PERSONAL: Wife of longest-serving Palestinian inmate hopes he avoids deportation after release

Record ID: 1905721

  • Title: PERSONAL: Wife of longest-serving Palestinian inmate hopes he avoids deportation after release
  • Date: 20th January 2025
  • Summary: RAMALLAH, WEST BANK (JANUARY 16, 2025) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF VIEW OF CITY OF RAMALLAH BARGHOUTI'S WIFE, EMAN NAFE, STANDING IN STREET VARIOUS OF NAFE BUYING CLOTHES TO NAEL BEFORE HIS RELEASE (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) NAEL BARGHOUTI'S WIFE, EMAN NAFE, SAYING: "I am always optimistic and I hope Nael will be with us soon, I prepared the house, also I bought him some clothes. It's been 10 years and a half years, his clothes are already tattered, even if he wanted to wear them it's not possible. He used to say that during his time in jail, they changed the gates of the jail twice. It's 44 years in jails, I am preparing everything. We hope to see them (prisoners) soon with us, our joy is incomplete due to martyrs, and destruction in Gaza. But as Palestinians we know that with everything affecting our freedom and our rights, it could take a while?"
  • Embargoed: 3rd February 2025 16:39
  • Keywords: Gaza Hamas Israel Palestinians ceasefire deal prisoners
  • Location: RAMALLAH AND KOBAR, WEST BANK
  • City: RAMALLAH AND KOBAR, WEST BANK
  • Country: Palestinian Occupied Territory
  • Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,Middle East
  • Reuters ID: LVA002375216012025RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Nael Barghouti, the longest-serving Palestinian inmate in an Israeli jail, liked to plant orange trees in his garden, but he has not eaten from them for the last decade.
    Revered by militants as the "dean" of their prisoners, Barghouti is among more than 200 Palestinians set to be deported under the Gaza ceasefire and hostages-for-prisoners swap.
    His wife Eman Nafe, herself a former prisoner who spent 10 years in Israeli jail accused of plotting a suicide attack, said they received confirmation that Barghouti will be deported.
    “I am in shock and sad. We are worried and we hope that this won't happen because I know my husband wouldn't accept to be deported,” she told Reuters last Saturday (January 18).
    Barghouti, 67, has spent 44 years incarcerated by Israel, more than any other Palestinian. Jailed in 1978 for killing an Israeli bus driver, he was freed in 2011 in a previous swap but re-arrested three years later and held ever since.
    Nafe said she does not even know how her husband looks like, for she had been banned from seeing him for the last two years.
    “I am always optimistic and I hope Nael will be with us soon,” she said, adding “I prepared the house, also I bought him some clothes. It's been 10 years and a half years, his clothes are already tattered.”
    Israel has said that Palestinians who have been convicted of killing Israelis must be permanently deported if they are freed under the Gaza ceasefire agreement, and will not be allowed to return to homes in the occupied West Bank.
    Barghouti is one of 217 prisoners on a list from the Israeli justice ministry, cited by the Palestinian prisoners' association, of those to be sent abroad.
    There are 10,400 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, not including detainees arrested in Gaza during the last 15 months of war, according to the Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners' Society.
    Under ceasefire agreement, Hamas is due to release 33 hostages in the first six-week phase of the truce, including women, children, men over 50 and ill and wounded captives.
    In return, Israel will release 1,167 people detained in Gaza during the war and 737 other prisoners from the West Bank, Jerusalem or Gaza.
    The first three Israeli hostages were freed on Sunday (January 19) in return for 90 Palestinian detainees, though none of the most sensitive Palestinian prisoners were in that initial group.
    “It's joy when we see them freed but it's incomplete due to what's happening in Gaza- the destruction and massacres,” Nafe said.
    Barghouti, who shares a common Palestinian surname with jailed political leader Marwan Barghouti, a distant relative, will learn that much has changed during his years in prison, his wife said.
    He will find "that his only brother has also died, that his brother’s son was martyred, many houses have been destroyed, and many members of the family are detained," she said.
    (Production: Ismael Khader, Roleen Tafakji, Nuha Sharaf, Michaela Cabrera)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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