Ramallah /PNN/
The Israeli occupation continues to escalate its targeting of Palestinians who were released in the latest prisoner exchange deal with the Hamas movement that took place earlier this year. Between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, occupation forces carried out a mass arrest campaign, re-arresting six of those who were recently released among others.
The six are: Saed al-Fayed (served 22 years), Ibrahim Attiya (served 22 years), Saeed Diab (served 22 years), Mahdi Akkas (served 8 years), Hamza Shreim (injured & served 14 months), all of whom are from Qalqilya governorate, while the sixth, Salama Qattawi (served 15 years) is from Ramallah.
They are among 25 Palestinians arrested by the occupation forces last night from across the West Bank.
Overall, Israeli occupation carried out 19 arrests of Palestinians who were released in the latest exchange deal. Of those, seven remain behind bars with the rest re-released. Of the seven people, six are being held without trial or charge under “administrative detention”.
It remains unclear whether the six people re-arrested yesterday will be kept in detention or later released.
This escalation is part of a systematic policy and a clear, new breach of the prisoner-exchange deal , sending a renewed message to all released prisoners that they remain under threat and persecution, the Prisoner’s Society explained.
These arrests are part of long-standing policies and tools used by the occupation against freed prisoners over decades. This became particularly evident in the case of the re-arrest of dozens of prisoners released in the Wafaa al-Ahrar exchange deal in 2011, and were later re-arrested and had their original sentences re-instated.
After the latest prisoner exchange in 2025, the targeting of released detainees has escalated to the level of organized state-terror. They are subject to brutal assault until the moment of their release, and their families are subject to constant threats and abuses by occupation forces.
The PPS had issued a statement yesterday highlighting the conditions for a number of those who were re-arrested, particularly those transferred to administrative detention under the pretext of having a “secret file.”
