The vast majority of Palestinians slated for release under an Israel-Hamas swap deal to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza, are teenage boys, an official Israeli list shows.
Israel released the names on Wednesday of 300 Palestinian detainees who could be set free under the agreement. Under the terms of the deal, the first phase will see 50 Israeli hostages released over the course of four days, with 150 security detainees to be freed in response.
More detainees could subsequently be released at the same ratio of three to one, it said. An AFP examination of the names found that 33 were women, 123 were boys under 18, and 144 were 18-year-old men.
The youngest was 14-year-old Adam Abuda Hassan Gheit from annexed east Jerusalem, who was arrested in May for “hostile sabotage activity, attacking a police officer and throwing stones”.
The oldest was a 59-year-old woman called Hanan Salah Abdallah Barghuti, who was arrested in September for “Hamas activity including money transfers”, it said.
It identified 49 as Hamas members, 60 as belonging to Fatah, the party which leads the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, and 17 as being affiliated with the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The others had no affiliation specified.
The most prominent individual on the list is Israa Jaabis, 38, who was convicted of detonating a gas cylinder in her car at a checkpoint in 2015, wounding a police officer. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Israeli rights group HaMoked welcomed the deal.
“Holding people as hostages is itself illegal, a war crime, and Hamas should release all the hostages unconditionally,” its executive director Jessica Montell said in a statement, adding it was “appropriate that Israel release prisoners and detainees to advance this goal”.
Most of those to be released were “detainees still awaiting trial, on charges that range from incitement to stone-throwing to attempted murder”, she said, adding that the list also included women and teenagers held without charge or trial in so-called administrative detention.
“These people should also have been released unconditionally, so a deal to release Israeli hostages and Palestinian administrative detainees is doubly welcome,” she said.