On November 24th, I woke up in occupied Ramallah to the news that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a temporary ceasefire. It was Friday, and the streets were empty. In a café, a few old Palestinian men were watching a news broadcast, which reported that the two warring parties had agreed to exchange human beings for four days: Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, at a ratio of one to three. The ratio reflected Hamas’s weakness: in the most recent hostage swap, in 2011, the militant group had traded the soldier Gilad Shalit for a thousand and twenty-seven imprisoned Palestinians. But in the café this depreciation was ignored. The men greeted the deal as a great victory—perhaps the only victory in two horrifying, bloody months.
By lunchtime, the Manara roundabout, in downtown Ramallah, was filling with people. They stood in twos and threes. The crowd circled four stone lions that guard the roundabout’s central island. A poster showed the faces of a few dozen of the thousands of children killed in Gaza. Palestinian policemen, in baby-blue uniforms, stood watching; they served the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah’s nominal government, and most residents consider such officers little more than quislings for the Israeli occupation. The P.A. has often suppressed rallies and protests, but today, it seemed to be allowing a demonstration.
The crowd advanced down an avenue lined with cafés and juice bars. A Christian priest marched in front, arms interlinked with the leader of Palestine’s Communist party. Men masked by kaffiyehs carried the flags of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another left-wing faction. Dozens of women marched behind the men; a few waved the green flag of Hamas.
A man shouted slogans, and each time the crowd echoed him: “Come on out, Oh, Moon! Light up our camps! We were not created to live in the shadow of oppression!” Women held signs printed with the photographs of sons and daughters taken by the Israelis. Their hope, though they didn’t spell it out, was that their children would be part of the swap.
I approached a woman speaking ardently about imprisoned Palestinians. “They want to make our homes empty,” she said. Her name was Aman Nafa, and she was fifty-nine. She said that she had been a prisoner herself multiple times: her first arrest occurred when she was seventeen, after she’d organized protests against the occupation of the West Bank.
Upon her release, she said, a prisoner named Nael Barghouti sent a message asking for her hand in marriage, and they fell in love. After he was released, during the 2011 swap, they married. But nine years ago Barghouti was arrested again—the soldiers who made the arrest accused him of being affiliated with Hamas. (Nafa denies this.) Prior to October, Barghouti’s sister Hanan and two of her sons were arrested. On October 7th, another of her sons posted a TikTok video mocking an Israeli soldier who was being dragged across the ground; he and his brother were arrested. Hanan and three of her sons were placed under “administrative detention,” in which Palestinians are held without charge or trial. The arrests, Nafa believed, represented “revenge” against a family known for its resistance activities. (The Israel Defense Forces have killed members of the Barghouti family, and have called them “terrorists.”)
The demonstrators returned to the roundabout. Nafa received a phone call. A rumor was circulating that the first prisoners would soon be released. “We’re ready!” she exclaimed.
The exchange was supposed to occur outside Ofer Prison, a few miles to the southwest, near the town of Beitunia. I drove there on a street that ran through shabby neighborhoods. In the distance was the West Bank separation barrier, which many human-rights groups call the Apartheid Wall, and, beyond that, the outlines of Ofer Prison.
I parked and proceeded on foot toward the exchange point. Many Palestinians were headed the same way. A woman told me, “I don’t know any of the prisoners, but I’m here to support them.” An S.U.V. negotiated the thick traffic; protruding from its sunroof were three children, each dressed in a different color of the red-green-and-black Palestinian flag. People streamed down the surrounding hillsides. The word was that, at precisely four o’clock, thirty-nine Palestinians would be released from Ofer.
By 3:45 p.m., more than a thousand people had gathered. Children in kaffiyehs, balancing on tires and cars and fallen girders, peered down the road at the prison’s watchtowers. The crowd was alive with an expectant buzz, as if at any minute figures would materialize in the distance, and the horror of the past seven weeks—the nearly fifteen thousand dead, the flattened neighborhoods in Gaza—would now be worth it. “What Hamas did was a great achievement,” a man in his sixties told me. I asked him whether the release of a few dozen prisoners could justify the deaths of so many civilians, on both sides. “I’m not happy,” he countered. “No one here is happy.”
Yet, all around us, I saw smiles and heard laughter and song. Patriotic tunes sounded through car windows. It was as if the crowd wanted the prisoner release to prove to the world—or, at least, to remind themselves—that, beneath all the recent suffering, their fight for self-determination was still alive. The state of Israel sensed this ambition. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national-security minister, had ordered the police to suppress celebrations in East Jerusalem. “There are to be no expressions of joy,” he declared. “Expressions of joy are equivalent to backing terrorism. Victory celebrations give backing to those human scum, for those Nazis.”
