Joy and anxiety for Palestinian mother as three sons freed

Palestinian woman Latifa Abu Hamid said she was filled with “indescribable joy” when she heard that her three sons had been freed from Israeli prisons, even though they had been forced into exile.
The three released yesterday were among dozens of inmates freed in exchange for Israeli hostages held by Gaza fighters, under the truce agreement between Israel and Hamas that has halted the war in the Palestinian territory. Like Abu Hamid’s sons, many Palestinians released by Israel were not sent home but deported. The 74-year-old resident of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has had five of her 10 children detained by Israel, some for decades, over their involvement in armed resistance. Her three sons Nasr, 50, Sharif, 45, and Mohammed, 35, were released on Saturday from a prison in southern Israel’s Negev desert.
“I’m so happy. I spoke to them... I heard their voices,” said Abu Hamid. “Of course, I would prefer them to live with us, to be here so we could enjoy their presence,” she said.
Out of 200 prisoners released on Saturday, nearly all Palestinian but including one Jordanian, 70 were handed over to Egypt, and some plan to settle in a Gulf state or another third country. Abu Hamid’s living room is adorned with large painted portraits of each family member and photo montages showing her flashing a victory sign and surrounded by her sons. Certificates of detention were displayed like diplomas.
Another photograph showed her in a dress decorated with the faces of her sons alongside an image of the Dome of the Rock, the iconic shrine in the Israeli-annexed Old City of Jerusalem. “For more than 40 years, I’ve been visiting my sons in prison — more than half my life — and I’ve never lost hope of seeing them free,” she said. Not that three are out of jail, “it’s an indescribable joy,” said the mother. “But the joy remains incomplete because my son Islam and the rest of the prisoners are still” locked up, she added. One of her sons, 38-year-old Islam, has been sentenced to life like his three brothers, but is not on Israel’s list of prisoners eligible for release under the Gaza truce agreement.
Abu Hamid said Islam killed an Israeli soldier with a stone during an army raid on the Al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah, where the family once lived. The eldest, Naser, was one of the founders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed group established during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.
He died of cancer in detention and Israel has never returned his body, said the mother. Another son, a member of the fighter group Islamic Jihad, was killed by the Israeli military in 1994.