Of Scars and Silence: The Bitter Homecoming of Palestine’s Freed Prisoners 

In a bitterswart exchange tied to a fragile truce, nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners returned to Gaza and the West Bank, where emotional reunions with families were starkly muted by IDF warnings against public celebration and overshadowed by widespread allegations of systematic mistreatment in Israeli detention.

The freed prisoners, many detained without charge, recounted experiences of beatings, torture with electric shocks, painfully tightened handcuffs that left visible scars, and being fed rotten food, with some alleging that fellow detainees were permanently injured or died under interrogation.

While the release brought joy to families who had waited decades, the homecoming was fraught with trauma, as prisoners returned to a devastated Gaza where they discovered unknown family deaths or faced exile to third countries, leaving a profound sense of relief deeply tempered by the lingering physical and psychological scars of their ordeal and the unresolved tensions of the conflict.

Of Scars and Silence: The Bitter Homecoming of Palestine’s Freed Prisoners 

The olive trees in Ramallah’s central square bore silent witness to a reunion decades in the making. Under their gnarled branches, a grandmother sat steadfast in her wheelchair, her traditional embroidered dress a vibrant testament to a culture of resilience. She could not form the words, but her trembling hands and the single, choked phrase, “Oh God,” spoken to the sky, said everything. She was waiting for a son she had not seen for years, a son who had grown into a man inside an Israeli prison.

This scene, brimming with a tense, subdued joy, was repeated across the West Bank and Gaza as nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners returned home. Yet, their homecoming was not a simple celebration; it was a complex tapestry woven with threads of relief, trauma, and allegations of systematic abuse, set against the backdrop of a fragile and uncertain truce. 

A Muted Celebration Under the Shadow of the IDF 

In Ramallah, the air was thick with an emotion difficult to name. It was not the unbridled euphoria one might expect. Families, dressed in their finest tatriz, perched on walls and crowded the streets, but their celebrations were hushed. This caution was not born of indifference, but of direct warning. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had delivered a clear message—through phone calls, visits, and even flyers dropped from the sky—that there were to be no public festivities, no media spectacles, no flags waved in triumph. 

Fear of retribution hung like a pall. The result was a profound, almost sacred, silence that spoke louder than any cheer. Doua’ Salame, waiting for her brother-in-law Khairy after his 23-year incarceration, encapsulated the mood. “Thank God he was released… He can now see his son, his siblings,” she said, her eyes glistening. “We respected [the warning]. We will simply welcome him home.” This was a homecoming under duress, a joy tempered by the ever-present reality of military occupation. 

When the buses finally arrived, the dam of emotion broke, but in a controlled torrent. Men, some with greying hair and gaunt faces, stepped into the arms of families who barely recognized them. The embraces were tight, the tears flowed freely, but the atmosphere remained one of trepidation. And almost immediately, the stories began to surface, not in shouted slogans, but in hushed, urgent tones. 

The Testimonies: “Israel Was Brutal Until the Very End” 

If the families were silent, the returning men were not. They carried with them not just the memories of lost years, but the physical and psychological evidence of their ordeal. 

One prisoner, his voice steady but his eyes burning with intensity, simply showed the crowd his wrists. “If you want to see what happened, just look,” he said, revealing deep, inflamed scars and bruises from handcuffs that had been tightened to the point of injury. His conclusion was stark: “Israel was brutal until the very end.” 

These accounts were not isolated. In Gaza, where 1,700 of the several thousand Palestinians detained during the war and held without formal charge were released, similar stories echoed through the battered streets. Fadi el-Attar, 27, arrested in Khan Younis in January, described a process designed to break the human spirit. “During interrogation by the army and intelligence services, conditions were brutal,” he told the ABC. “They broke young men, humiliated them. Some even died under torture.” 

The most harrowing testimony came from Muin Wachh, 35, who was arrested with his brother at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza a year ago. He described a relentless regime of abuse. “They would tighten the handcuffs painfully and give us rotten food,” he recounted. “Every day we heard explosions. They used electric shocks and tasers.” His voice likely faltered as he shared the story of a close friend, a man with special needs like himself, who was struck on the head during an interrogation. “He lost his sight. He’s blind now.” 

These allegations are not new, but they gain a new, chilling weight when voiced by men still bearing the fresh wounds. They match the findings of numerous human rights organizations, including the United Nations, which has long documented accounts of mistreatment and torture in Israeli detention facilities. 

The Legal Labyrinth and the Pain of Exile 

The joy of return was also incomplete. The prisoner exchange was a complex transaction, and its terms created their own unique forms of anguish. Of the 250 prisoners serving life sentences who were released, Israel exiled 154 of them, sending them to neighbouring Egypt with the stated intention that they would be resettled in third countries. These were often men convicted of the most serious offences, like murder, in Israeli military courts. 

This system of justice itself is a central point of contention. Widely criticized by international observers for its lower evidentiary standards and a conviction rate of over 99%, Israel’s military court system is seen by Palestinians and human rights groups as a key instrument of occupation, designed to criminalize resistance and maintain control. 

For the families of the exiled, the reunion was a bittersweet affair staged in a foreign land. Alaa Alsharabati travelled to Cairo to meet his father, Ayman, who was imprisoned in 1998 when Alaa was just six years old. The man he embraced was a stranger he knew only through visits behind glass and years of longing.

“It was the first time I heard my father’s voice in two years. I swear my heart stopped from joy,” Alaa said. “It was mixed feelings, I couldn’t believe myself… It’s like he was in a grave and suddenly came out into life.” But for Ayman, “coming out into life” meant a life in exile, barred from returning to the home and land he fought for. 

The Gaza Return: A Homecoming to Ruin 

For those released into Gaza, the concept of “home” had been utterly shattered. They returned not to familiar streets and welcoming neighbourhoods, but to a landscape of apocalyptic destruction. Safiyeh Qishta, 60, waited anxiously for her son, whom she had not seen since the war began. Her joy was poisoned by a dreadful knowledge. 

“We miss him. We want to hear his voice and see him,” she said. “He does not know that his father died and he does not know that his sister and her children died, and that his brother also died during the war. He does not know about them. How will he come back? What will his feelings be like? I don’t know.” 

Her words capture the profound dislocation of this moment. For these detainees, the war was not something they witnessed, but something they endured in parallel, in the isolation of a cell. Their release is not a return to normality, but a brutal collision with a new, devastating reality. They must now process their own trauma while simultaneously grieving for a world that no longer exists. 

A Fragile Peace and the Scars That Remain 

The release of these prisoners marks a critical juncture in the ongoing conflict, a fragile breakthrough after two years of war. Yet, it raises more questions than it answers. While Israeli hostages were reunited with their families, and Palestinians celebrated the return of their sons and brothers, the underlying structures of the conflict remain firmly in place. 

The allegations of systemic abuse, backed by the visible scars on the bodies of the returned men, point to a deep, institutionalized violence that no temporary truce can erase. The muted celebrations in Ramallah are a testament to the fact that freedom, for these families, is still conditional, still lived under the shadow of military power. 

The homecoming of these nearly 2,000 Palestinians is not the end of a story, but the beginning of a new, difficult chapter. They carry with them the trauma of their imprisonment into a world scarred by war. Their stories of beatings, rotten food, and torture are a stark reminder that even as diplomacy takes tentative steps forward, the human cost of this conflict is cumulative, leaving wounds on a generation that will take a lifetime to heal, if they ever do. The silence in Ramallah was not the silence of peace, but the heavy, knowing quiet of a people all too aware that their struggle is far from over.