![]() And they have spurred celebrations resembling rallies in front of prisons in Israel and at Israeli checkpoints in the occupied West Bank. The releases have reunited Palestinian families, returned mothers to their children, and sent home boys and girls, mostly teenagers between the ages of 15 and 17. ![]() Reunions like this have been playing out across east Jerusalem and the West Bank this week as Israel released women and children prisoners in return for Israeli hostages freed by Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza. Abu Al-Humus, cradling her son Tuesday, six months after he had been arrested by Israeli police in a roundup of local youth in his neighborhood in August. “This is the dream I prayed for,” said Ms. Nihaya Abu Al-Humus hugged and kissed her 17-year-old son, Muhammed, over and over again in the family room of their east Jerusalem home as if she hadn’t seen him in a lifetime. “Our happiness will only be complete when the Israeli jails are truly all empty,” she said. With a wary face, she said her freedom was bittersweet. Rawan, among the first batch of Palestinian prisoners to be released, stepped off the International Committee of the Red Cross bus and hugged her family. “Our happiness feels incomplete with ongoing war and the losses we are seeing in Gaza,” Buthaina Matar said while waiting at a checkpoint for her sister Rawan to be released. Yet there is an underlying wariness amid the arrests and violence still spiraling across the West Bank, and concerns that war is set to begin anew in Gaza. The shows of appreciation for Hamas coincide with frustration with the ineffective and increasingly autocratic Palestinian Authority. With each nightly prisoner release, the green flag of the Islamist Hamas has been raised in the West Bank, overtaking the yellow flag of Fatah, the faction that dominates the West Bank. Family reunions have been playing out across east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank this week as Israel released Palestinian women and children prisoners in return for hostages freed by Hamas.
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