The New Yorker:

Outside a prison where detained Palestinians were released, celebration and chaos.

By Anand Gopal

On November 24th, I woke up in occupied Ramallah to the news that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a temporary ceasefire. It was Friday, and the streets were empty. In a café, a few old Palestinian men were watching a news broadcast, which reported that the two warring parties had agreed to exchange human beings for four days: Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, at a ratio of one to three. The ratio reflected Hamas’s weakness: in the most recent hostage swap, in 2011, the militant group had traded the soldier Gilad Shalit for a thousand and twenty-seven imprisoned Palestinians. But in the café this depreciation was ignored. The men greeted the deal as a great victory—perhaps the only victory in two horrifying, bloody months.

By lunchtime, the Manara roundabout, in downtown Ramallah, was filling with people. They stood in twos and threes. The crowd circled four stone lions that guard the roundabout’s central island. A poster showed the faces of a few dozen of the thousands of children killed in Gaza. Palestinian policemen, in baby-blue uniforms, stood watching; they served the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah’s nominal government, and most residents consider such officers little more than quislings for the Israeli occupation. The P.A. has often suppressed rallies and protests, but today, it seemed to be allowing a demonstration.

The crowd advanced down an avenue lined with cafés and juice bars. A Christian priest marched in front, arms interlinked with the leader of Palestine’s Communist party. Men masked by kaffiyehs carried the flags of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another left-wing faction. Dozens of women marched behind the men; a few waved the green flag of Hamas.

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