Ramallah -

"I will leave my cell" is a two-word title chosen by Palestinian prisoner Karim Yunis in a final message he addressed to his people a few days before the end of his 40-year-long rule in Israeli prisons, during which he lost his parents and the cause he fought for witnessed many changes. And he had to face the younger generations who were born and grew up in his absence.

After she left his visit in the Israeli "Hadrim" prison yesterday evening, Saturday, his lawyer, Gaid Qassem, said, "Karim gives you peace and greetings...and a few hours separate him from freedom after 40 years of imprisonment in the colonial bastilles." He is scheduled to be released on Thursday, corresponding to the fifth. From this January.

Subhia Younes, Karim's mother, waited for him for 4 decades, and she died months before his release (Al-Jazeera)

insistence on arrest

The Israeli occupation arrested Karim Younis on January 6, 1983, and sentenced him to life imprisonment, and his life sentence was later set at 40 years.

In 2013, on the 30th anniversary of his arrest, his father died, and his mother continued to visit him, despite her illness and old age, until she died last May, 8 months before his release.

The prisoner Younis is one of 25 Palestinian prisoners who have been detained by Israel since before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, as it has refused for decades to release them, despite the passage of many exchange deals and mass releases, the last of which was in 2014, when it was scheduled to release the batch. The fourth and last of the old prisoners, however, denied the agreement that was reached at the time within the framework of the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

He hoped to emerge victorious

In the letter, entitled “I will leave my cell,” Karim Yunus wrote, “Here I am about to leave my dark cell, in which I learned not to be afraid of the dark. ".

He added, "I have always wished to leave it, wresting my freedom, accompanied by the brothers of the path and the comrades of the struggle, imagining a reception that expresses victory and a great achievement. I feel disappointed and helpless, especially when I look into the eyes of one of them, some of whom have been in captivity for more than three decades.”

In an indirect message to all Palestinians, Yunus - who is from the town of Ara in the occupied Palestinian triangle in 1948 - talked about the difficulty of leaving his comrades in captivity.

He said, "I am leaving, but my soul remains with those holding on to the embers who keep the embers of the Palestinian struggle as a whole, with those who have not and will not be broken, but the years of their lives slip under them, above them, before them, and behind them, and they still aspire to see the sun of freedom."

Although he bore the burden of 40 years in captivity, Karim Yunus wonders in his letter, "Unusually perplexed," as he says, "How long can a prisoner carry his corpse on his back, and continue his life while death walks with him? How can this suffering and slow death keep his fate?" For an endless period in light of an unknown future and a dead end...?”

And he continues, "I will leave my cell, knowing that our ship is being battered by international waves from all directions, regional storms from east and west, local earthquakes, and aggressive volcanoes that are about to swallow it, as it moves away from the shore its captain tried to anchor to more than a quarter of a century ago."

Karim Younis did not forget solidarity with him and with the prisoners in the occupation prisons in Palestine and the diaspora, "who embraced us and our cause over all those years, and were loyal to our cause and the cause of our people, which always gives us renewed hope, and a firm belief in the justice of our cause, the sincerity of our affiliation, the feasibility and the essence of our struggle." .

A world like no other

Yunus, after 4 decades in captivity, is preparing to meet “a generation unlike his generation,” as he wrote, and said, “I will leave my cell, raising my hat to a generation that undoubtedly does not resemble my generation, a generation of young men and women activists who have been at the forefront of the scene in recent years.. It is clear that they are Stronger, bolder, braver, and more deserving of receiving the banner... despite the atmosphere of rushing."

Karim Yunus does not hide his fear of a world that does not resemble his world, preparing to meet it, and he wrote, "After a few days, the fear overwhelms me with the approach of a world that does not resemble my world," but he seemed more ready for a moment "in which I must pass through my old wounds, and my old memories."

He says, "A moment in which I can smile in the face of my old image, without feeling remorse or disappointment, and without having to prove the obvious that I have lived and experienced for 40 years, so that I can adapt to my new mirror."

He concluded his message, "I am returning to sing with my people everywhere the anthem of my country, the anthem of the fedayeen ... the anthem of return and liberation."