For Maher Younis, welcomed home to Gaza yesterday after spending seven years in an Israeli jail for killing collaborators and wounding Israelis in a series of violent attacks, it was a moment to savour.
"I'm very pleased with what I did, it was very, very, very justified," Younis declared. "But now it is time to put all that aside and make real peace."
For Dov Kalmanovitz, his face permanently scarred by the petrol bomb that nearly killed him 12 years ago, when he was attacked at the very start of the Palestinian Intifada uprising, the sensation was one of pain and humiliation.
"I couldn't sleep last night," he said. "Reconciliation does not mean forgetting the past. These prisoner releases encourage other murderers to go out and kill, knowing they'll be freed."
At dawn yesterday, eight buses, carrying 199 Palestinian prisoners, rolled out of two southern Israeli prisons - heading for a series of crossing points into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There, waiting, were Palestinian policemen firing guns in celebration, military bands, and the wives and children who only knew for certain that their loved ones were coming home when they saw them get off the buses.
Yesterday's prisoner releases did not please everybody, on either side. For Israelis like Mr Kalmanovitz, it was "simply immoral". For some Israeli right-wingers, it was an unwarranted capitulation to the reviled Mr Yasser Arafat. And worse, in their eyes, is to come.
Israel is today set to hand Mr Arafat civilian control of another seven per cent of the occupied West Bank, and on Monday to begin a serious attempt to secure a permanent peace treaty.