RAMALLAH, Thursday, January 5, 2023 (WAFA) - President Mahmoud Abbas today congratulated Karim Younis, a Fatah official and the longest-serving Palestinian freedom fighter, on finally getting released after spending 40 years in Israeli prisons.

President Abbas said that Younis represents a symbol of the Palestinian people and the free people of the world in steadfastness.

He stressed that prisoners are the cause of the entire Palestinian people, adding prisoners are the top priority, and the Palestinian leadership will make every effort to release them from the Israeli occupation detention centers.

Israeli authorities Thursday released the longest-serving Palestinian freedom fighter Karim Younis after spending 40 years behind Israeli bars.

Younis, 66, from the Arab town of Ara in northern Israel, was detained on January 6, 1983, for his resistance of the Israeli occupation and sentenced to life in prison, which was later commuted to 40 years.

The Fatah official, and his cousin, Maher Younis, who has also been in Israeli prisons since 1983, were supposed to have been freed in 2014 in a deal brokered by then-US Secretary of State John Kerry in which Israel was supposed to free in four different batches all Palestinian prisoners held since before the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords that launched the peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.

K.T.