In late January 2025, Omar—then serving a life sentence in Israeli prison—met with representatives from the International Red Cross informing him that Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire deal, and he was set to be released.

“The Red Cross told me there are two options here: One, that I stay behind bars in prison or [two], to be deported to Egypt,” Omar, who requested his last name be withheld, told Jerusalem Story.1 “But there was no option for me to stay in my hometown, where I was born and raised, in Jerusalem.”

After spending nearly 22 years in Israeli jails, on January 25, 2025, Omar, along with 69 other Palestinian prisoners, climbed onto buses transporting them to the Egyptian border, where they would be free but forced to remain in permanent exile.2 They endured abuse before arriving; Omar’s rib was broken in the beating that he and others received from the Israeli wardens.

As part of the subsequent October 9, 2025, ceasefire agreement, Israel released 2,000 imprisoned Palestinians. The majority had been detained in Gaza during the war and held without charge; 250 of them were serving lengthy sentences in Israeli jails. Of these 250, 154 were—like Omar—deported to Egypt.3

There are over 11,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention camps, besides an unknown number of Palestinians from Gaza classified by Israel as enemy combatants detained since October 7, 2023. As of this writing, five released prisoners have been rearrested by the Israelis, accused of returning to political activity.4

In Cairo, Omar and the other released prisoners were held at a Marriott Hotel before being transferred to another hotel in the city of Ain Sokhna, roughly 90 minutes outside of the capital city. The Daily Mail had disclosed their location, which was sensitive to the government and also put them at risk.5 (The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club says that their accommodation was then downgraded again in response to an Israeli outcry that such prisoners should not be allowed to stay in relative luxury.)

The deportees live in limbo, and freedom is elusive. They are mostly confined to the hotel and must be accompanied by Egyptian security forces when traveling outside. In order to stay in Egypt, they’ve received temporary Palestinian passports issued by the Palestinian Authority (PA) that can be renewed annually. Like other exiled Jerusalemites, Omar was stripped of his Jerusalem permanent residency status (see Precarious Status), leaving him stateless. A permanent travel document can’t be issued until the deportees receive residency or citizenship from a specific country; Omar has applied for citizenship in Turkey.

“Real freedom is always elusive,” Omar says. “My hope is to return to my homeland, and this freedom is missing. In terms of stability, I am without a job or a residency, and I don’t have any identity card that allows me to stay in Egypt or to travel. There is only social media, which we are just learning about.”

Most of the Palestinians deported in the latest agreement were sent to Egypt, but some are in Turkey or Indonesia, Nasser Qous, director of the Jerusalem Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, said.

“Their situation is unknown, because they don’t know if they want to settle or will be able to stay in Egypt. Other proposed countries that they can be sent to haven’t committed yet to take them, such as Spain, Tunisia, and Algeria,” Qous told Jerusalem Story.

In the past, other countries like Greece, Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, and Turkey have also accepted Palestinian deportees.6

“Their future is very difficult, because even the countries that say they will receive them, then they don’t really integrate them,” says Qous. Most of them have been in prison—which Omar compares to “living between graves”—for decades, and then they must adapt to a new country with different customs and traditions. “Each one wants to start a family. Ninety percent of them are not married. How can they marry someone from the country they live in? In Turkey and Indonesia, the language is different.”

Living in a new country doesn’t just require adaptation, it also means isolation from family.

“From the last prisoner release, there are many families that have not yet been able to visit their children. The Israeli authorities have put a travel restriction on them, preventing them from going to see the released ones in the other countries,” Qous said. “This is another form of torture for the families, that they can’t now see their relatives.”

Lastly, “there are many people in exile who find themselves alone—their parents have died, or they were an only child, etc.”

Israel has long used the policy of deportation against Palestinian prisoners. Qous says that currently, the Prisoners’ Club is aware of and tracking 253 former prisoners whom Israel deported over different releases through the years.

