Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.
The occupied West Bank bade farewell to five of its young heroes who were shot dead by ‘Israeli’ occupation troops after intense confrontations that erupted in at least four towns following overnight arrest raids.
According to official Palestinian news agency Wafa, Zionist military forces stormed the northern town of Burqin near al-Quds in the predawn hours of Sunday, and surrounded a home before breaking in and detaining its owner. The detainee was identified as Mohammad Zirini.
The raid prompted skirmishes between angry town residents and Zionist occupation troops who fired live rounds, killing two protesters and injuring at least four others.
One of the two Palestinian martyrs was identified as 22-year-old Osama Yaser Soboh.
Confrontations also erupted shortly after midnight in Kafr Dan village northwest of Jenin as Zionist occupation troops raided the area, detaining at least two Palestinians.
On Saturday night, the occupation regime’s undercover forces kidnapped two young Palestinian men from their car in a fuel station near Jenin.
Furthermore, three Palestinians were shot dead by the Zionist forces in an attack which targeted a house in the village of Biddu.
Witnesses told Wafa that ‘Israeli’ occupation military troops surrounded the building and fired gunshots and grenades at it. Loud explosions were heard during the raid.
Tensions have been rising in the occupied territories following the heroic escape of six Palestinian detainees from high-security Gilboa Prison earlier this month.
The six heroes tunneled their way out through their cell’s drainage system, dealing a serious blow to the Zionist regime’s prestige through bringing the condition of Palestinian prisoners to international attention even though they were rearrested later.
The Zionist occupation regime’s so-called Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev on Friday published the names of the committee members to investigate the escape of six Palestinians from the high-security Gilboa prison in northern ‘Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories earlier this month.
All six Palestinians heroes were eventually recaptured following a massive manhunt involving the Zionist Police, Shin Bet [Zionist Security Agency] and the Zionist military.
The government commission will be headed by retired judge Menachem Finkelstein, who served as the Tel Aviv regime’s Military Advocate General from 2000 to 2004.
Professor Efrat Shoham will also be on the committee. She served as chair of the ‘Israeli’ Criminology Association and serves as head of the Department of Criminology at the Ashkelon Academic College.
Finkelstein and Shoham will be joined by Arik “Harris” Barbing, a former senior official in the Shin Bet, who served as head of the security agency’s cyber division.
Six Palestinian resistance detainees tunneled their way out through a hole that wasn’t sealed for seven years while the prison guard near their cells was sleeping, the watch tower was unmanned, no one answered the phone, and the structure’s blueprint was published online a year earlier.
The jailbreak embarrassed the Zionist security establishment but delighted Palestinians who see resistance members jailed by the occupation regime as heroes in the struggle for liberating Palestine.
The Commission of Palestinian Detainees published Friday new letters from Mohammad and Mahmoud Al-Arda from behind the bars of “Israeli” prisons. The letters included new details about the “Tunnel of Freedom” under Gilboa Prison and their current situation behind bars.
Detainee Mahmoud Al-Arda revealed new details about the tunnel through which six detainees broke free from prison, saying that the main reason behind digging the tunnel is “snatching freedom.”
“Digging the tunnel was in retaliation for the martyrdom of detainee Mohamad Al-Ashkar in 2007, and for this same reason the tunnel in Shatta Prison was dug in 2012,” he added.
“The Tunnel of Freedom came in protest to the martyrdom of the detainee Kamal Abo Waer, the miserable situation of the women in detention, the awful isolation circumstances, the non-implementation of the quests of the mass hunger strike of detainees in 2017, the current tragic conditions and preserving achievements.”
In parallel, Al-Arda dedicated “this victory to martyrs Mohamad Al-Ashkar, Kamal Abo Waer, as well as to the martyrs of The Palestinian Detainees Movement, The Resistance, to our Arabic and Muslim peoples, to the free souls everywhere, and to Gaza in gratitude to what it had offered to the detainees.”
He announced that the tunnel has got the name “The Road to Al-Quds.”
“We have won and “knocked the empty water tank of the lorry” as the great writer Ghassan Kanafani once said. We have delivered our message to the world, that we are seekers of freedom and rights, that we are oppressed, and the world should be by our side in order to free our land,” he added.
For his part, detainee Mohamad Al-Arda, stated that he has been isolated from the outside world since the last nine days, and he paid tribute to his Palestinian people.
Fathia, the mother of Palestinian prisoner Mahmoud Arda. (Photo: via Social Media)
Palestinian prisoners Mahmoud Arda, 46, sent a letter to his mother through his lawyer, Quds News Network reported on Friday.
The letter read as follows:
“I’d like to extend my greetings to you, mom, and tell you that I tried very hard to come and hug you before you leave this world, but I couldn’t.
