Will Israel ever free its most feared Palestinian prisoner?

The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that during the Sharm el-Sheikh negotiations, Hamas demanded the release of Ibrahim Hamed, the former commander of its military wing in the West Bank. Israeli security sources claim that Hamed possesses capabilities equal to or even greater than Yahya Sinwar’s.

Hamed is recognized as the chief architect of Hamas’s martyrdom operations during the Second Intifada. He had long been pursued by Israel’s internal security service (Shin Bet) before being captured by Israeli forces in 2006. In 2012, he was sentenced to 54 life terms for allegedly killing 46 Israelis and injuring over 400 others.

Hebrew-language media report that Israel continues to oppose the release of prominent Palestinian leaders, including Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Sa’adat, and it remains unclear whether it will agree to release other high-profile prisoners such as Hamed.

The request is part of the ongoing prisoner exchange talks, under which Hamas has pledged to implement part of the deal within 72 hours.

Born in 1965 in the town of Silwad, east of Ramallah, Ibrahim Hamed is one of the most prominent Hamas military commanders in the West Bank. A Birzeit University graduate, he has been actively involved in Hamas’s military structure since the 1990s. Following the martyrdom of senior Hamas commanders Imad and Adel Awadallah in 1998, Hamed assumed command of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank.

Shin Bet regards him as the mastermind behind dozens of military and suicide operations during the Second Intifada — including gas pipeline explosions, attacks on military installations, and martyrdom operations that, according to Israeli sources, resulted in the deaths of dozens of soldiers and settlers.

Since his arrest, Hamed has been held in solitary confinement in Israeli prisons and subjected to severe physical and psychological torture. Yet, Israeli media acknowledge that none of the interrogation methods have succeeded in extracting a confession from him. Shin Bet has described him as an “unbreakable rock,” admitting that no other detainee has challenged them as much as Hamed.

He has been denied family visits and suffers from serious physical ailments, including a torn cruciate ligament and spinal disc injury, caused by harsh prison conditions. His wife and children were deported to Jordan following his imprisonment.

In recent years, Ibrahim Hamed’s name has repeatedly surfaced in prisoner exchange negotiations, and he remains a symbolic figure of Palestinian resistance inside Israeli jails.