Nearly 2,000 people, including about 1,700 seized from Gaza and held without charge, set free from Israeli jails
The police could not hold the crowds back. As soon as they saw the Palestinian prisoners through the windows of the bus, hundreds of people gathering in front of a theatre in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank rushed forward, chanting the names of loved ones they had not seen for years and in some cases, decades.
The prisoners were gaunt, the sharp angles of their faces decorated by freshly scabbed-over wounds. Loved ones hoisted them up on their shoulders with ease. One prisoner, swaddled in a Palestinian keffiyeh and splaying his fingers into a V for victory, was dropped before his mother, whose feet he began to kiss.