“You are in my heart and head. The good news is that I have eaten figs from many places across our homeland. I also ate prickly pears, pomegranates, sumac, and wild thyme. I even ate guava for the first time in 25 years. I had a jar of honey as a gift for you. Extend my greetings to my dead sisters Basima, Ruba, Khitam, and Saeda, and to my brothers as well, as I miss them a lot.
“I smelled freedom and we saw that the world has changed. I climbed the mountains of Palestine for long hours and we walked across broad plains. I saw how the plain of Arraba, my hometown, is a small part of Bisan and Nazareth.
“My greetings to all family members and friends. My greetings to my niece, Sinat, who I wore her socks all across the mountains. My greetings to Abdullah, Hadeel, Yousef, the wife of Raddad, and all family, to Sarah, Rahaf, Ghada, Muhammad, and everyone. A special greeting to Huda. I miss her so much and I will send the whole story to her.”
Arda, 46, spent over 28 years of his life in Israeli jails, 25 of which are continuous. He is serving a life sentence.
On September 6, along with other five prisoners, he managed to carry out a daring escape from the highly fortified Gilboa prison. However, he was recaptured by the Israeli Police on the outskirts of Nazareth, north of occupied Palestine.
Zakaria Zubeidi is one of six Palestinian prisoners who, on September 6, tunneled their way out of Gilboa, a notorious, high-security Israeli prison. Zubeidi was recaptured a few days later. The large bruises on Zubeidi’s face told a harrowing story, that of a daring escape and of a violent arrest. However, the story does not begin, nor end, there.
Twenty years ago, following what has been etched in the collective Palestinian memory as the ‘Jenin Massacre’, I was introduced to the Zubeidi family in the Jenin refugee camp, which was almost entirely erased by the Israeli army during and following the Jenin battle.
Despite my repeated attempts, the Israeli army prevented me from reaching Jenin, which was kept under total Israeli military siege for months following the most violent episode of the entirety of the Second Palestinian Uprising (2000-2005).
I could not speak to Zakaria directly. Unlike his brother, Taha, Zakaria survived the massacre and subsequently rose in the ranks of Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed wing of the Fatah movement, to become its leader, thus topping the list of Israel’s most wanted Palestinians.
Most of our communication was with his sister, Kauthar, who told us in detail about the events that preceded the fateful military siege of April. Kauthar was only 20 years old at the time. Despite her grief, she spoke proudly about her mother, who was killed by an Israeli sniper only weeks before the invasion of the camp and about her brother, Taha, the leader of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad in Jenin at the time; and of Zakaria, who was now on a mission to avenge his mother, brother, best friends and neighbors.
“Taha was killed by a sniper. After he was killed, they fired shells at him, which completely burned his body. This was in the Damaj neighborhood,” Kauthar told us, adding, “The Shebab gathered what remained of him and put him in a house. Since that day, the house has been known as ‘The Home of the Hero’.”
Kauthar also told me about her mother, Samira, 51, “who spent her life going from one prison to another” to visit her husband and her sons. Samira was loved and respected by all the fighters in the camp. Her children were the heroes that all the youngsters attempted to emulate. Her death was particularly shocking.
“She was hit with two bullets in the heart,” Kauthar said. “Once she turned around, she was hit in the back. Blood poured out of her nose and mouth. I did not know what else to do but to scream.”
Zakaria immediately went underground. The young fighter was feeling aggrieved at what had befallen his beloved Jenin, family, mother and brother – the latter’s wedding was scheduled one week from the day he was killed. He was also feeling betrayed by his Fatah ‘brothers’ who continued to openly collaborate with Israel, despite the mounting tragedies in the occupied West Bank, and by the Israeli left that abandoned the Zubeidi family despite promises of solidarity and camaraderie.
“Every week, 20-30 Israelis would come there to do theatre,” Zakaria said in an interview with ‘The Time’ magazine, with reference to the ‘Arna’s House’ theater, which involved Zakaria and other Jenin youngsters, and was established by Arna Mer-Khamis, an Israeli woman who was married to a Palestinian. “We opened our home and you demolished it … We fed them. And, afterwards, not one of them picked up the phone. That is when we saw the real face of the left in Israel.”
Of the five children who participated in the ‘Arna’s House’ theatre, only Zakaria survived. The rest had joined various armed groups to fight the Israeli occupation and were all killed.
Zakaria was born in 1976 under Israeli occupation, therefore never experienced life as a free man. At 13, he was shot by Israeli soldiers for throwing stones. At 14, he was arrested for the first time. At 17, he joined the Palestinian Authority security forces, believing, like many Palestinians at the time, that the PA’s ‘army’ was established to protect Palestinians and to secure their freedom. Disillusioned, he left the PA less than a year later.
