Israeli prison guards attacked him, bound his hands and feet, and threatened him the day his novel won the 2024 “Arabic Booker Prize” was published.
The 42-year-old was then placed in Ofer Prison’s solitary confinement for 12 days.
He thinks it was retaliation for embarrassing the Israeli prison system, getting a book published under the aegis of guards, and getting people’s attention for his detention and circumstances.
After serving 21 years in three life sentences, he is now released from Israeli prison.
“I still feel like I’m dreaming, and I’m terrified I might wake up and find myself back in a cell”, Khandakji said.
He is still unable to bring his family back to Nablus after his release. He is currently awaiting adoption in Egypt while his family battles his return. He was driven out of his native country by Israel.
‘ We saw new horrors ‘
Khandakji is still trying to process the horrors he witnessed in Israeli prisons and his sadness over leaving other prisoners behind.
He allegedly faced a prison sentence in 2004 for participating in a “military cell” and a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, a crime he claims he was forced to admit to.
“The lawyer told me I had to sign a confession … so that three young men could be spared life sentences. In exchange for releasing some younger men from life sentences, there was a kind of “quid pro quo,” which involved accepting a particular charge.
At least 75 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons since October 2023, according to UN estimates, and organizations like B’Tselem and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights have documented systematic abuse.
Khandakji spent months at a time in solitary confinement and was often moved between prisons, spending time in most of Israel’s 19 facilities that hold Palestinians – each as “hellish” as the last, he tells Al Jazeera.
There are deliberate practices of starvation, abuse, psychological and physical torture, constant humiliation, and intentional medical neglect, according to the report.
Around the world, people are outraged by images of Palestinian prisoners who have been released. Appearing fit and healthy in photos of them before incarceration, on release, many had been reduced to emaciated, cadaverous shadows of their former selves.
After an Israeli-led attack on October 7, 2023, according to Khandakji, 139 people died in Israel and 250 were taken as captives, leading to Israel’s two-year genocidal war in Gaza.
According to Khandakji, prisoners began to die suddenly and frequently, with guards using “new horrific methods,” particularly those that involved detainees who had been taken from Gaza by hundreds.
“Inmates saw guards hanging up the bodies of dead prisoners in cells and leaving them there, decaying”, he said.
Another reported seeing more than 12 bodies stuffed into cells at the al-Jalama detention center, according to another.
Khandakji claims that his entire life will be haunted by the gruesome memories of the dead Palestinians and the brutal torture he underwent.
“The main strategy authorities used to break prisoners was starvation”, he said. In the harsh winter, “cooling” was also used, which translated to the lack of clothing, blankets, or heating.
He continued, “There were constant beatings.” They use horrifying, savage methods – targeting the head, neck, and spine. “
On Khandakji’s accusations, Al Jazeera reached out to Israeli prison officials for comment, but they never got back.
Communication with friends and family was banned, he added, and he was prevented from accessing news from the outside world – although he did receive word of his father’s death.
He said, “I was denied the opportunity to bury my father while he was alive, and after his death, I was denied.
More than 3,500 Palestinians are being held in “administrative detention,” which Israel established to justify imprisoning people indefinitely without charge or trial, while nearly 9, 000 of them are still imprisoned in Israeli jails.
Smuggling out an award-winning novel
Writing provided me with a safe haven, a hiding place where I could escape the brutality of the jail and reclaim my freedom, according to Khandakji in prison.
He was forced to repeatedly perform a hunger strike in order to purchase notebooks and pens.
He wrote as much as he could, keeping his manuscripts hidden from the guards and staying out of their way until he could smuggle his writing out via his lawyer or any other visitor.
His award-winning novel A Mask, The Colour of the Sky, was published in Lebanon in Arabic in 2023, and it received a shortlist for the Arabic Booker, an international literary competition.
Nur, a Palestinian archaeologist, discovers an Israeli ID and accepts “Ur,” who later joins an archaeological dig on an illegal Israeli settlement.
In it, Khandakji reflects on the uncovering of Palestine’s antiquity and the difference between the constrained life of Nur with his Palestinian ID and Ur, whose sky-blue ID allowed him to go anywhere.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the shortlisting’s enraged ultranationalist Israeli national security minister, rebuffed the request, while others on the extreme right in Israel called for Khandakji’s assassination.
His triumphant award included a $50,000 prize and funding for an English translation, enabling a wider readership.
When Israel launched its war on Gaza, conditions became worse in the prison, and guards confiscated Khandakji’s writing material and smashed his reading glasses.
He claims that he felt “completely powerless.” It felt like I was lacking in air because I was depriving myself of my pens and notebooks.
Now free, he aims to publish another novel, which he wrote in his head in his final year of captivity. It is based on Walid Daqqa, one of his closest friends, who allegedly suffered deliberate medical neglect from prison guards. He passed away from cancer.
Khandakji’s only solace in prison was the friendships he made, which he claimed “even death cannot erase” despite his writing.
” I live with sorrow and pain because I left behind so many friends in prison, still suffering, “he adds.
Marwan Barghouthi, a Fatah politician who received five life sentences plus 40 years in prison, was one of these friends, with whom he shared a cell.
Due to his decades of political prisonering experience and his unwavering popularity among Palestinians, Barghouthi is frequently compared to Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader of South Africa.
” Marwan Barghouthi is a great man, “he said”. He might become a unified voice for the country if he were released.
The 66-year-old was unconscious when Israeli jail guards beat him last month, and his son, Arab, claimed in an interview that his father worries for his life as Israel continues to ignore international requests for his release.
His homeland lives within him
At the age of 21, Khandakji was detained in his final year of his Nablus-based journalism and political science degree.
As a teenager, Khandakji joined the Palestinian People’s Party after growing up in a socialist family. He is now an elected member of the party’s political bureau.
However, he made the decision to join the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) during the second Intifada in the early 2000s.
In the end, he says, “Vaxation in all its forms is inhuman.
“As human beings, we should first try to solve our issues through peaceful and civilised means”, Khandakji said. Your struggle turns into a matter of existence when someone tries to destroy you, but they do it.
He continues, “But if time could go back, I might look for other ways to find a different path, one that didn’t take him from his family for 21 years.”
He was one of 250 high-profile detainees freed by Israel on October 13 as part of the United States-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.
Nearly 2, 000 Palestinian detainees who were held by Hamas were exchanged for their release, the majority of whom were “perished” by Israel from Gaza, according to the UN.
Khandakji described the night of his release as “terrifying,” adding that he felt shaken as he “knew the moment of freedom had finally come.”
When he passed the prison gates and his bus went south instead of towards Nablus, he knew his full freedom would be denied a little longer.
He said, “It’s a burning, painful feeling to be exiled from your homeland.” My city, Nablus, was where I had my first joy, sorrow, and first dreams.
“Palestinians, unlike others, do not live in their homeland – their homeland lives within them”, he said.
After earning a master’s degree in Israeli studies while imprisoned, Khandakji plans to continue writing and pursue a PhD.
His family is attempting to reunite with him in Egypt, but Israel repeatedly thwarts their efforts.
“I still hope that in the coming period, there will be some human justice that allows me to embrace my mother”, he says.
Source: Aljazeera
Leave a Reply