Israel is due to release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners over the course of the 42-day initial cease-fire, according to the terms of the agreement, beginning with at least 90 on Sunday in exchange for three Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
Israelis say that many of the prisoners are terrorists and murderers. Many Palestinians see the imprisoned militants as freedom fighters against Israeli rule, and they argue that others were jailed by an unfair Israeli military justice system.
Here are several of the most prominent Palestinian prisoners set to be released under the cease-fire, according to the Israeli Justice Ministry.
Zakaria Zubeidi
Over the past two decades, Zakaria Zubeidi, 49, has been a militant, a theater director, and an escaped prisoner whose flight stunned Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Mr. Zubeidi rose to prominence as a militant leader during the Second Intifada, or uprising, in the early 2000s, during which Palestinian militants committed deadly attacks against Israelis, including suicide bombings targeting civilian thoroughfares.
Israel responded by reoccupying major Palestinian cities amid street battles. Some of the toughest fighting took place in the Palestinian city of Jenin, Mr. Zubeidi’s hometown. He later emerged as a top commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed militia loosely linked with the secular Fatah party, the dominant Palestinian political faction in the West Bank.
After the uprising, Mr. Zubeidi worked at a theater inside the hardscrabble Jenin refugee camp. In 2019, Israel arrested him again on charges that he had returned to militancy.
Two years later, Mr. Zubeidi and five other Palestinian prisoners conducted a jailbreak by crawling nearly 32 yards through an underground tunnel outside one of Israel’s maximum-security prisons. Although they were later recaptured, the security breach shook Israelis and thrilled Palestinians.
An Israeli drone strike killed Mr. Zubeidi’s son, Mohammad, in September. The Israeli military called the son a “significant terrorist” and said he had been involved in shooting at Israeli troops.
Wissam Abbasi, Mohammad Odeh and Wael Qassim
Wissam Abbasi, 48, Mohammad Odeh, 52, and Wael Qassim, 54, were jailed in 2002 on accusations of carrying out Hamas attacks against Israelis during the Second Intifada. According to Israel’s justice ministry, the three men were given life sentences for murder and a string of other crimes.
According to contemporary Israeli media reports, the men were among several convicted of being involved in a Hamas cell in Jerusalem that was responsible for a string of bombings that killed over 30 Israelis in crowded civilian areas.
The attacks included a Hamas bombing at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that killed nine people, including four U.S. citizens, according to the Israeli authorities.
Mr. Odeh, who was working as a painter at the university, planted the bomb in a cafeteria and covered it with a newspaper, The New York Times reported at the time, citing Israeli officials. When he left, he remotely detonated the explosive with a cellphone, the officials said.
Under the terms of the cease-fire deal, the men will not be allowed to return to their homes in Jerusalem, according to the Israeli justice ministry. They will be required to live in exile, although it is unclear where they will be allowed to go.