Four o’clock came—nothing. The singing stopped. Around four-thirty, the sun disappeared behind the hills, and a festive atmosphere returned. I met a high-school coach who, in his red tracksuit, looked like he’d just come from the gym. (He refused to give his full name.) His brother-in-law would supposedly be released today. “This is a personal joy, because I went through this,” the coach explained. “I was in prison, too.” He considered himself blessed. He’d fallen in love, graduated from college, and started a family—but nothing had rivalled the moment when he’d walked free through a prison gate. He told me that he hadn’t quit his activities against the occupation, which he described, vaguely, as “tiny acts of resistance.” He told me that Israeli soldiers had raided his home the previous day; he hadn’t been there, so they’d briefly detained his wife.
As the final threads of light faded, the crowd’s excitement morphed into restlessness. Chants started up about Jerusalem—a city, nine miles to the south, that many of the protesters were barred from visiting. The crowd was now within a few hundred feet of Ofer Prison, a daunting sight to many Palestinians. Since Hamas’s October 7th massacre, which killed some twelve hundred Israelis, Amnesty International has documented “horrifying cases of torture” in Israeli prisons. (The Israel Prison Service did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the alleged abuses.)
People surged forward with a roar: a jeep carrying an Israeli flag appeared. It paused, seeming to size up the crowd, then disappeared around a bend. The atmosphere grew more tense, and some youths carried stones in their hands.
What happened next was very difficult to parse. Everyone turned and started running, as if on command, and I found myself running with them. A scream pierced the air. We fled in unison—young men in track pants, little girls, grandmothers—amid more screams. I didn’t dare turn around; a moment’s hesitation and I would have been trampled. After about a minute, the mass of bodies slowed, and I looked behind me. I couldn’t see anything, but the air smelled of vinegar, and I realized that the Israelis had tear-gassed the crowd. But then, just like that, as if this were an everyday activity, the crowd turned and walked back.
Teen-age girls were taking selfies for Instagram. One said that she was there for the “vibes.” The Israeli jeep reappeared, and the sight corkscrewed the crowd’s energy. A circle of men chanted for freedom. It was now six o’clock, and street lights had come on.
“Run!”
I couldn’t see where the shout had come from, but suddenly I was running again, along with hundreds of others. “What’s happening?” I yelled. Someone shouted, “I don’t know!” Tear-gas cannisters soared above us, the contrails spidering toward the earth.
When the air cleared, we inched toward the prison gate once more. People had resumed taking selfies and singing songs. “This is life!” a man told me. His name was Safwan, and he’d come hoping that his relative, a twenty-three-year-old woman, would be freed that day. She was an activist on her college campus, and had already been in prison for speaking out against the occupation. Then, one night in early November, soldiers burst into her home and arrested her again. Safwan and I spoke in Arabic, but when he learned that I was American he tried out his halting English. “The U.S. government, it is bullshit,” he said, referring to American support for Israel. “The U.S. don’t care about us.”
Safwan’s family was originally from the outskirts of Ramla, in what is now Israel. In 1948, Jewish forces expelled Arab inhabitants from the area; Safwan’s village was demolished, and a kibbutz was later built at the site. His family lived as refugees in Jerusalem until 1967, when they were expelled by the Israeli military again, this time to the West Bank. Like almost everyone I met, Safwan believes that Israel intends to eradicate Palestinians in the West Bank, too—but his family refuses to be displaced a third time. “I will die here,” he said.
As we were speaking, we heard a loud, terrible sound: Israeli forces were shooting. I jammed my notebook in my pocket and joined a panicked mob. I tried to take cover behind a parked car, but amid the swarm of bodies I couldn’t stay in place. (Neither the I.D.F. nor the Israel Border Police responded to requests for comment about the use of gunfire.)
Amid more gunshots, Safwan grabbed my hand and led me to his car. We drove to a nearby hilltop. A few people there were burning a fire to stay warm. Down below, we could see the crowd, illuminated by orange street lamps, repeatedly approaching the gate and then retreating, like some strange organism. More gunfire. In the dark, it was impossible to tell exactly what was happening, but I noticed a Red Crescent ambulance struggling against the current of bodies.
As I perched on a ledge, a green laser strafed our car and the men gathered near it. “It’s our guys,” one said, but another countered, “No, no, it’s the Army!” I had little desire to stay and find out; Safwan and I jumped back into his car.
