Freed Palestinian prisoner welcomes Gaza deal.

On the first day of independence, Bushra al-Taweel was sipping morning coffee and looking forward to lunch when we arrived at the family apartment in Ramallah.

“In prison it was just hummus, hummus, hummus. Now, I might have something different,” she joked.

There were hugs from family and friends in the kitchen as her mother sat at the table, happy that her only daughter was finally home as Hamas began exchanging Palestinian prisoners and releasing hostages as a result of the Gaza ceasefire. Israeli prisons on Sunday.

The 32-year-old journalist spent more than 5 years in Israeli prisons at various times.

She has always been detained without charge, most recently since March 2024, except when she was once charged for a speech she gave in a mosque.

She said that I am a journalist and I have the right to express my opinion.

This is not the first time Bushra al-Taweel has been part of a prisoner exchange.

In the year In 2011, she was released along with 1,000 Palestinian prisoners under a deal to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held hostage in Gaza for more than five years.

She was quickly arrested by Israeli forces shortly after the agreement.

During her arrest, she said she was severely beaten, shot in the leg and had a cigarette ripped out of her back.

She said she was humiliated by guards every day in prison.

“The worst thing was that I was not allowed to wear my veil,” she said.

“And when we first entered the prison I was made to strip.”

The Israeli prison says all prisoners are treated according to the law.

The young journalism graduate is a conservative Muslim.

In the living room, on the wall is a photo of her father, Jamal al-Taweel, a prominent Hamas politician in the occupied West Bank.

He is the former mayor of al-Bireh village, just outside Ramallah. He spent more than 19 years in an Israeli prison.

I asked Bushra if she supports Hamas.

“I don’t want to be arrested again,” she said, refusing to answer.

I asked her if she had any sympathy for the three Israeli hostages, young women like her who were freed from Hamas exile in Gaza on Sunday after more than a year.

“We have to go home and they have to go home,” she said.

“The hostages mean I’m out. As long as there are hostages, prisoners like me will be free.”

An additional 30 Israeli hostages are expected to be released in the first phase of the cease-fire agreement, along with about 1,800 more Palestinian prisoners.

Some of these prisoners were convicted of more serious crimes, including multiple murders.

Outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories, they could be deported to countries like Qatar and Turkey.

But all the Palestinians freed on Sunday, including many children, were convicted of relatively minor offenses.

Many, like Bushra, were never charged and languished in Israeli prisons under so-called ‘administrative detention’; This process has been strongly condemned by human rights organizations.

The Israeli military often argues that it cannot disclose details of the charges, even to its detainees and their lawyers, for security reasons, so as not to reveal the identities of informants.