Hamas will release three Israelis, including two women and an 80-year-old man, as well as five Thai nationals during the next hostage release set for Thursday, Israel and Hamas said Wednesday as their tenuous ceasefire in Gaza moves ahead.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is aimed at ending the war and securing the release of dozens of hostages held by the militant group, as well as hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned or detained by Israel.

In recent days, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have jubilantly returned to northern Gaza. However, their homecoming has been bittersweet as nearly everyone has friends or relatives who died, and many northern neighborhoods have been transformed into an apocalyptic landscape of devastation by more than 15 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

A list of more than 100 Palestinian prisoners that Israel is set to release on Thursday in exchange for three hostages includes Zakaria Zubeidi, a prominent former militant leader and theater director whose dramatic jailbreak in 2021 thrilled Palestinians and stunned the Israeli security establishment.

Zubeidi once led the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade — an armed group affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party that controls the Palestinian Authority — which carried out deadly attacks against Israelis during a Palestinian uprising between 2000 and 2005.

After the uprising, in 2006, Zubeidi established a theater in his hometown in the northern West Bank to promote what he described as cultural resistance to Israel. Even today, the Freedom Theater in Jenin refugee camp puts on everything from Shakespeare to stand-up comedy to plays written by residents.

In 2019, after Zubeidi had already served years in prison for attacks in the early 2000s, Israel arrested him again over his alleged involvement in shooting attacks that targeted buses of Israeli settlers in the West Bank but caused no injuries.

Zubeidi has been awaiting trial in prison since. He denies the charges, insisting he focused on political activism as a member of Fatah and a prisoner advocacy group.

In 2021, he and five other prisoners tunneled out of a maximum-security prison in northern Israel, an escape that helped solidify Zubeidi’s image among Palestinians as a folk hero. All six escapees were recaptured days later.