Zakaria only committed to armed struggle in 2001, as a way of achieving freedom for his people, months after the start of the Second Intifada. One of his childhood friends was one of the first to be killed by Israeli soldiers. In 2002, Zakaria joined the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, around the time that his mother, Samira, and his brother, Taha, were killed.
2002, in particular, was a decisive year for the Fatah movement, which was practically, but unofficially, divided into two groups: one that believed that armed struggle should remain a strategy for liberation, and another that advocated political dialogue and a peace process. Many members of the first group were killed, arrested or marginalized, including Fatah’s popular leader, Marwan Barghouti, who was arrested in April 2002. Members of the second group grew rich and corrupt. Their ‘peace process’ failed to deliver the coveted freedom and they refused to consider other strategies, fearing the loss of their privileges.
Zakaria, like thousands of Fatah members and fighters, was caught up in this ongoing dilemma, wanting to carry on with the struggle as if PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ leadership was ready to risk it all for the sake of Palestine, while remaining committed to the Fatah party, hoping that, perhaps, someday the movement would reclaim the mantle of Palestinian resistance.
The trajectory of Zakaria’s life, so far, is a testament to this confusion. He was not only imprisoned by the Israelis, but also by the PA. Sometimes, he spoke highly of Abbas only to, later, disown all the treachery of the Palestinian leadership. He surrendered his weapon several times, only to retrieve it with the same determination as before.
Though Zakaria is now back in prison, his story remains unfinished. Scores of young fighters are now roaming the streets of the Jenin refugee camp, vowing to carry on with armed struggle. Namely, Zakaria Zubeidi is not just a single person but a whole generation of Palestinians in the West Bank who are caught up in an impossible dilemma, having to choose between a painful, but real, struggle for freedom and political compromises, which, in Zakaria’s own words, “have achieved nothing”.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
In wake of the heroic Gilboa Prison Break, ‘Israeli’ prisons administration tended to punish detainees to compensate its intelligence failure.
In further details, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-detainees stressed that the ‘Israeli’ prisons’ administration has been recently intending to apply the policy of ‘collective revenge’ and tightening its grip against Palestinian detainees in different prisons, namely in “Nafha.”
In a statement, the Commission said that the Nafha Prison administration is intending to carry out punitive measures against the detainees, in addition to tight security measures, all-night inspections, and exposing the faces of detainees to light every five minutes.
Additionally, the Nafha Prison administration is specifically tightening the measures against the Islamic Jihad detainees, preventing them from remaining in their organizational cells, and transferring them instead to other cells.
The Commission also pointed to two separate cases involving sick detainees, one of which is the case of detainee Mahmoud Abu Wahdan from Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus. He is serving three life sentences.
Abu Wahdan suffers from hemiplegia causing paralysis in the right side of his body. As a result, he is unable to move his right leg and hand, as well as his tongue, which caused a twisting of the face from the right side.
The Commission reported that he was transferred to the ICU in Soroka Medical Center, where he underwent many tests, including a blood test and CT scan. It turned out that he had been subjected to psychological pressure. The Commission pointed out that Abu Wahdan’s condition is now stable, but he is now taking four types of medication and is waiting for an MRI scan to determine the cause of the hemiplegia.
In 2003, the prisoner was also beaten on the head, which lead to vision problems. He needs a referral to an ophthalmologist.
The second case is that of detainee Jamal Amro from the city of Al-Khalil. He is serving a life sentence. Amro is in very poor health and is in dire need of urgent medical care.
He has tumors in the liver and kidneys and suffers from stomach and intestinal problems. He recently experienced nerve problems, and his hands often tremble. Amro also has severe dental problems.
The Commission indicated that the Nafha administration was procrastinating in providing him with treatment and deliberately neglected him medically, as he has been suffering from these health problems since 2018.
It further added that a date was set for a gland operation at Soroka Medical Center a month and a half ago, and on the day of the operation, he was informed of its cancellation. The reason was that the prison doctor refused to take him out claiming that he does not need an operation.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club announced on Wednesday morning that the Palestinian prisoners have suspended their hunger strike, which was supposed to begin on Friday.
The club said in a statement that the “prisoners, in a unified and harmonious manner, decided to suspend the collective hunger strike, after their demands were met.”
According to the statement, the “Israeli” authorities agreed to cancel the “collective punishments” imposed on the prisoners after six Palestinian prisoners succeeded in fleeing from Gilboa Prison last week.
The apartheid “Israeli” entity also reportedly agreed “to stop targeting prisoners affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad [PIJ], the statement added, without providing further details.
