians see their armed men and boys as freedom fighters with a legal right to resist occupation. Lawyers say some armed resistance is legal, though it must be “undertaken in a lawful manner”, which means not attacking civilians, for example, and keeping to “military objectives”.
“Ninety per cent of our family members are in the resistance because there’s no other point to life for us,” said a relative of Assi’s. “We can’t free Palestine without resistance,” said another man in Balata, who asked not to be identified. But taking up arms was a young person’s game, he added, as “there’s no medicine [in prison]”.
The mothers go through so much. I’m lucky that my sons are still alive but other mothers lost theirs. We don’t sleep at night
— Palestinian woman
Abu Ali (60) – who, like others in this article, identified himself by his kunya, or honorific title – said he had been in prison 17 times, beginning when he was an adolescent. “They used to take me and my two other brothers together,” he said. “I hold my head up high ... I’m proud of what I did for the Palestinian cause and I’ll never regret it.” He said he was interrogated for 78 days without giving up names. He hoped armed resistance would continue until “Palestine is free”.
Also at the welcome celebration was Brahiem Hammad. The 31-year-old has family in Balata, but grew up in the Netherlands. “I got lucky ... I had a normal childhood, I got married, but people here, they’re living day by day,” he said. Hammad protests and raises money in Europe, even becoming involved in politics there. His goal is to “see my people living a normal life” but he is convinced that Israel will continue to increase its control over Palestinian territory. “I believe they eventually will take over everything ... what they’re doing to Gaza now they’ll do to Jenin, Tulkarem, they’ll move south.”
In an indoor corridor, women sat together, discussing injustices and oppression they faced from Israeli soldiers. One said Israelis built a road through her family’s land, another that soldiers came into her home, stealing a gold ring and electric shavers, then went upstairs and started shaving themselves. A third woman said her brother was killed. Several had incarcerated sons. “The mothers go through so much. I’m lucky that my sons are still alive but other mothers lost theirs,” one said. “Write it, write it,” said another. “We don’t sleep at night.”
The people left to protect them were “random kids who learn to shoot randomly”, a woman chimed up. “Generation after generation, we’re being taught that giving up is not an option. We will never accept being sent away from our home. We’re not terrorists, we have the right of return. It doesn’t give them the right to kick us out.”
If the Palestinians surrendered completely, “there will soon be a new generation to fight the cause. What you see now in the West Bank, and especially Gaza, it’s a whole generation being wiped out, killed or put in prison. Their children and young brothers will grow up hearing about their fathers or brothers being killed and they will pick up weapons.”
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After long-term prison sentences, some men chose marriage. “In our family most of us went to prison. Seven were killed,” a 68-year-old said.
The man was arrested for the first time in 1985, and got out for the last time in 2008. He was 52 when he married, one month after his final release, and the couple went on to have five children together. His wife, now 43, said four other men asked for her hand but she chose her husband. “He came out, he wanted to start his life and I was happy to be the one to do it.”
Um Husam wanted the same for Assi: that he’d marry “as soon as possible, so he can be happy ... and start a life after so many years.” She already had a potential wife in mind and was looking forward to grandchildren. “We will introduce him, but first he is mine. I want to be able to hug him without another woman claiming him, I want to sleep with him in my lap.”
That same week, around 80km southeast as the crow flies, Ratib Hrebat was preparing for his wedding in the West Bank city of Dura.
The 45-year-old had been out of prison for a year. He spent 22 years incarcerated, after taking part in the second intifada in 2002 (Israeli authorities did not respond to a request for further information). He said he was sentenced by a military court but does not recognise the legitimacy of Israeli arrests.
During his detention, he said he endured beatings and periods without heating, water and food. He said he was sometimes locked in a closed room without natural light or privacy. It was particularly intense at the beginning, when he felt he was being forced into a confession. He was transferred between prisons multiple times, because “they don’t want the detainees to settle in”. During those transfers he described being locked on to an iron chair, his eyes covered and arms and legs restricted. (The Israeli prison service did not respond to a request for comment on this and other issues raised.)
Hrebat sat on a couch in his family’s sittingroom. On the wall was a picture of a younger version of him superimposed on to the Al Aqsa Mosque, which read: “The heroic prisoner on hunger strike ... The battle of empty stomachs. From our hunger, we create victory.” With other prisoners, he went on hunger strikes to achieve better conditions – a tactic which he said did result in improvements.
He said they attempted to build a community inside prison. “We tried to create a cultural atmosphere, a social atmosphere, even something like family relations.” They democratically elected leaders and organised discussion seminars. He personally wrote four books – focused mostly on the suffering of prisoners – as well as getting a bachelor’s degree from Al-Quds Open University. His mantra, he said, was “we live inside the prison but the prison doesn’t live inside us”. (A fellow prisoner, Basim Khandaqji, won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, considered the Arab world’s equivalent of the Booker Prize, in 2024, for a novel written behind bars.)
The conditions became much worse after the Hamas-led attacks of October 7th, 2023, Hrebat said. “We suffered horrible physical torture, hunger, thirst, they ordered us to take off our clothes and be naked.” He said he lost 25kg. They couldn’t change clothes, and diseases or skin conditions such as scabies were rampant. Electrical devices were removed. “From October 7th [2023] up until now [prisoners] are separated from the outside world. If someone is newly arrested then they ask him what’s happening.”
He was released in July 2024, when his sentence ended. Outside, he noticed “the architecture has changed, buildings are changed, technology surprised me, but the thing that impressed me is that the habits and traditions and the love for the Palestinian prisoners didn’t change. I found I was surrounded with love and respect from my community”.
He also noticed the increased number of checkpoints. “Palestinians are living in complete isolation now.”
While he was in prison, his father, mother and one sister died. “I was very connected to my mom, I couldn’t imagine that I would lose her [in 2004] while I was unable to see her or say farewell or goodbye ... In 2007, I lost my father ... He was responsible for teaching me and bringing me up.” Hrebat’s sister, Khawla, supported him in the aftermath. “She was ill but her death was a horrible shock, a nightmare.”
Hrebat was getting married the following Friday: his remaining five sisters and four brothers were helping him prepare. “I’m happy but my happiness is incomplete because of the situation in Gaza,” he said. “The wedding is a bit of hope that we want to live a normal life, to live as any other normal people. And hope helps us to overcome all these troubles.”
