Gaza mother's hopes for return of long-jailed son dashed

Awaiting the release of her son after more than three decades in jail, 75-year-old Najat El Agha had searched the ruined streets of Gaza for some modest supplies to welcome him back.

Her son, Diaa El Agha, was supposed to be freed as part of an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners on Saturday under a fragile Gaza ceasefire deal.

"I was walking in Omar al Mukhtar Street in Gaza, asking myself, 'What can I get you, my son?' I filled the bags with clothes, and even toothpicks," she said in an interview in the family home in Gaza.

She waited for 12 hours at the handover site at Gaza's European Hospital, but Israel postponed delivering the batch of 620 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, saying it wanted assurances over the next release of its hostages first.

Najat El Agha has been inconsolable ever since.

"I prepared everything for him, but he didn't get out," she said, overcome by emotion as relatives comforted her.

"At the end, they took me and forced me to go home, but I wished I could have stayed until Diaa was released," she added, sitting near a picture showing her son, now 50, kissing her hand during a prison visit.

"I was staring at people like crazy, wondering why they were asking me to leave."

Diaa El Agha was imprisoned in 1992, aged 17, for killing an officer of the Israeli spy agency Mossad.

On his family's website a newspaper report shows a picture of an Israeli soldier holding up the pickaxe used to kill the Mossad agent. An image of Diaa, who the website said was sentenced to 99 years, is superimposed.

One of 18 Palestinians detained for 30 years or more in Israeli prisons, he lost both his father and sister during his time in detention and became known as the "Dean of the Prisoners" for spending so long behind bars.

RARE HOPE

When Israel delayed delivering the Palestinians on Saturday it said it was seeking assurances that its hostages would be released without "humiliating ceremonies", a reference to recent handovers by Hamas that UN officials said went against international law because they were not respectful.

Hamas has made hostages appear on stage in front of crowds and sometimes speak before they were handed over. Coffins with hostage remains have also been carried through crowds.

Sixty-three more captives, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, remain in Gaza and are due to be released under the three-phase ceasefire deal.

The war in Gaza broke out after the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023, in the bloodiest single day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Hamas killed 1,200 people and took around 250 people hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. The Israeli retaliatory offensive has killed at least 48,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say, and laid waste to much of the enclave, leaving some hundreds of thousands in makeshift shelters and dependent on aid trucks.

Despite widespread suffering all around her, the war left people like Najat El Agha with rare hope that at least she would embrace her son again after so many years apart.

For now the family home, damaged by an Israeli strike, still bears a sign reading: "House of the prisoner Diaa Zakaria El Agha".