Qadri Abu Bakr, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission, had said before that the first phase of the hunger strike would include 1,380 prisoners.
“The prisoners and detainees have decided to go on a hunger strike to improve their conditions,” Abu Bakr said in an interview with the Palestinian news agency Ma’an.
“The prisoners’ demands in the upcoming strike aim to restore the situation to what it was before the recent punitive measures,” he explained, referring to the prison authority’s measures in the aftermath of the escape.
The prisoners added new demands, such as removing the glass separating them from visitors, and allowing families from the Gaza Strip to visit their jailed sons in the Zionist entity, the Palestinian official said.
The Captive Movement decided to suspend the collective hunger strike after the occupation forces acquiesced to its demands. The most substantial of these demands was putting a halt to collective punishment.
Palestinian Prisoner Club: One of the most prominent demands is to stop targeting Islamic Jihad prisoners.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club announced in a statement today, Wednesday, that the captive movement decided to suspend the collective hunger strike after the Israeli occupation acquiesced to its demands.
The Prisoner’s Club said that one of the most prominent demands is the abolition of the collective punishments imposed by the occupation after the Freedom Tunnel operation, as well ceasing to target Islamic Jihad prisoners and its organizational structure.
The Palestinian Political Captives’ Movement had announced that it would resort to an escalation to stop the Israeli abuse, suppression, and isolation of the prisoners after the success of the Freedom Tunnel operation in breaking from the Gilboa prison.
The Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs quoted the Captive Movement announcing that 1,380 prisoners will start an open hunger strike next Friday under the slogan “The Battle to Defend the Righteous.”
Earlier today, Al Mayadeen‘s reporter said that the situation of the re-arrested prisoners is severe and that there is real concern for their lives, pointing out that the Israeli occupation is trying to fabricate new charges against them.
Last Monday, the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees‘ Affairs reported that the movement decided to escalate in the face of the “Israel Prison Service,” which continues to abuse, suppress, isolate and brutalize prisoners at the hands of its repressive units in various prisons.
Zakaria Al-Zubaidi’s lawyer discloses that Al-Zubaidi did not participate in the excavation of the escape tunnel.
Prisoners Commission: Zakaria Al-Zubaidi suffered fractures in the face and body as a result of beatings
The Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs reported on Wednesday that lawyer Avigdor Feldman was able to visit prisoner Zakaria Al-Zubaidi in the Al-Jalama detention center. The lawyer found that the latter was subjected to beatings and abuse during his arrest. Al-Zubaidi’s injuries included a broken jaw and two broken ribs.
According to the commission, Al-Zubaidi was transferred to an Israeli hospital and given only painkillers following the arrest. Bruises and scratches cover his body as a result of beatings.
Feldman disclosed that Zakaria al-Zubaidi did not participate in the tunnel excavation. He added that al-Zubeidi joined the room of the other five prisoners one day before they exited the tunnel, which took nearly a year to dig.
During the visit, Al-Zubaidi detailed to Feldman that over the four days they spent outside captivity, the escapees did not ask for help from anyone, out of concern for Palestinians in the occupied territories being punished by Israelis.
He also pointed out that they did not drink any water after their successful escape and only ate whatever fruits they found in orchards, such as figs and cacti.
Zakaria’s brother: We do not know the seriousness of his injuries
Jibril Zubeidi, Zakaria’s brother, announced last Monday that Zakaria was in need of hospitalization due to the deterioration of his health during his arrest.
Yahya al-Zubaidi, another brother of Zakaria, told Al- Mayadeen that Zakaria’s health condition deteriorated further due to an old injury he sustained from a mortar shell in his face. Yahya added that he recently had a broken leg and bruises on his body.
While the Zionist regime’s Prison Service officials wonder how they allowed six Palestinian prisoners to escape one of their most secure facilities, the chief of Hermon Prison said last week it’s still unclear if the prison break was down to systemic neglect.
Six Palestinian resistance detainees tunneled their way out through a hole that wasn’t sealed for seven years while the prison guard near their cells was sleeping, the watch tower was unmanned, no one answered the phone, and the structure’s blueprint was published online a year earlier.
They never know, they never hear, they never see but most importantly they never take responsibility, ever. That’s the number one rule of the Zionist regime’s public officials.
From a lowest ranking officer up to a minister, every official in the occupation regime knows very well who wins over the public. Everybody is responsible, but nobody bears the responsibility.
For many years no one in the Zionist public sphere would take responsibility and resigned over national disasters caused by human error, and over time they stopped being ashamed.
For years, no one would stand in front of a camera and say the one thing that any decent man would say after a devastating event for which he is accountable for: I failed, I resign immediately, and hope that one who comes after me will do a better job.
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