Raw Video: Israel Completes Prisoner Swap

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Raw Video: Israel Completes Prisoner Swap

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The prisoners released in this phase were all Israel's choice; all were light security prisoners, and most had very little time left to serve.

This second phase involved what the Israelis call light security prisoners. None had been convicted of killing or wounding anyone, and none were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

About half of the prisoners were serving four years or less, and a third of them two years or less, often for offenses like throwing stones or incendiary bombs or possessing weapons. About 10 percent had sentences of 10 years or more, mostly for throwing or planting bombs or attempted murder. Ten percent are younger than 18; three of the prisoners are 14 years old.

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“This is not a serious part of the exchange,” Issa Qaraqe, the Palestinian minister of detainees for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, said in a telephone interview. “Many of those being released were due to get out within months anyway, and there are women left behind and prisoners who have been there a long time. If Israel had wanted to make a real good-will gesture, the list would have been totally different.”

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In Gaza, a spokesman for Hamas, Salah al-Baradweel, said Israel seemed to be punishing Gaza by freeing so few prisoners from there: 41 of the 550.

Israel Frees Palestinians in Second Part of Exchange

Meanwhile, Israel restocks...

Israel has detained nearly the same number of Palestinians they freed in the first stage of a prisoner exchange deal in the two months since the swap, a prisoners group said on Thursday.

Israeli forces detained nearly 470 Palestinians since the Oct. 18 release of 477 prisoners from Israeli jail in exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Ramallah-based rights group Addameer said.

"This wave of arrests reveals that the exchange deal has not deterred Israel’s policy of detention of Palestinians; rather, Israeli prisons are being refilled with almost the exact number of Palestinians that were released in October," the prisoners group said.

Seventy children have been detained in the two months since, Addameer said. In the past two weeks, 11 children were arrested in Jerusalem refugee camp Shufat and 10 in Duheisha refugee camp in Bethlehem, according to figures from the rights organization.

Further, 11 women have been arrested, two of whom are still in custody and three are under house arrest, they said.

In the second phase of the prisoner exchange, 550 prisoners are set to be released on Sunday. Gaza prisoners ministry official Riyad al-Ashqar said on Thursday that six women and 55 children were among those slated for release.

But Addameer said it was "concerned" about the implications of its figures for the period following the next phase of releases.

The rights group highlighted that arrests targeted politicians and protesters in West Bank villages.

Since Oct. 18, Israel detained two PLC members renewed the administrative detention orders of six, and sentence another lawmakers to 30 years in jail.

Among villages holding weekly non-violent protests against Israel separation wall and settlement expansion, forces detained 17 people in Beit Ummar, two in Bilin, three in Nabi Saleh and two in al-Walaja during the same period, the group said.

Israeli jails 'refilled' after prisoner swap