Palestinian Prisoners Day: We demand the release of Walid Daqqa

On the 49th commemoration of Palestinian Prisoners day we must all reiterate the demand to free Walid Daqqa, one of the longest held Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. As one of the most prominent faces of the Palestinian prisoners’ resistance movement, Daqqa has been targeted by the Israeli prison administration. The veteran prisoner has been unjustly detained for over 37 years, and despite the widespread campaigns calling for his release, and four prisoner exchanges and releases that have taken place since his detention, Israel refuses to free him.

Walid Daqqa, from Baqa Al-gharbia, was detained on the 25 March 1986 along with a group of his comrades (including Ibrahim Bayadseh who is also still incarcerated) for allegedly taking part in a Palestinian resistance operation targeting an Israeli occupation soldier. For this they were all given life sentences. In 2012 his life sentence was set to 37 years which meant that his release date was set to be the 24 March 2023. However, in 2018 an Israeli military court ruled to extend his unjust detention by two years.

''The constant sadistic repression Palestinian prisoners experience during ‘investigations’, when thrown into solitary confinement, or during humiliating daily incarceration, seek to erode the proactive spirit of steadfastness (sumud) that stems out of this infrastructure of resistance.''

Daqqa’s case is all the more urgent now given his deteriorating health. Following being diagnosed with leukaemia in 2015 he has faced severe medical negligence. Additionally, last year, he was also diagnosed with myelofibrosis, a rare bone marrow cancer. He is currently in intensive care after a surgery to remove a part of his lung but, as his family has stressed, he requires unrestricted treatment from adequate hospital services and to be surrounded by his loved ones during such a difficult time. All of which require him to be freed.

Despite all the violence that Daqqa has been exposed to, he has remained active in the national struggle and did not cease to partake in the social, cultural and academic life of Palestine. The same is true of his engagement internationally through his prison literature.

Indeed, Daqqa’s resilience reminds us of the failures of Israeli prisons in deterring Palestinian revolutionary consciousness.

As he explained in his own research, Searing of Consciousness: Or On Redefining Torture (2010) the struggle of prisoners is primarily a political one, and a rights-based, humanitarian one second. The analysis he offers of Israel’s prison system pushes us away from understanding it as merely a security measure. Rather, the carceral apparatus works in tandem with other tools of the Israeli war machine to eviscerate Palestinian revolutionary national consciousness. In his words, it targets ‘the material and moral infrastructure of resistance’.

The constant sadistic repression Palestinian prisoners experience during ‘investigations’, when thrown into solitary confinement, or during humiliating daily incarceration, seek to erode the proactive spirit of steadfastness (sumud) that stems out of this infrastructure of resistance. Daqqa explains that this mode of torture and its intended effect is also not contained within the prison walls.

For him, the targeting of Palestinian collective psyche is first trialled on prisoners, then exported to the wider Palestinian population, with the prisons serving as a lab for Israeli governance. Prisoner resistance must therefore be a compass for the Palestinian liberation movement.

Moreover, it is often political leadership that is targeted as a means for Israel to disrupt any organising within Palestinian society. So when thousands of Palestinians are put behind bars, this aims to disrupt their entire social and political networks. And, since 1967 it is estimated that over 800,000 Palestinians have experienced Israeli detention representing a significant proportion of Palestinian population in historic Palestine.

Such methods also seek to break apart families and fragment the Palestinian social fabric. But, resistance to this continues. In Walid Daqqa’s case, he’s been refused family visitation rights since 1999, and in an attempt to further isolate his relatives, his family home in Baqa Al-gharbia was barbarically stormed by Israel’s occupation forces earlier this year. Yet, in February 2020, Daqqa and his wife Sana’a Salameh had their first child through smuggled sperm, demonstrating that prisoners’ embodied resistance does not end with hunger strikes.

Since the Unity Intifada in May 2021 and the heroic escape of six prisoners from Gilboa prison in September that year – which undermined Israel’s entire security and carceral apparatus – the state has escalated its collective punishment of Palestinian prisoners. This is because it was the epitome of proactive sumud, and proved once again that Palestinian consciousness cannot be ‘seared’. Since then, successive Israeli governments have introduced repressive measures, including the transfer of Palestinian prisoners between different Israeli prisons every three months.

In the lead up to Ramadan this year, the largest hunger strike in recent memory was planned as this escalating confrontation mounted to a climax. ‘The Volcano of Freedom or Martyrdom’ movement, succeeded in halting the repressive measures for now and in the process has reinvigorated national unity in Palestinian society and amongst the prisoners' themselves.

On Palestinian Prisoners Day it is our responsibility to join in reinforcing the demands for freedom by the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. In Britain, this is all the more important given the British mandate’s history in developing prisons prior to 1948 in order to squash Palestinian resistance, that were then inherited by Israel.

We should aspire to practise the principled commitment and self-sacrifice that Palestinian prisoners have led with, to work towards their freedom and the dismantling of Zionism and Israel’s carceral apparatus.

Yasmin Elsouda is a Palestinian organiser, researcher and writer and is a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement’s Britain branch.

Follow her on Twitter: @yxs_min @palyouthmvmt

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.