Thousands greet freed Hamas leader, Jamal al-Awawdeh, after 15 years in Israeli occupation prisons

Thousands greet freed Hamas leader in Dura

[ 03/11/2007 - 11:02 AM ]

From Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

KARMA, DURA (Al-Khalil District), (PIC)--

Thousands of Palestinians have arrived at this small village, 4 kilometers south-west of Dura, to greet Jamal al-Awawdeh, a prominent Hamas leader and former member of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas.

Awawdeh was released from jail in Israel last week, having spent fifteen years of harsh imprisonment for resisting the Israeli military occupation and affiliation with Hamas.

Awawdeh, now 38, was 23 years old when he was arrested in April 14, 1993, on charges of a membership in “a terrorist organization,” membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, and opening fire on Israeli occupation soldiers.

Israel calls all Palestinians involved in resistance against Israel’s 40-years’ old occupation of the Palestinian homeland “terrorists.”

However, virtually all Palestinians and their Arab and Muslim and other supporters view resistance fighters with utmost respect and admiration for carrying out the noble duty of fighting a sinister foreign military occupation that seeks to steal Palestinian land and replace Palestinians with Jewish settlers imported from around the world.

Asked to reflect on 15 years of imprisonment in Israel, Awawdeh, who watches his words very carefully, says that “in Palestine there are two sides: One has justice but very little physical power, and the other, Israel, which has a lot of military power and other means it uses to torment us and steal our land.”

He pointed out that the collective Israeli mind couldn’t understand and wouldn’t accept the fact that a thoroughly tormented and persecuted people, such as the Palestinians, has been able to survive sixty years of war, persecution, oppression and dispossession, and is still alive and kicking.

“Many Israelis were brought up to think that the outcome of the conflict has already been decided and that the conflict with the Palestinians is over, whereby Israel has won, and the Palestinians have lost. This is why they can’t understand and are extremely furious that problems, which Zionism thought were over in 1948, are still very much alive and relevant sixty years later.”

Harsh conditions Awawdeh said prison conditions, including treatment by prison authorities, have been particularly harsh since 2002.

This harshness expresses itself in many aspects, including limiting family visits to the very minimum, the routine practice of solitary confinement, the poor quality of food as well as inflicting on inmates a variety of psychological suffering.

Before 2002, things were relatively stable and a certain modus vivendi had been established.

However, since then the Israeli prison authorities have been dealing with the Palestinian inmates with vindictiveness, malice and excessive desire to inflict pain and suffering.

“There were sporadic attempts to smuggle cell phones which inmates use to call their families. The prison authorities retorted by carrying out wave after wave of persecution and repression. This situation continues unabated.”

Personally, Jamal says he was tortured repeatedly especially during the first years of his imprisonment.

“The beginning was very harsh, I was subjected to severe beating and 18 hours of handcuffing and leg-fettering per day while forced to sit down on a very small chair which is 30 cm in height.

“It was very very hard.”

Coming home When Awawdeh was arrested in 1993, his only child, his daughter Qamar (moon) was not yet born. Qamar is nearly 15 years’ old now.

“I almost fainted when I saw her coming to embrace me. I just couldn’t withstand this.”

Asked what his plans were, or whether he was planning to write a book to document his experience, Jamal said it was still too early to think of specific plans.

“I just want to live in peace. I believe in peace, peace with one’s self, peace with one’s surroundings, peace with one’s people and even peace with the enemy.”

Prior to his arrival at Karma, Islamic activists decorated the dusty alleyways and narrow streets of the village with placards and the green flags of Hamas. Some of the placards featured the portraits of Hamas’s late founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdul Aziz al Rantisi and others.

Moreover, a seemingly interminable delegates of well-wishers from all over the Hebron (Al-Khalil) area and other parts of the West Bank kept arriving at the large reception tent erected at the center of the village, to congratulate him on his freedom and wish him well.

This, local villagers say, shows that Hamas is still deeply entrenched in the hearts and minds of numerous Palestinians despite the American-backed crackdown on the movement by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas.

Interestingly, 4 months of witch-hunting campaign by the Fatah militias in the West Bank has ostensibly failed to seriously undermine Hamas’s popularity.

This probably explains the latest gesture by Abbas to invite two prominent Hamas leaders, former deputy-prime minister Nasserudin al-Shar’er and Hussein Abu Qweik to pray with him at his headquarters in Ramallah on Friday.

Hamas and the vast bulk of Palestinians have welcomed the gesture, hoping that it would be a first step toward rebuilding Palestinian national unity, broken up earlier this year when the US sought to arm and finance former Fatah strong man in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Dahlan, to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas-led national unity government, which eventually prompted Hamas to crush and oust Dahlan’s forces.

The showdown between Fatah and Hamas culminated in the dismissal by Mahmoud Abbas of the National Unity government in Gaza and the creation of a Western-backed government in Ramallah which is not answerable to the Palestinian Legislative Council.

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