Longest-serving Palestinian inmate, deported to Egypt, sends wife new wedding ring

By Mohammed and Torokman

KOBAR, West Bank (Reuters) – Nael Barghouti, the longest serving Palestinian inmate in an Israeli prison, had no chance to see his wife when he was freed on Thursday so he sent her a second wedding ring with their names engraved on it.

Jailed for life in 1978 for killing an Israeli bus driver and still regarded by Israel as a dangerous enemy, Barghouti was deported to Egypt instead of being allowed to return to his home in the occupied West Bank.

He asked another prisoner who was also released in the latest hostages for prisoners exchange between Hamas and Israel to deliver the ring to his wife Eman Nafe, 60, who served ten years in an Israeli jail for plotting a suicide attack.

She said Israel’s prison authority had taken Barghouti’s original wedding ring.

“The first wedding ring meant our life, long time together,” she said. “But this one is the continuation of our life which occupation can’t end.”

Barghouti, 67, revered by militants as the “dean” of prisoners, was freed in 2011 in a previous swap but re-arrested three years later and held ever since. He married Nafe during that period of freedom.

Israel has said that Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis must be permanently deported if they are freed under the Gaza ceasefire agreement, and will not be allowed to return to homes in the West Bank.

Barghouti was among 620 Palestinian prisoners and detainees released on Thursday in exchange for the bodies of four Israeli hostages in the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal.

“God bless you, we miss you so much. What can I say!” Nafe told Barghouti by telephone from their home as he listened from Cairo.

She had hoped to join him in Egypt but the Israeli authorities barred her from exiting the West Bank over the bridge to Jordan, she said.

“When I wanted to travel I took with me some clementines, I wanted him to eat from his plants. I hoped that he will come back and he will pick the fruits,” she said.

Israeli authorities did not reply to a request for comment from Reuters.

(Reporting by Mohammed Torokman, Additional reporting by Roleen Tafakji and Ali Sawafta; Writing by Nayera Abdallah; Editing by Michael Georgy and Peter Graff)