part of the agreement 200 Palestinian prisoners have been released from Israeli jails just seeing from Egypt State linked media there saying 70 of those freed Palestinian prisoners have arrived in Egypt a large number of the others are going to the West Bank and our correspondent John donison is in rala just describe the scenes to us John well you can see the three prison buses behind me about 20 minutes ago those buses arrived and frankly pretty chaotic scenes as the prisoners got off a very large crowd and we saw the prisoners in their gray prison fatigues
many of them with shaved heads long beards a lot of them looking pretty thin it has to be said hoisted onto the shoulders carried into the sports complex behind me you can just see one now emerging there man in his 40s I'd say maybe his 50s being carried out with a shaven head and when they arrived you know the scramble to get to their loved ones I just saw one prisoner coming out on the shoulders and what looked to be his young son was hoisted up and put into his arms now the big difference in
this prisoner exchange this week compared to last week is the people released today many of them had been convicted of much more serious offenses including uh murder killing Israeli civilians now those convicted of most the most serious offenses and I think there were 121 of the 200 serving life sentences they're going to be taking into Egypt as you say they're there already and they're going to be deported to uh countries including Qatar and turkey so the people here and I think there's about a hundred or so who've been brought here today they will be allowed
to return to their families their homes in the West Bank many of them have been in prison for years and it's really a big moment for Palestinians here the prisoner issue is a massive one most families in the West Bank will have had a family member or a friend who's been help in Israeli prison at some point and you know these images today it has to be said Hamas will make hay from them because they'll say look we are the force that is getting our prisoners out just describe to our audience around the world a
how many Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli jails and B how many do we expect to be released as part of this hostage release deal well there are thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails from a whole range of offenses as I say every family probably has a member who at some point has been in an Israeli prison in the past 15 months there have been and you can just see another prisoner coming out here with the with the Celtic there he's just coming past being carried on down through the crowd with the Palestinian cfia
scarf on the scarf that yasa Arafat the former Palestinian leader was very well known for and going back to that question uh thousands of Palestinians have been arrested just in the past 15 months uh across the West Bank and also detained from Gaza in this first phase of the deal the first six we phase we are expecting another 1,600 Palestinian prisoners to be brought brought out some more now just emerging 1,600 more to come in the next 6 weeks including the most high-profile prisoners those convicted of the most serious offenses and John we mentioned that
this is the first phase of the three phases of this ceasefire and prisoner swap deal what is the mood in the West Bank about hopes for all three stages passing off and us getting to the end of the process well a few things first of all there's huge relief that there is some sort of ceasefire albe it perhaps temporary in Gaza there is celebration and relief that these prisoners are coming out today but overall I would say there is absolutely zero sense of optimism that this decades long conflict is anywhere near to coming to an
end you know Palestinians here in the West Bank feel like they're being squeed squeezed like never before they've seen a rise in attacks by Jewish settlers in the West Bank they've seen a rise in Israeli operations targeting militants in the West Bank just this week in Janine right in the north of the West Bank we saw a large Israeli military operation which killed I think at least 13 Palestinians and the past 15 months in the West Bank although overshadowed by events in Gaza has been the most deadly the most violent in decades so you know
there is absolutely no real Prospect of Peace here and we sometimes hear International political leaders saying you know the next stage is rebuilding Gaza and a two-state solution a Palestinian State living side by side with an Israeli state but the truth is you know there's no optimism that that's coming anytime soon
