Times: Israeli Prisons are Creating a Generation of Hamas Leaders

SadaNews - A report by the British Times newspaper revealed that Israeli prisons have played a pivotal role in shaping and forming a generation of leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), most notably Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the October 7, 2023 attacks.

The newspaper reported, through its correspondent in Washington, George Grillz, that Sinwar, who spent more than 20 years in captivity before being released in 2011 as part of the deal for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, emerged from "Hadarem" prison armed with a deep understanding of his adversary.

However, Sinwar believed the deal was incomplete as it did not include Hassan Salameh and Mahmoud Issa. While Salameh remained in prison, Issa was recently released after decades of detention.

In prison, Sinwar learned Hebrew, studied Jewish history, translated books for Israeli intelligence officers into Arabic, and wrote a novel about jihad from the tunnels of Gaza, according to the newspaper.

Grillz quoted Israeli security officials as saying he planned the October 7 attacks from within the very prison known among detainees as "Hadarem University."

The reporter noted that Israel has consistently employed, since its establishment in 1948, an approach of inequitable deals for prisoner exchanges, based on a biblical principle that sanctifies the preservation of life, making the kidnapping of Israelis an effective bargaining chip for Palestinian factions.

However, the Shalit deal, which resulted in the release of more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, has become, according to Israeli officials, a "security disaster" that contributed to the rebuilding of Hamas's military leadership.

The newspaper's report cited similar experiences involving other leaders, such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Ismail Haniya, who rose to the top of the movement after their release.

Today, Israel - Grillz says - fears repeating the same mistake, having kept prominent names like Marwan Barghouti and Abbas Al-Sayed behind bars, while tightening detention conditions and canceling educational and cultural privileges inside prisons.

Israel views these strict policies as incurring a heavy humanitarian cost, as reports from the UN and human rights organizations, including "B'Tselem," have documented cases of torture and sexual assaults within prisons since the October 7 attacks, while Israel denies the violations and insists it adheres to "the limits of international law, no more."

The Times quoted Dr. Yoav Beaton, according to SadaNews, the former head of the Israeli Prison Service intelligence, as saying he believes releasing hundreds of prisoners in the current ceasefire deal is a "high price that is unavoidable," but he warns against the error of deporting some of them abroad, as monitoring them would become impossible.

The newspaper noted that Tel Aviv released 1,700 Palestinian detainees and 250 life-sentenced prisoners in the last ceasefire deal, among them 157 from Fatah and 65 from Hamas, and 154 of them were deported abroad via Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey.

It stated that former officials warned that the released individuals might reorganize away from Israeli oversight, as happened with Saleh Al-Arouri, who was released in 2007 and later became a Hamas leader in the West Bank and one of the architects of the October 2023 attacks.

The newspaper concluded with a striking paradox: the prisons that Israel intended to serve as a means of deterrence have, through education, interaction, and experience, transformed into incubators for the most influential and resilient Hamas leaders: a generation that emerged from behind bars to master the language of its enemy, understand it, and then confront it with what they learned there.