Ceasefire intransigence: Palestinian prisoners and Israeli reluctance

Even as ceasefire proposals aimed at ensuring a long-term cessation of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza go through the motions of indirect exchange, a major sticking point remains the issue of high-profile Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Indeed, the fraught history of prisoner exchanges with Palestinians have always been perceived by the nuclear-capable entity as one of its cruellest dilemmas. 

The moral weight of needing to release its citizens from captivity has long collided with the hard calculus of its national security and deterrence. In 2011, Israel freed 1027 prisoners–including Yahya Sinwar–for the return of one captured soldier, Gilad Shalit. 

Yet even if many Israelis cheered that exchange deal at the time, just as many also feared it would embolden Hamas. Both were correct.

Now, amid negotiations over the Israelis held in Gaza since October 7th, 2023, Israel again faces calls to release the most sophisticated Palestinian prisoners in its jails. 

However, this time the stakes are immeasurably higher.

Hamas and its allies are not merely asking for the release of young stone-throwers or even the thousands of civilians detained randomly since Israel’s onslaught on Gaza began and for which is sitting Prime-Minister has been indicted for war crimes. 

They are instead asking for the release of men whose names are vividly etched in living Israeli memory as architects of some of the deadliest attacks against them since 1948.

Israel’s fears that releasing them would not constitute a mere symbolic victory for the Palestinian struggle; it would risk allowing Hamas to rewrite the future battlefield on a global scale.

Enter the Military Kingpins

Among those whose names surface most often in speculative exchange lists is Ibrahim Hamed, the imprisoned head of Hamas’s military wing on the West Bank and often described as the equivalent of the late Mohammad Deif—the overall commander, strategist, and mythic figure of Hamas’s military Izz-al-din al-Qassam brigade HQ in Gaza.

Hamed, imprisoned since 2006, is currently serving 45 consecutive life sentences for being the orchestrating mastermind behind a spate of attacks on Israeli targets during the second Intifada. 

To Hamas, forcing the top commander’s release along with other lifers through a prisoner exchange with its Israeli enemy not only symbolizes survival against all odds, but also that catastrophic losses will not prevent Hamas from regaining its senior leadership.

But to Israel, contemplating the granting of freedom to someone of Hamed’s stature cannot simply be measured by confining it to his past operations.

Israel is well-aware at Ibrahim Hamed is viewed in Palestinian circles as an enduring symbol of resilience and resistance, a commander with shrewd intellectual depth, capable of reorganizing resistance networks from incarceration and, if released, from abroad.

Thus, the dilemma it faces is balancing the fate of its citizens held in Gaza against restoring to the battlefield a man who knows exactly how to rebuild a resistance network from the ground up, injecting new energy into a movement that’s been severely weakened although far from defeated.

But Hamed is not the only veteran commander with a long memory.

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Hassan Salameh, remembered as the right-hand man of the late Yahya Ayyash, has been serving multiple life terms since 1997 for his role in shaping the early era of Hamas attacks against Israeli targets and for which his return would embody the generational continuity of the movement. 

Abdullah Bargouthi, a developer, teacher, and manufacturer of explosive devices used in attacks during the Second Intifada. His life sentences—the most cumulative terms ever handed down by an Israeli court—reflect the scale of his responsibility. Israel would argue that releasing him is to risk handing back not just a man, but a playbook.

There is also Abbas al-Sayed, serving 35 consecutive life sentences since 2006 for his role in masterminding attacks on Israel during the Second Intifada. Although like the latter two military figures he is an embodiment of previous generation of warfare, his return would offer Hamas the intellectual capital it lacks in the West bank. 

Notwithstanding, the debate over prisoners is not confined to Hamas military figures. 

Marwan Barghouti, a leader of Fatah’s Tanzim militia during the Second Intifada, and Ahmad Saadat, the secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), belong to a broader Palestinian nationalist struggle rather than Hamas itself. 

Their prominence is political rather than military, and Marwan Barghouti remains a potential unifying figure, one whose release could transform the fragmented Palestinian political landscape—a feat complemented by the fact that he both supports Israel’s right to exist and negotiations with it.

But again, Israel would face a dilemma: freeing Barghouti might undercut Hamas’s monopoly over resistance by empowering a national leader more palatable to Western capitals, yet it could also embolden the wider Palestinian movement at a time when Israel seeks to keep political divisions entrenched. 

Between Pragmatism and Principle

As it happens, what truly distinguishes this prisoner exchange debate from 2011 is geography. 

Then, most released prisoners either returned to Gaza or the West Bank. Today, Israel worries that men like Hamed, Salameh, or Barghouti could operate from exile in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon—environments where Israeli reach is limited and where global communications networks amplify every message.

The nightmare scenario Israel fears is not only renewed violence in the West Bank. It is the emergence of transnational cells targeting Israeli interests abroad and for which—considering the magnitude of death and destruction in Gaza—there is unlikely to be a shortage of recruits.

In a conflict that is increasingly globalized, a released commander does not need to set foot in the West Bank to matter. He only needs an encrypted communications device and loyal disciples ready to execute orders at a moment’s notice.

But considering the on-going dynamics of the prevailing war on Gaza, the central question is not whether Israel will engage in another prisoner exchange—it almost certainly will, given the moral and political imperative to recover its citizens—but how far it will go? 

Israel’s government is under immense pressure to bring them home alive.

Every day of delay feels like betrayal to the families waiting for word. Yet the calculus involved in the final decision is not about compassion; it is about survival. The release of one high-profile Hamas prisoner could re-energize a movement that Israel has vowed to fight to the brink in Gaza.

This explains why the moment feels different from the Shalit deal. It can no longer afford to treat prisoner exchanges detached from strategic consequences.

The likes of Ibrahim Hamed, Hassan Salameh, and Abdullah Barghouti are not simply names on a list. They are force multipliers whose freedom will shape the next decade of armed Palestinian resistance against Israel.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.