BBCOn her first day of freedom, Bushra Al-Taweel was enjoying her morning coffee and looking forward to lunch when we arrived at the family's apartment in Ramallah.
“In prison, it was just hummus, hummus, hummus,” she joked. “Now, I can eat something different.”
In the kitchen, there were hugs from family and friends, and her mother sat at the table watching, happy that her only daughter was finally home as a result of the Gaza ceasefire agreement that saw Hamas begin releasing hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Gaza. Israeli prisons on Sunday.
The 32-year-old journalist spent more than five years in Israeli prisons at various times.
She has always been detained without charge, most recently since March 2024, except for one occasion when she was tried over a lecture she gave at a mosque.
“I am a journalist,” she said. “I have the right to express myself.”
ReutersThis is not the first time that Bushra Al-Taweel has participated in a prisoner exchange.
In 2011, she was released along with 1,000 other Palestinian prisoners as part of the deal to release Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who had been held hostage in Gaza for more than five years.
Shortly after that deal, Israeli forces quickly re-arrested her.
She said that during her various arrests, she was severely beaten, threatened with being shot in the leg and having a cigarette extinguished on her back.
She said that in prison she was insulted on a daily basis by the guards.
“The worst thing is that I am not allowed to wear the hijab,” she said.
“When we first went to prison, they forced me to strip.”
The Israeli Prison Service said that all prisoners are treated in accordance with the law.
ReutersThe young, bespectacled journalism graduate is a conservative Muslim.
In the living room, on the wall is a picture of her father, Jamal Al-Tawil, a prominent Hamas politician in the occupied West Bank.
He is the former mayor of Al-Bireh, outside Ramallah. He spent more than 19 years in Israeli prisons.
I asked Bushra if she supports Hamas.
“I don’t want to be arrested again,” she said, and refused to answer.
I also asked her if she had any sympathy for the three Israeli hostages, young women like her, who were released Sunday after more than a year of Hamas captivity in Gaza.
“We have to go home, and they have to go home,” she said.
“The hostages wanted me out. As long as there are hostages, prisoners like me will have their freedom.”
ReutersIt is expected that thirty more Israeli hostages will be released in the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, in exchange for the release of about 1,800 additional Palestinian prisoners.
Some of these prisoners have been convicted of more serious crimes, including multiple murders.
They will likely be deported outside Israel and the Palestinian territories to countries such as Qatar and Turkey.
But all of the Palestinians released on Sunday, including many children, were convicted of relatively minor crimes.
Many, like Bushra, were never charged and were held in Israeli prisons under so-called “administrative detention,” a process strongly condemned by human rights groups.
The Israeli military says it often cannot disclose details of the charges people face, not even to detainees and their lawyers, for security reasons, to avoid revealing the identities of informants.