We returned to the street below. I crept behind parked cars until the gate was again visible. Some in the crowd chanted the old Arab Spring slogan “The people want the downfall of the regime!” They were referring to the Palestinian Authority. Protesters also shouted in support of the military wing of Hamas: “The people want al-Qassam Brigades!”
The heaviest volley of gunfire yet rang out. I spotted some paramedics, who told me they’d just rushed to nearby hospitals a few young men who had been struck by live rounds. Despite the chaos, the street was still packed with children, young couples, women carrying babies. Everyone remained intent on seeing the exchange. Nobody was prepared to miss this one sliver of good news, were it to come at all.
At eight-twenty, a notice on my phone indicated that the Israeli hostages being released from Gaza were now safely in Israeli hands.
The night sky flashed white. I saw something—a rocket?—trace a parabola through the sky. I then realized that it was headed toward the prison. There was an explosion of brilliant red, green, and white: someone was setting off fireworks.
The scene was now delirious—as though the war was over and the Palestinian cause had been won. A pair of Red Cross buses emerged from the gate and struggled through the crowd. The doors of the first bus swung open and released prisoners—they were all under nineteen—flooded out. They faced camera crews and key lights and hundreds of lit phones. The former prisoners were hoisted onto shoulders and carried through the crowd like conquering heroes.
The next Red Cross bus was soon swarmed, with people banging on its sides. This bus contained female prisoners. One of the women flashed a V sign, and the crowd erupted. The door swung open and the women emerged. Each began giving interviews—speeches, really—extolling the virtues of hope and determination. One released prisoner, draped in a Palestinian flag, swore that Israel could never quash her thirst for freedom. Cars honked wildly.
Later, I visited local hospitals, to try to get a better sense of casualties. Dozens of Palestinians had been wounded that night, some critically. At the intensive-care unit of the Palestine Medical Complex, in Ramallah, a twenty-two-year-old man whose first name was Hashem lay connected to a tangle of I.V. lines. His face was covered by an oxygen mask. Doctors told me that he’d been shot by the Israelis near the gate that night. I said hello. He looked at me and, with great effort, tried to lift his hand, but he failed.
Israel released two hundred and forty prisoners during the ceasefire week, all women and children. Three-quarters of them hadn’t been convicted of a crime. Meanwhile, Israeli forces raided many cities and camps in the West Bank, arresting dozens of people. It’s not clear whether the ceasefire deal even made a dent in the total number of captive Palestinians.
On the second day of the Gaza ceasefire, Israeli forces stormed the West Bank town of Qabatiya, where, according to local reports, they confronted protesters who threw stones. I visited shortly afterward. Red-tiled buildings dotted the rocky hills, amid thick olive and pomegranate groves. I stopped by the house of Mahmoud Kumail, a thirty-year-old real-estate broker. According to Kumail’s family, on the day of the Israeli raid a neighbor had come by unannounced, and Kumail had invited him in. Kumail was carrying a plate of hummus and pita to his guest when Israeli forces surrounded the house. The guest hid in the back yard, along with Kumail. The soldiers forced the rest of Kumail’s extended family—some twenty-five people—into the street. For thirty minutes, the Israelis demanded that the guest show himself; finally, he and Kumail emerged, with their hands raised. According to multiple witnesses, the guest—a twenty-year-old named Tareq Ziad—was then shot in the leg, despite his surrender. He and Kumail were taken away. His mother told me she has heard no news of her son.
Afterward, Israeli forces proceeded through the neighborhood in a convoy. A dozen houses away, Shamekh Kamel Abu al-Rub, an internal-medicine physician, heard gunshots. Calling around, he heard that civilians had been wounded nearby. It was his day off, but he wanted to help. I obtained a video that depicts what happened next. The footage, taken from a nearby rooftop, shows an olive-green armored Israeli vehicle driving through the residential street. A second armored vehicle passes through the frame. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth.
“Bang! Bang!” The camera jolts. A sixth vehicle passes. A woman’s scream can be heard. “Bang!” More vehicles pass. Multiple women are crying and screaming.
I visited Abu al-Rub’s home, where the iron front gate was pocked with bullet holes. According to his relatives, he and his brother opened the gate and stepped onto the street just as the convoy was rolling past. Soldiers in one of the vehicles shot Abu al-Rub’s brother. When Abu al-Rub rushed to help, he was also gunned down. His brother remains in critical condition, but Abu al-Rub died. (An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson acknowledged firing rounds, noting that “terrorists threw explosives” and fired at their forces. Eyewitnesses dispute this claim.)
