Yahya Sinwar, leader of the Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement, celebrates his freedom from occupation prisons in 2011 following a successful prisoner exchange. Photo: Khaled Safi.
By Nabih Awada – Apr 6, 2024
When Ahmed Ghandour was released from Ashkelon Prison in 1994, he promised his comrades still inside that he would help them achieve freedom. A few years after he arrived in Gaza, he, alongside Ahmed Al-Jabari and Marwan Issa, engineered and executed the Operation Dissipated Illusion.
On June 25, 2006, at 5:15 a.m., a group of Palestinian Resistance fighters infiltrated through a tunnel to the outskirts of the Kerem Shalom border crossing east of the Gaza Strip and attacked an occupation military outpost. That day, the occupation army woke up to an announcement from Abu Obeida, the military spokesperson for Hamas’ Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, stating that the resistance succeeded in killing two Israeli soldiers and injuring five others, in addition to capturing the soldier Gilad Shalit. Abu Obeida summed it up: “Shalit will not be released except through a prisoner exchange.”
The then Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, driven by an attempt to whitewash his image after rumors of his corruption were spreading in the corridors of the building [Israeli parliament] on Balfour Street in occupied Jerusalem, rejected the Resistance’s offer and ordered the Israeli army to launch a military attack on the Gaza Strip to retrieve the soldier.
After three weeks of battles, shelling, and failed incursions, another event shocked the occupation, this time from the north. On July 12, Hezbollah fighters managed to cross the border at Ayta ash-Shab and attacked an Israeli patrol. Rumors immediately spread about the possibility of occupation soldiers being captured. Hurriedly, Olmert convened the Cabinet, while Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah announced the Operation Sincere Promise and his demands for the release of Israeli captives in his possession: “indirect negotiation and exchange.”
After receiving the slaps of both Operation Dissipated Illusion and Operation Sincere Promise, the occupation settled on the following course of action: it temporarily halted its aggression on Gaza and declared war on Lebanon. The war lasted 33 days and the occupation failed to retrieve its soldiers, despite all the destruction and invasion it had unleashed on Lebanon.
After its failure in the war, the occupation yielded to indirect negotiation and concluded a prisoner exchange deal. The negotiations with Gaza were mediated by Egypt and Europe amidst the victories of the Lebanon front. Gaza’s position was strengthened by Hezbollah’s achievement of negotiation through German mediation in 2008.
Netanyahu ousted Olmert on March 31, 2009, three months after the occupation failed to achieve its goals of pressuring Gaza through Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), and two weeks after the failure of negotiations in the Egyptian city of El-Arish. These negotiations had been attended by the Egyptian Major General Mohamed Ibrahim and Brigadier Wael Safati, while the Hamas delegation included leaders Mahmoud al-Zahar, Nizar Awadallah, Ahmed Al-Jabari, and Marwan Issa. As for the Israeli side, Yuval Diskin, then head of the Israeli internal spy agency Shin Bet, and Ofer Dekel, former deputy head of the Shin Bet, attended in the adjacent room. The resistance refused to back down from its positions and conditions, consequently Olmert and the head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, declared the El-Arish negotiations as failure.
With Netanyahu coming to power, Haggai Hadas was added to the negotiating delegation as his representative alongside Diskin and Dekel. Netanyahu tasked Hadas with traveling to Germany to meet with the German intelligence chief Ernst Uhrlau and requested his entry as a mediator. In return, Hamas added Mousa Abu Marzouq to its delegation. Germany brought intelligence official Gerhard Conrad into the negotiations. He headed to Gaza and held a secret session at al-Zahar’s house, attended by Al-Jabari. Conrad conducted back-and-forth visits with the aim of reaching a deal.
In parallel, Netanyahu tasked Ofer Dekel with pressuring the resistance leadership in the prisons. He asked him to go to the Prisons Service to arrange a meeting with Hamas leaders in Hadarim Prison to have them pressure the leadership outside. The security official met with prisoners Tawfiq Abu Naim, Yahya Sinwar, and Abdel Nasser Issa. A few days after this meeting, whose echoes reverberated in the prison and were conveyed through the prison administration to other prisons, the Prisons Service transferred all the Hamas leaders in the prisons, including Sinwar and all the detained members of the Legislative Council, to the Negev desert prison. The prison administration provided the prisoners with a cell phone and asked them to contact the Hamas leadership outside so that they would soften their position in exchange for releasing all of them in a preliminary exchange. The prisoners’ leadership noticed the trap that the Israelis had set and how they sought to sow confusion and dissent among the prisoners, especially those sentenced to life imprisonment, not to mention the sick, elderly, children, and women. However, the resistance factions, in all exchange operations that they conduct, ensure that the release does not include only specific individuals from the same party, but primarily aims to include all categories of prisoners from all organizations.
The prisoners’ leadership handed over the phone to the prison administration and informed them of its position and condition: that only Yahya Sinwar would be released and that he must be delivered safely to the Gaza Strip for consultation with the leadership on the issue of the exchange deal. Of course, Dekel rejected Sinwar’s offer, which thwarted the Israeli plan. In less than an hour, the Prisons Service returned the prisoners to the prisons from which they had been gathered.
Negotiations remained frozen throughout 2010, especially after Sinwar learned the details—from his lawyer visiting him in prison—of the negotiation agreement that had been presented at al-Zahar’s house. The planned agreement excluded many senior prisoners, especially those who had planned and executed major operations, including Hassan Salameh, Abdullah Barghouti, and Ibrahim Hamed.
Through a phone smuggled to Room 11 of Beersheba Prison, Sinwar made a call to al-Zahar informing him of his position and the prisoners who rejected the proposed deal. Sinwar then made another call to the leader Khaled Meshal, informing him of his objection and that of all the prisoners. Meshal promised Sinwar that he would halt the deal, and this is what happened.
Before dismantling the phone and hiding it to avoid detection, Sinwar made his final call to his brother Mohammed Sinwar, saying to him: “Say hello to Hajj [referring to his former cellmate Ahmed Al-Jabari] and tell him that the trust he has is not in vain” (referring to the captive Shalit).
Sinwar specified from inside his prison the price for the release of Gilad Shalit. The agreement was concluded on October 11, 2011, with the Netanyahu government announcing its approval of the deal with Hamas which achieved the liberation of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including Yahya Sinwar.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/DZ/SC
Nabih Awada
Nabih Awada is a Lebanese journalist and former prisoner of Israeli occupation prisons. His work can be found on Al-Akhbar here.