The Israeli-occupied West Bank did started in the festivities after 90 Palestinian prisoners, most of them women, were released from Israeli prisons as part of the Israel-Hamas war.
Families in the West Bank waited until Monday morning to receive their loved ones, many of whom were arrested without charge.
The cease-fire, which ended Israel's more than 15-month war in Gaza, also led to three slaves of Israel. More information slaves and the prisoners are expected to be released in the coming weeks.
This is what we know about Palestinian prisoners who was released:
Who are some of the famous Palestinians who were released?
The prisoners – 69 women and 21 children – were released at around 1am on Monday (23:00 GMT Sunday). They were taken to the West Bank city of Ramallah in Red Cross buses.
They are the only ones 90 prisoners He was arrested before October 7, 2023, when Palestinian groups led by Hamas carried out violence in southern Israel. The attack killed more than 1,100 people, nearly 250 were taken prisoner and triggered Israel's war on Gaza.
Israel has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians during its offensive in Gaza, drawing criticism for using unlimited force on civilians and targeting hospitals and schools. It also killed more than 850 Palestinians and arrested more than 7,000 in violent attacks in the West Bank.
Khalida Jarrar, leader of the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a feminist, was one of the most prominent prisoners released.
Jarrar has been imprisoned in Israel since 2015 for speaking out for the rights of Palestinian prisoners and for being affiliated with an “illegal” party. The PFLP is considered a “terrorist” group by Israel.
In a statement in 2016, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said that Jarrar's repeated arrests are part of Israel's larger confusion about nonviolent political opposition to 50 years of occupation of the Palestinian territories.
His most recent arrest was on December 26, 2023.
The first Palestinian arrest took place in March 1989 during the International Women's Day ceremony at Birzeit University in the West Bank. He was a master's student at the time.
Jarrar emerged as a feminist leader as she fought gender stereotypes and worked to promote female entrepreneurship in the West Bank. He did public works in Nablus, helping to clean up public areas and repair public schools. He was later elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council.
He served as the director of the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association from 1994 to 2006.
“There are these two feelings that we live in: on the one hand, this feeling of freedom that we are grateful to everyone and, on the other hand, the pain of losing so many Palestinians,” Jarrar told the Associated Press news agency later. he was released.
Another prominent prisoner released is journalist Rula Hassanein, editor of the Ramallah-based Wattan Media Network. He was arrested by Israeli forces on March 19 as part of a mass arrest of Palestinians.
Hassanein, 30, was tried by an Israeli military court at Ofer prison in Israel. He was accused of social media activism for posts that allegedly included retweets of X and expressed dismay at the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.
How many more prisoners will be released?
The first phase of the three-phase curfew lasts 42 days. During this time, 33 Israeli slaves have been freed, including women and soldiers as well as children and the elderly.
In the meantime, up to 1,900 Palestinians are still living.
On the first day of the exchange, three slaves of Israel were released from Gaza: 24-year-old Romi Gonen, 28-year-old Emily Damari and 31-year-old Doron Steinbrecher.
Before the release, about 100 people were believed to have remained in Gaza. It is not known how many are still alive.
The remaining prisoners, in addition to the 33 expected to be released in the first phase, are said to be male soldiers to be released in exchange for an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners.
How many Palestinians are in Israeli prisons?
Before the release of 90 prisoners on Monday, there were 10,400 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including those arrested in Gaza during the last 15 months of the war, according to the Palestinian Committee for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner's Society.
“If they do the least to challenge the status quo, they will face prison,” Al Jazeera's Nida Ibrahim said. Ibrahim said that many children have been arrested by Israel on charges of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.
“The list of prisoners, hundreds of names released, many are serving time the closure of leadershipwhich is the method Israel uses to keep people in prison forever without trial,” Ibrahim said.
Prison conditions
“I left hell and now I'm in heaven.” We have all left hell. They used to crush us, beat us, tear gas at us,” Abdelaziz Atawneh, a young man released from an Israeli prison on Monday, told reporters.
“There is no food, there is no candy, there is no salt,” he said.
Israeli prisons are notorious torture of Palestinian prisoners and onlookers commented on how Jarrar looked weaker in his appearance compared to how he had seen it during his recent arrest.
United Nations agencies, researchers and human rights organizations have documented unjust, cruel and humiliating detentions, torture and death of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
On the other hand, the slaves who were freed and sent to Israel appeared to be in good health, Israeli media reported.
The three hostages, “along with their mother, just arrived at the hospital, where they will be reunited with all their families and receive medical treatment”, the Israeli army said in a statement. The three freed hostages are at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv.
In April, Dr Adnan al-Bursh, head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, died in Israel's Ofer prison. His family said that al-Bursh was tortured to death.
“The release of Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, does not mean that the conditions of captivity have changed. Negotiators in Israel insisted that nothing will change inside Israeli prisons,” Basil Farraj, an associate professor at Birzeit University, told Al Jazeera.
“This is very disturbing, and it explains why families have come together to welcome loved ones because they know the hell they (prisoners) have been going through is brutal.”
Farraj added: “This shows that the carceral regime wants to crush the Palestinian prisoners. They are deliberately trying to break their spirit and life.”