The Israelis also recently raided the village of Beita. Not long afterward, I showed up to find people crowded into a fitness club, where a memorial service was being held for a boy named Muhammad Adeeli. He and his friends had been playing in an abandoned lot. A few hundred feet away, across a narrow valley, Israeli soldiers were stationed. According to the children, they were fired on without warning. A bullet fatally struck Muhammad. (The I.D.F. spokesperson said that “rioters hurled stones at the forces, who responded by shooting,” and that it is reviewing the circumstances of the boy’s death.)
A poster at the club’s entrance showed a smiling Muhammad alongside the words “In heaven we’ll meet.” Just weeks earlier, the Israelis had killed one of Muhammad’s relatives, which had made a deep impression on the child, who was in fifth grade. He’d told his friends that he knew his own time was running out. “When I’m martyred, bury me next to him,” he’d reportedly said.
Throughout the West Bank, I met Palestinians who swore that such killings had first appeared to them in dreams, in visions. It was impossible for them to watch the news from Gaza and not have a sense of apocalypse. At a moment when nihilism might be tempting, an eschatological view imbued each loss with a sense of meaning.
Muhammad’s memorial poster also featured a photograph of Yasir Arafat. Posters of Fatah, the nationalist political party, were everywhere—but I noticed that people seemed increasingly eager to hail Hamas. In Balata, a refugee camp where the streets are so narrow that you can extend your hands and touch facing houses, I met with Aseel al-Titi, the released prisoner whom I’d previously seen through the bus window flashing a V sign. She belongs to a family of resistance fighters. Many had apparently been affiliated with Fatah—photographs of killed relatives were plastered on her living-room walls—but Titi now sat beneath a giant Hamas flag. It was a gesture of gratitude toward a group she saw as her liberators. “The ceasefire was a great achievement,” she said, and its goal was to “empty the prisons.” Nearly everyone in her family had spent time in prison, even her mother, and some had never been charged.
In another village, I met Ataf Jaradat, a grandmother, who described how her two sons had been arrested in December, 2021, for allegedly shooting at Israelis who had established an illegal settlement, one of whom died. After she took to the media, and announced that if her children were “engaged in the resistance” she refused to condemn them, she was arrested, too. The I.D.F. subsequently dynamited her son’s home. Jaradat spent nearly two years in prison. Her living room hummed with visitors congratulating her on her release, and each one seemed convinced, in the teeth of the evidence, that this horrible war had achieved something.
Tragically, almost everyone I met credited Hamas. Secular Palestinians were no exception. A woman who frequents night clubs told me, “Before, I would have been horrified at the thought of living under Hamas. But now I admire them. In a way, we are all with Hamas now.” Such an attitude is born of immense despair, not only in the face of fifteen thousand dead Gazans but also after decades of humiliation. The way so many Palestinians see it—and I heard endless versions of this argument—they have tried everything. When they attack military targets, they are called terrorists. When they protest peacefully, they can be shot at or thrown in prison or, in some cases, expelled from the country. Even posting on Facebook can land them behind bars. When they call on allies to boycott businesses linked to the occupation, they are labelled antisemites. When, in 2018, Gazans staged a yearlong protest called the Great March of Return, Israeli forces regularly fired on unarmed demonstrators, killing more than two hundred civilians. The U.N. Human Rights Council found that “in several instances it was likely that Israeli snipers shot at children intentionally.” (Israel said that the U.N. report reflected “political bias against Israel.”) Yet the world hardly noticed. Perversely, it was only the October 7th Hamas massacre that brought Palestine to the front pages.
The attacks made manifest what people on the ground have long known: that the status quo cannot continue, and the Oslo Accords are fully dead. Nobody I spoke with could articulate a path forward, but for now they felt that it was enough just to banish the past.
For the three remaining nights of the prisoner exchange, crowds continued to gather near Ofer Prison to welcome their loved ones. They crept up to the gate, were tear-gassed, and fell back. They crept up again and were shot at. There were many more injuries. At least one person was killed, on the final day of the swap. It’s unclear whether there were others.
During the night, the freed prisoners emerged into a sea of revellers, where they gave speeches about steadfastness, freedom, and God. During the day, the Israeli military raided towns and camps, battling militants, apprehending people, and killing bystanders. On the final day of the swap, Safwan, whose cousin had been among the released, told me, “This is our sacrifice. Today we sacrifice, so that tomorrow we can be free.”
The next day, the ceasefire broke down, and Israel began pounding the Gaza Strip again. ♦
