On Saturday, the Al-Qassam Brigades handed over the seventh and final batch of prisoners as part of the first phase of the prisoner exchange deal.

The handover of the two prisoners, Tal Shoham and Avraham Mengistu, took place in Rafah. Mengistu had been captured 11 years ago, and Israel had previously refused to negotiate over him, while Tal Shoham had been captured in the October 7 operation.

The Qassam Brigades displayed destroyed Israeli weapons on the platform for handing over the prisoners in Rafah, after its fighters had seized these weapons in the Rafah battles during the ground war on Gaza.

The platform in Rafah carried the slogan "We are the flood...we are the great might", in addition to the verse "For red freedom there is a door that every blood-stained hand knocks on", which is the verse that Yahya Sinwar had appeared reciting in scenes broadcast by the Qassam Brigades of Sinwar in Rafah during the war.

The platform also carried a picture of the captive soldier Hadar Goldin, who was captured in the 2014 war, and the occupation announced his death, while Hamas refused to comment on his fate before conducting real negotiations to release him along with the three other captives it had in its possession at the time, namely: Abraham Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who are being released in the seventh batch today, and Shaul Oron, whose body the occupation recovered after the ceasefire.

The Qassam Brigades handed over three other prisoners in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip: Ilya Maimon Yitzhak Cohen, Omar Shem Tov, and Omer Finkert. As for the sixth prisoner, Hisham al-Sayed, he was handed over in Gaza without any ceremony. Media outlets quoted a source in the Qassam Brigades as saying that the decision was made "as an honor to our people in the occupied interior," considering that Hisham al-Sayed is a Palestinian from 1948, and he is "among the exceptional cases of those who enlist in the occupation army, which is rejected by all Palestinians," according to the Qassam source.

On the handover platform, the Al-Qassam Brigades raised a banner that read, “The land knows its people... from the foreigners with dual citizenship.” The handover process was opened with the Palestinian national anthem.

In return, 151 prisoners serving life sentences and long sentences will be released today, as well as 445 prisoners from the Gaza Strip who were arrested during the war, in addition to women and children arrested from Gaza during the war; who were decided to be released in exchange for the four bodies that were released last Thursday.

Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif Al-Qanou said that 33 days have passed since the first phase without the occupation completing the implementation of all the terms of the agreement, stressing that the guarantee for completing the upcoming exchange operations is the occupation’s commitment to the remaining terms of the agreement and implementing the humanitarian protocol.

Al-Qanou added, in press statements coinciding with the handover of the two prisoners in Rafah, that the situation in Gaza is catastrophic, "which requires mediators to pressure the occupation to implement the humanitarian protocol and provide our people with shelter and relief supplies."

Al-Qanou reiterated the resistance's readiness to complete a "broad and complete one-package" exchange process based on a final cessation of war, the withdrawal of the occupation, and the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. He continued: "We informed the mediators that the next day in Gaza is a purely Palestinian affair."

It is noteworthy that this batch is the last of the living prisoners who were agreed to be released in the first phase of the ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement, while the release of 4 detained bodies is expected in the coming days.