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Hassan Yousef, a senior Hamas leader and co-founder of the movement, has been released by Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank after more than two years in administrative detention, his son Owais Yousef confirmed on Thursday.
According to Owais, 71-year-old Yousef was “freed near the southern West Bank city of Hebron” and immediately taken to a hospital in Ramallah, where he currently resides. Yousef, who co-founded Hamas in the 1980s alongside Sheikh Ahmad Yassine and other Palestinian members of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been a prominent figure in the West Bank for decades.
Yousef was detained in October 2023, shortly after the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza. He had been held without trial under Israel’s administrative detention system, which permits authorities to hold individuals for renewable six-month periods without charge.
Israel defends the practice as a necessary security measure to prevent attacks while gathering evidence. Critics, however, including human rights groups, argue that the system is often abused.
This is not the first time Yousef has been detained; he was released in July 2020 after serving 16 months under administrative detention. Over the years, he has faced multiple arrests, reflecting the ongoing tensions between Israel and Hamas in the West Bank.
Yousef also has a complicated family history. He is estranged from his eldest son, Mosab Hassan Yousef, who spied for Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet from 1997 to 2007. Mosab later relocated to the United States under a new identity and chronicled his experience in the book Son of Hamas.
Israeli police did not immediately respond to requests for confirmation of Yousef’s release.
