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Israel is reportedly forcing over 150 Palestinians freed from Israeli prisons as part of the ceasefire deal into exile, in a move that experts say is a violation of international law.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office says that at least 154 Palestinians released on Monday will be exiled and deported to an unknown country, per Al Jazeera. Almost all had been residents of the occupied West Bank.
As Al Jazeera reported, families rejoiced upon hearing of their loved ones’ release, only to be devastated to hear that they would not be reunited with their family members, many of whom have been imprisoned for decades in Israel’s prisons and torture camps.
This is a violation of international law, experts said.
“Forcing Palestinian prisoners into exile in Gaza or abroad as a release condition, or expelling them post-detention, is a war crime under international law. This is exile, not freedom,” wrote Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor legal head Lima Bustami on social media.
Bustami noted that, with Israel controlling all of the borders of Palestinian territory, Israel has also prevented families from traveling abroad to see their exiled family members.
“Exile here is turned into a whole system of collective torture, to punish, to isolate, and to erase human connection itself,” Bustami said. “Exiling Palestinian prisoners is the continuation of captivity by other means…. This is not security; it is the anatomy of apartheid.”
“It goes without saying it’s illegal,” said Tamer Qarmout, public policy associate professor for the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, to Al Jazeera. “It is illegal because these are citizens of Palestine. They have no other citizenships. They’re out of a small prison, but they’re sent to a bigger prison, away from their society, to new countries in which they will face major restrictions. It’s inhumane.”
Qarmout noted that many of the Palestinian prisoners being released are political figures who would be punished for or barred from exercising their political beliefs in the countries they’re sent to. The Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that prisoners are being deported to Egypt; prisoners from the ceasefire in January were deported to Egypt temporarily before being sent to Tunisia, Algeria, and Turkey.
As part of the captive release deal, Palestinian forces released the remaining 20 living Israeli captives, while Israel released 250 Palestinians serving long or life sentences in Israeli prisons, and over 1,700 Palestinians abducted from Gaza amid the genocide.
Hamas is also slated to release the bodies of Israeli captives who died in captivity, a process Palestinian officials said would take some time because of Israel’s thorough destruction of infrastructure across Gaza.
However, in its first major diversion from the ceasefire thus far, Israel told the UN on Tuesday that it would only be allowing 300 aid trucks into Gaza and would not yet open the Rafah crossing because Hamas has not released all of the bodies.
This is despite the agreement stipulating that Israel allow 600 trucks in per day, and on top of the fact that Israel is still barring the vast majority of aid from entering Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israel has continued killing Palestinians in Gaza during the ceasefire. On Tuesday alone, Israel reportedly killed nine Palestinians, including five people in Gaza City who Israel claimed were approaching soldiers.
“Ceasefire according to Israel=‘you cease, I fire.’ Calling it ‘peace’ is both an insult and a distraction,” said Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories. “All eyes on Palestine: Israel must face justice, sanctions, divestment, boycott UNTIL occupation, apartheid and genocide are over and every crime is accounted for.”
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