As Israelis celebrate the promised return of the hostages from Gaza and the end to a painful two years of war, the joy is bittersweet as the price of this deal with the devil becomes clear. Not all the details of Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war have been finalized or made public. Hamas submitted names to Israel, and the Prime Minister’s Office responded with minor revisions. 

A top official within Hamas told AFP that Israel would release nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for around 20 living hostages as part of the deal. The figure includes 250 terror convicts out of 270 currently serving life sentences for murdering Israelis over the past four decades. Roughly 40 convicted terrorists will remain behind bars. Israel will also return 15 Palestinian bodies for every one it receives, which is expected to total the bodies of 360 terrorists. Israel will release 1,700 residents of the Gaza Strip who were not involved in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre and were arrested after that date, as well as 22 minors from Gaza who were not implicated in the attacks and were detained later. The bodies of Yahya and Mohammed Sinwar will not be returned, a measure intended to prevent their graves from becoming symbolic sites for terror commemoration.

Nukhba terrorists with “blood on their hands” from the October 7 massacre will not be released.

Terrorists serving life sentences who are released as part of the deal will be deported either to Gaza or to foreign countries willing to accept them. Israeli officials have already opened talks with several nations. In previous exchanges, most of those freed were sent to Gaza, Egypt, or Turkey, with a few transferred to Malaysia. According to Israeli estimates, Turkey and Qatar are expected to take in most of those released under the new deal.

Terror groups in Gaza are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted by Hamas terrorists and Gazans on October 7. They include the bodies of at least 26 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive, and grave concerns remain for the well-being of two others. Among the bodies held by Hamas is an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.

Jihad A-Karim Azziz Rom, a terrorist who participated in the lynching of IDF reservists Vadim Norzitch and Yosef Avrahami in 2000 and the abduction and murder of Yuri Gushchin in 2001, is set to be released as part of the Gaza peace deal. 

Also set to be released is Raad Sheikh, a Palestinian police officer, who took part in the 2000 lynching. The PA policeman beat Norzitch to death with an iron bar. He is serving two life sentences.

The Ramallah lynching became a key moment in Palestinian terrorism, after Italian film crews recorded Arab terrorists lifting their blood-soaked hands in celebration of the attack at Ramallah police station. The two reservists had mistakenly driven into Ramallah, where they were detained by Palestinian Authority police officers, and taken to the local police station in Ramallah’s twin city, el-Bireh, where a thousand Palestinians rallied for their deaths. The crowd eventually overwhelmed the officers, took over the station, and beat and stabbed Norzitch and Avrahami to death.

Also set to be released is Iyad Abu al-Rub, a senior Islamic Jihad commander from the Jenin area, who was found responsible for a series of deadly suicide bombings, including the 2003 attack in Sde Trumot, the 2004 bombing at the Stage nightclub in Tel Aviv, and the 2005 attack at the Hadera market, as well as numerous foiled plots.

Israel rejected several of the names proposed by Hamas. An Israeli official told Ynet overnight that the deal will not include the release of members of Hamas’ elite Nukhba force who were involved in the October 7 massacre. Also rejected was Abdullah Barghouti, a senior Hamas bombmaker and commander during the 2000 intifada who was implicated in several attacks on Israeli civilians, mainly in Jerusalem. An Israeli court handed him 67 life sentences in 2004 — the longest sentence handed down in the country’s history — after he was convicted of attacks that killed 66 people, including five Americans, and wounded more than 500.

Israel also rejected the release of Ibrahim Hamed, a senior Hamas operative convicted of murdering 46 Israelis, and  Ahmad Sa’adat, also known as Abu Ghassan, who is viewed as one of the most dangerous Palestinian political leaders. Israel also refused the Hamas request to release Hassan Salameh,  a senior Hamas commander sentenced to 46 life terms for organizing 1990s bus bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that killed dozens of Israelis, or Abbas al-Sayed, who was responsible for the 2001 Sharon shopping mall terror attack, in which 35 Israelis died.

Also requested by Hamas for release and rejected were Amjad and Hakim Awad, who murdered five members of the Fogel family of five in Itamar in 2011. The victims were the father Ehud (Udi) Fogel, the mother Ruth Fogel, and three of their six children—Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and Hadas, the youngest, a three-month-old infant. The infant was decapitated.; and Mahmoud Atallah, who was accused of a series of rapes and other sexual offenses against two female soldiers serving as guards in Israeli jails.

The release of the prisoners is painful to Israelis. In October 2011, after more than five years in captivity, IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was freed at the cost of releasing 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including some of the most senior Hamas operatives ever held by Israel. Among those freed was Yahya Sinwar, one of Hamas’s founding members in Gaza, who had been serving multiple life sentences for the abduction and murder of Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel. Upon his release, he rose to become Hamas’ political and military chief in Gaza.and was the principal architect of the October 7, 2023 massacre. 

According to data from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, approximately 76 of the released prisoners—around 12 percent of those allowed to return to the Judea and Samaria —were later implicated in terrorism or other security offenses. In 2014, during Operation Brother’s Keeper, following the murder of three Israeli teenagers, Israel rearrested another 56 of the Shalit deal’s released prisoners, most of them affiliated with Hamas.