Palestinian sons await reunion as militant father jailed 23 years ago appears on detainee swap list

On the outskirts of Jenin, a young family look forward to the sort of release that crystallises the opposition of some Israelis to the exchanges of detainees and hostages

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Samer and Najib Aweis, like all residents of Jenin’s refugee camp, have lost almost everything over the past two months. A siege by Palestinian Authority security forces, followed by one of the most severe Israeli operations in the camp’s violent history, forced the two brothers and their young families into exile up a quiet hillside overlooking the camp in the occupied West Bank.

The last they heard of their home in Jenin was that Israeli forces were using it as a preliminary detention centre – a better fate than many in the area that have been destroyed. They have had no update on the fate of their gaming cafe, stocked with pricey computers, that had been their livelihood.

But they are also close to gaining the ultimate gift from a ceasefire between Israel and militant group Hamas to pause the war in Gaza: their father may return to them after more than two decades in prison.

“I didn’t have the opportunity to have a father, so for me this is a very special moment,” Najib, who was four years old when their father was jailed, told The National, sitting next to his brother as his young son pretended to clean their rented house with a broom three times his size. Another child lay playing a game on his phone, legs kicking precariously close to a shisha pipe as the early evening light streamed in through the door.

The Aweis brothers and their young families fled Jenin for a quiet hillside overlooking the camp in the occupied West Bank. Photo: Patricia Martisa for The National

Najib and Samer's father, Abdel Karim Aweis, is on the list of between 1,700 and 2,000 people supposed to be released during the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, over 42 days. The fifth hostage-prisoner swap under the deal took place on Saturday but their father was not among the 183 detainees Israel said would be freed in the exchange.

Even though he is younger, Samer, 22, knows his father better than Najib, 27, and teased him about that throughout their conversation, after spending a year with him in prison.

Samer and Najib have a third brother, whom they did not name and who does not live with them because he is wanted by Israel for suspected militancy, Najib said. “He’s moving around. Only God knows when he’ll see my dad,” he explained.

In January 2019, the wanted brother was sent to prison and met his father in captivity. That inspired Samer, then 16, to try to meet him too.

“I used to go up to the Jalameh checkpoint outside Jenin and shoot at it so that [Israeli soldiers] would eventually arrest me. I knew what I was doing, I was just there to make noise, not kill anyone.”

Samer was locked up by March that year, sentenced to five years in prison. Two years later he was moved to the same adult facility as his father, after turning 18. He got to see him for a full year before being released in 2024.

“We spoke to him after the list was published,” Najib added. “He had mixed feelings. He was very emotional but also asking for news of the camp and the situation in Jenin. He kept asking us if we were sure he was on the list.”

Their father, a militant belonging to the Fatah group, was jailed during the second intifada in 2002, and should have been spending the next 27 years in prison, having served 23 for premeditated murder and planning terror attacks. A leader in the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, he was convicted of organising attacks on Israeli settlers and suicide bombings in Israel.

The release of prisoners like Abdel Karim Aweis in the deal is hugely troubling for Israelis and is tearing at the seams of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right coalition, many of whose ultranationalist members think freeing such men is a dangerous humiliation and a risk to national security.

Despite the tensions, polling suggest that a significant majority of Israelis are willing to carry on with the deal and want hostages out above all else.

Exile awaits

As part of the deal men such as Aweis who are serving the most severe sentences will go into exile, to countries like Turkey, Qatar, Algeria and Egypt, and possibly other nations.

“I hope he’ll go to Turkey,” Najib said. “After 23 years in jail he deserves to be in a beautiful country he can enjoy. We are so grateful for Gaza’s resistance – 50,000 people sacrificed their lives for the prisoners.”

Damaged roads and buildings near the main entrance to Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank city. EPA

Throughout the decades of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Jenin, and in particular its refugee camp, has been on the frontline of Palestinian militancy and resistance. It has paid a heavy price for that. Residents told The National on Thursday that they believe Israel is trying to do what it did in Gaza to their city. They were defiant, even as the vast majority of the camp was displaced, the fate of their old lives unknown.

“Force can only be faced with force,” Najib said when asked whether the family’s suffering, as well as that of Jenin and Gaza, was worth it.

“Hamas didn’t need to get any more popular in the West Bank after October 7 – it already was,” he concluded, next to his young sons who were growing impatient and tired.

If they can leave the city and if Abdel Karim is released, it will be the first time the three generations have been together – but still not in Jenin, Najib observed, as a few Israeli shots rang through the valley, breaking the tense silence in the leafy suburb.