Israel said that neither Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti nor the bodies of Yahya and Mohammed Sinwar will be included in the Gaza ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement signed in Egypt.

Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said on Thursday that Israel will not include Palestinian Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti in the prisoner exchange agreement reached with Hamas in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

“I can assure you at this stage that he will not be part of this release deal,” Bedrosian told reporters.

Barghouti, imprisoned for over two decades, is seen by many Palestinians as a unifying national figure. 

A senior leader in the Fatah movement, he played a major role in both the First Intifada of 1987 and the Second Intifada of 2000. Over the years, he has faced multiple arrests, deportations, and assassination attempts, and is currently serving five life sentences in Israeli prisons.

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Bedrosian said Israel had reached “a fateful point in this war,” claiming that “all the goals set by the prime minister have been achieved.” She added that “the government made difficult decisions to reach this moment.”

She confirmed that the ceasefire in Gaza is expected to take effect within 24 hours of today’s cabinet meeting. The Israeli army, she said, would redeploy along what she referred to as the “yellow line,” maintaining control over roughly 53 percent of the Gaza Strip.

According to Bedrosian, the final draft of the first phase of the ceasefire and prisoner exchange plan was signed in Egypt on Thursday morning. Once implemented, a 72-hour period for the release of captives will begin.

Meanwhile, Israeli Army Radio quoted a security source as saying that the bodies of Yahya and Mohammed Sinwar will not be handed over as part of the deal.

Earlier, Hamas announced that the lists of Palestinian prisoners to be released had been exchanged based on previously agreed-upon criteria and numbers.

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A Palestinian source close to the talks said the list includes Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah figure, and Ahmed Saadat, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Both men are serving long sentences for attacks that killed Israelis.

With the start of the internationally mediated talks in Egypt on Monday, four high-profile Palestinian prisoners emerged as top names Hamas is demanding in any exchange, citing their political and symbolic significance.

According to The Jerusalem Post, Barghouti leads the list. Once head of Fatah’s Tanzim organization in the West Bank, he was arrested during Israel’s 2002 “Operation Defensive Shield” in Ramallah and later convicted by an Israeli court of five murders and other charges.

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The second figure on the list is Ahmed Saadat, accused by Israel of masterminding the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi. After being detained by the Palestinian Authority, he was seized by Israeli forces in 2006 following the withdrawal of British and American observers from Jericho prison and sentenced to 30 years.

Hamas is also calling for the release of Ibrahim Hamed, former operations commander of the Qassam Brigades in the West Bank during the Second Intifada, who was arrested in Ramallah in 2006 and sentenced to 54 life terms for attacks in Jerusalem, including one at the Hebrew University.

The fourth name is Abbas al-Sayyed, a senior Hamas figure from Tulkarm, convicted of planning the 2002 Park Hotel bombing in Netanya. He is serving 35 life sentences and has been excluded from previous exchange deals.

(PC, AJA, Israeli Media)