Among the Palestinians released on Thursday in a hostage-for-prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas was Zakaria Zubeidi, who over the past two decades has been a militant, a theater director and an escaped prisoner whose flight stunned Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Mr. Zubeidi, 49, rose to prominence as a militant leader during the Second Intifada, or uprising, in the early 2000s, during which Palestinian militants committed deadly attacks against Israelis, including suicide bombings that targeted civilian thoroughfares.
Israel responded by reoccupying major Palestinian cities amid street battles. Some of the toughest fighting took place in the Palestinian city of Jenin, Mr. Zubeidi’s hometown. His mother and one of his brothers were killed during the clashes.
He later emerged as a top commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed militia loosely linked with the secular Fatah party, the dominant Palestinian political faction in the West Bank. On at least one occasion, Mr. Zubeidi publicly announced that the group had conducted armed attacks against Israelis.
After the Second Intifada, Israel granted sweeping amnesty to militants affiliated with Fatah; the party now controls the Palestinian Authority, with which Israel coordinates closely on security in the West Bank.
Mr. Zubeidi later turned to theater, which he said was a more effective means of resistance than violence. He helped direct the Freedom Theater, a community cultural center in the hardscrabble Jenin refugee camp, which was founded by Palestinians displaced by the 1948 wars surrounding Israel’s establishment.
“I don’t miss weapons,” Mr. Zubeidi said in an interview with Israeli television several years ago. “I miss the intifada, the revolution.”
But in 2019, Israel arrested him again on charges that he had returned to militancy, accusing him of involvement in recent West Bank violence.
Two years later, Mr. Zubeidi and five other Palestinian prisoners conducted a jailbreak by crawling nearly 32 yards through an underground tunnel outside one of Israel’s maximum-security prisons.
Although they were later recaptured, the prison break shook Israelis and thrilled Palestinians. Israelis saw Mr. Zubeidi’s escape as a chilling security breach with the potential to incite further violence. Many Palestinians called it a temporary victory against Israel’s mass incarceration of Palestinians.
An Israeli drone strike killed Mr. Zubeidi’s son, Mohammad, in September. The Israeli military called the son a “significant terrorist” and said he had been involved in shooting at Israeli troops.
Other militants convicted of involvement in deadly attacks against Israelis were also among the Palestinians being released on Thursday.
One was Sami Jaradat, 56, who was serving multiple life sentences for involvement in a deadly 2003 suicide bombing that targeted a restaurant in Haifa, on the Israeli coast. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack.
At least 21 people were killed in the bombing, according to the Israeli authorities, including women, children and a one-year-old girl.
Mr. Jaradat, like many Palestinian detainees involved in the deadliest attacks against Israelis, will not be allowed to return to his home near Jenin. Under the terms of the deal, he will be expelled to either the Gaza Strip or another country like Egypt.
Unlike Mr. Jaradat, Mr. Zubeidi is expected to remain in the West Bank.
On Thursday, Mr. Zubeidi’s wife, Alaa, 39, stood with her sisters and friends in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, dressed in black, to wait for him to be released from prison.
She said she had been in mourning since her son Mohammad’s death, visiting his grave daily until mid-December, when Palestinian security forces began operating in the Jenin refugee camp.
Fatima AbdulKarim contributed reporting.
