After The Prisoner Exchange, over 11,000 Palestinian Hostages Will Remain
By Robert Inlakesh
More Palestinian hostages have been killed than Israelis, yet there is almost no coverage of this, as there is often no mention that the majority of Israeli captives who died in Gaza were killed by Israeli bombings.
While people around the world hold their breath in anticipation of the upcoming Gaza ceasefire and prisoner exchange, many commentators are hailing the “return of all the hostages”. Such rhetoric is in and of itself revealing of a double standard, whereby Palestinian hostages are not worth the same as Israelis.
So far, there have been two prisoner exchanges during the Gaza genocide, one in November of 2023 and the second earlier this month during the ceasefire that Israel violated in March.
During the first exchange, a batch of 39 female and child prisoners was released from Israeli detention. At the time, the Western corporate media refused to refer to the minors released as child detainees, instead referring to them as young people or, in some cases, teenagers. Yet, when Israelis under the age of 18 were being freed, they were immediately identified as children and covered obsessively.
Meanwhile, the abuses of Palestinian detainees were ignored almost entirely. Also, it went unmentioned that Israel arrested over 310 Palestinians in the West Bank, as it freed 240 as part of the truce-prisoner exchange. Not only did Israel violate the terms of this agreement, delaying their release for hours, but it later re-arrested many of those whom it had freed.
Similarly, when Hamas began releasing batches of Israeli captives for Palestinian ones, the release of the Israeli detainees was, in many cases, covered live. Predictably, displaying the same bias that was on show back in November of 2023, the Palestinians released were barely mentioned. On January 20, 2025, 90 female and child prisoners were released; again, the Western corporate media refused to cover the event as it did the release of a much smaller number of Israelis.
As of now, Palestine’s Wafa News states that the current data of Palestinian prisoner groups confirm that over 11,100 Palestinians are currently being held in the Israeli prison system, including 400 child prisoners. Almost all of these are from the occupied West Bank alone. Also, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, Israel has arrested around 20,000 Palestinians from the West Bank since October 7, 2023, including students, scholars, journalists and medical workers.
As part of the Gaza ceasefire-prisoner exchange deal, 250 Palestinian detainees with life sentences will be freed and some 1,700 Gazans who were seized after October 7, 2023. These Palestinians from Gaza are not held in official Israeli prisons, but in torture detention facilities where they are subjected to round-the-clock torture and sexual violence at the hands of soldiers. The number of Palestinians seized from Gaza in the last two years is unknown, although the estimated figure is set at around 15,000 in total.
The Western corporate media and governments constantly express their concern over the potential abuses suffered by Israeli prisoners held in Gaza, yet never mention the Palestinians who are held by Israel without having committed any offense whatsoever.
Palestinian hostages have been subjected to gang rape, all kinds of sexual violence, torture, the amputation of limbs, humiliation rituals, starvation, the deprivation of water, and at least 78 Palestinian detainees have been murdered while under Israeli detention since October 7, 2023.
This means that more Palestinian hostages have been killed than Israelis, yet there is almost no coverage of this, as there is often no mention that the majority of Israeli captives who died in Gaza were killed by Israeli bombings.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the Palestinian hostages will not be returning to their families and will continue suffering under the brutal conditions of torture and starvation. No doubt, when the prisoner exchange occurs, if Israel chooses to honor it, then the Western corporate media will again display its racist double standards in the coming week.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
What gets me is this has been going on for ever and Israel was perceived by many as a decent country until the unspeakable crimes in Gaza. Glad this is more visible now. But how can this ever end if this is allowed to continue. How can there be peace when people’s family members are tortured and imprisoned?
. . . Which goes to show that a new word is needed to distinguish diplomacy from Israeli ‘diplomacy,’ which is altogether another species of ‘diplomacy.’