In December 1992, following the killing of six Israeli security officers, including the kidnapping and subsequent killing of border patrol officer Nissim Toledano, Israel launched a massive arrest campaign, detaining some 1,600 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel’s cabinet then ordered that the individuals they claimed incited the violence be deported for up to two years.7

On December 17, 1992, in the middle of winter, Israel deported 415 Palestinians from the occupied territories to southern Lebanon. Most were deported from the prisons they had been held in since Israel had arrested them earlier that month.8 Politically, this tactic backfired as the deportees formed long-lasting relationships that helped fuel later resistance.

Two decades later, during the Second Intifada in 2002, Israel deported to the Gaza Strip 39 Palestinians of approximately 200 who sought refuge in the Church of the Nativity when Israeli forces took control of Bethlehem; the deportations were part of a negotiated solution to the five-week standoff that ensued.9

In 2011, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was released from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. Of this number, 18 were deported to Gaza for a period of three years, 146 were permanently deported to Gaza as a condition of their release, and 41 were deported outside of the occupied Palestinian territories.10 Jerusalemite prisoner Nasser Abed Rabbo was one of those released to his home town of Sur Bahir, but he was rearrested in 2014 and forced to complete the rest of his 37-year, eight-month sentence.11 His name came up in February, 2025 to be deported in the most recent prisoner exchange, and he was actually taken out of his cell en route to being released, but because he had only a few months remaining on his time, he refused deportation, only to be shot by a guard. He was finally released in October 2025, without deportation, having served three decades in prison and finally completing his sentence.12

“Israel is always using the issue of prisoners in order to put more pressure and punish collectively—not just the prisoners themselves, but the family, the society, and so on,” says Sahar Francis, a human rights lawyer.13

More recently, Israel has passed several bills aiming to fast-track the deportation of Palestinians. In 2023, the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, passed a law allowing the revocation of the citizenship or permanent residency of any Palestinian who has been convicted of “terrorism” by Israel who received money from the PA or on whose behalf money was received from the PA. In 2024, the Knesset passed a law permitting the government to deport relatives of individuals convicted of “terrorism” by Israel or held in custody on suspicion of “terrorist offenses,” but not charged. And in 2025, the Knesset passed an amendment to the state's Citizenship Law approving the revocation of status for Palestinians whose relatives are convicted of terrorist acts—regardless of whether or not they have a connection to the family member or were involved in the incident.

Deportation of an occupied population is illegal under international law, specifically violating Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the forcible transfer and deportation of protected persons. Deportation of protected persons in situations of armed conflict also violates the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), thereby constituting a war crime.14

“This provision underlies a series of prohibitions,” Susan Akram, director of Boston University Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, told Jerusalem Story.15 “And what it means is it governs two types of forcible transfers—forced relocation within occupied territory, so moving someone between the West Bank and Gaza, for example, or East Jerusalem . . .  as well as deportations, meaning forced relocation from occupied territory to the territory of any other country.”

It’s not just Israel that is then implicated in these war crimes, but also the countries Palestinians are deported to as well, as Akram explains.

“They’re also governed by these provisions,” Akram said. “These forcible deportations and transfers can’t become lawful because they’re in agreement between Israel and another country. They remain prohibited by both the receiving country and the sending country.”

Despite decades of Israel forcibly transferring Palestinians, the International Criminal Court has yet to take action on this matter.

“It’s time, to the extent that this is going to continue . . . the only way this practice will stop is to charge the individuals, the principals, who are carrying out these forcible transfers, [and] to charge them with the war crimes that they are [committing],” Akram told Jerusalem Story.

Justice, though, like Omar’s freedom, feels unattainable, as his future still hangs in the balance. “ After 22 years in prison, today I feel like a stranger outside my country. I want to be with my family and friends,” says Omar. “I would like to finish my life in my country and on my land. I was resisting the occupation of the lands that Israel occupied in 1967.” The Hague and United Nations have asserted this year that this resistance is legal, he says.