Gaza -

On October 10, 1992, Dia Zakaria Al-Agha was a 17-year-old boy, when the Israeli occupation forces arrested him, put him in prison, from which he has not left since, and subjected him to various forms of oppression and torture.

These days, the Agha enters his 31st consecutive year in captivity, during which he moved between various Israeli prisons and prisons, until he became nicknamed "The Dean of the Prisoners of Gaza." occupation in 1993.

guerrilla boy

Diaa belongs to a family from the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.

In April 1975, he was not yet born when an Israeli special unit assassinated 3 of the most prominent leaders of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. They are Kamal Nasser, Kamal Adwan and Abu Youssef al-Najjar.

On the anniversary of his commando operation, the Agha family - one of the oldest and largest families in Gaza - is proud of their son's courage, and this year the family posted on its Facebook account, saying, "Using an agricultural pick... On October 10, 1992, a boy in The 17-year-old had an operation in the Gush Katif settlement complex, astonishing the officers and staff of the occupation army. Today marks his 30th consecutive year in the occupation cells, after he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

At that time, the commando operation resulted in the killing of an officer in the “Sirt Matkal” unit, an elite unit in the occupation army, called “Metsa Ben Haim,” a settler of “Gush Katif,” one of the settlements that was established on the lands of the Gaza Strip, before the Israeli withdrawal in 2005.

According to Palestinian sources, the same dead officer participated in the assassination of Khalil al-Wazir "Abu Jihad", one of the most prominent leaders of the Fatah movement in Tunisia in 1988. The press also wrote at the time that "the officer of the unit that assassinated Kamal Adwan and his two companions in 1973 was killed by a young man from Khan Yunis." ".

Never ending penalties

Zia was subjected to a harsh interrogation, during which he was subjected to various forms of torture in "interrogation cellars and cells", and then an Israeli military court sentenced him to life imprisonment.

It seems that this punishment was not enough for the occupying power, as it isolated Zia and deprived him of his right to visit, and later only allowed his mother to visit him at intervals.

With the passage of years, his mother, Najat Al-Agha, known in the media as "Umm Zia", although he is not the eldest of her sons, became a familiar face in the arenas of solidarity and events to support and support prisoners, and she moved between Arab and Western capitals accompanied by the "Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Authority" of the Liberation Organization, to introduce the issue of prisoners And expose the violations they are subjected to in prisons.

Umm Zia says - to Al Jazeera Net - that she visited him in "Nafha Prison" last August, after about 4 years of deprivation without any justification other than the continued desire to take revenge on him, as were hundreds of "heroic prisoners" in prisons and deprived of the visit.

Umm Zia, who is over 70 years old, is the only one who is allowed to visit her son among the family members, whenever the "occupier mood" permits.

"Visiting prisons is a piece of hell," she said. "It is a day of torment at the checkpoints and humiliating inspection procedures inside prisons, but it is all easier for the mothers of prisoners who wait eagerly to see their sons every few months for a period not exceeding 45 minutes."

In 2005, Diaa's father died, and he was accompanied by his brother Muhammad in prison, where he spent 12 years, and they did not have the opportunity to see their father's farewell.

Today, the mother says, "I have no longer a wish in this life, except to see and embrace Zia, and to rejoice in his marriage."

Dia was 17 years old when he carried out a commando operation that killed an officer from a unit that assassinated leaders from Fatah (communication sites)

Exception to release

Dia, who entered prison as a young boy, stands at the threshold of his 50th (47 years), and is nicknamed among his colleagues as "the father of prisoners".

The head of the Studies and Documentation Unit in the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission, Abdel Nasser Farwana, says that the list of prisoners who have spent 30 years and more continuously inside the prisons of the occupation;

It rose to 18 captives, with Zia joining it.

Farwana told Al Jazeera Net, a former prisoner and close to the Agha family, that Diaa still has high spirits and a strong will, despite the bitterness of prison and its torments, but his mother was exhausted by fatigue and illness, and she finally underwent surgery, despite that insisting on his visit, and the participation of the families of the prisoners in solidarity activities. .

Farwana attributes the deprivation of Um Zia, and other mothers and families, from visiting for long periods that may extend for years, to an Israeli desire to "continue to take revenge on the prisoner, his family and his social environment."

This revenge against the captive who "carried out a commando operation that leads to the killing of Israelis", as in the case of Diaa, begins from the moment he was arrested by torture, and then he is sentenced to "life" imprisonment.

According to Farwana, there are prisoners serving life sentences for the number of Israelis who died in their commando operations, in addition to other years for the number of wounded in those operations.

According to Farwana, Israel is the only country in the world that approves this punishment, "life imprisonment without a time limit", and it applies to the Palestinian accused of security issues.

While an Israeli convicted of criminal cases is sentenced to life imprisonment of 25 years.

Of the approximately 5,000 prisoners currently in Israeli prisons, 551 are serving life sentences, including 27 life captives from Gaza, the oldest of whom is Dia Al-Agha.

Zia was scheduled to be released in late March 2014, as part of US-sponsored Palestinian-Israeli understandings, but Israel reneged on its commitments at the time.

"Under these understandings, Israel released 3 batches of prisoners, and Diaa was among 25 prisoners in the fourth batch, who are still languishing in prisons," Farwana said.

Farwana believes that there is no hope of freedom for life prisoners - known as "generals of patience" - in the absence of "the prospect of a political solution with the occupation, except for an exchange deal in which the Palestinian resistance adheres to the conditions for their liberation."