Gaza - 

The detention experience of the liberated Palestinian prisoner, Raafat Hamdouna, was not a passing station in his life. In his view, the prison was a "arena for a struggle of wills" between fedayeen prisoners who consider prisons arenas of new resistance, and between the Israeli jailer and the Occupation Prison Service, which adopts "human engineering schemes" to destroy the will of the prisoner. and hope in life.

Hamdouna was a 20-year-old young man studying medical laboratories at the Modern Community College in Ramallah, when the occupation forces arrested him in 1990 and sentenced him to the number of years of his life at that time, before commuting the sentence to 15 years in prison, which he spent in full until his release in 2005. .

Hamdouna describes the prison experience as "a school, in which the result is either a successful or a failure, as it is a double-edged sword, either the prisoner masters its use and investment, or returns to his chest... in which the pen turns into a gun and the paper into a battlefield with the jailer."

prison school

Hamdouna feels satisfied with his result in the "prison school", and the words addressed to him by an Israeli jailer before the military court's ruling signed him in himself, as he told him, "You are 20 years old and you will spend 20 years here." And I said: If that is the case, then let it be as I want it, and not as the jailer wants it.”

Accompanied by 36 prisoners, the youngest of whom was in age, Hamdouna spent the first two years in “Nitzan al-Ramla isolation”, the most severe and harsh of the isolation sections in the occupation prisons, due to its location below the ground, and its lack of the simplest necessities of life, with many insects and rodents crowding the prisoners in the place on the His space was narrow, before he moved to the regular sections with other prisoners in Ashkelon prison, where "I felt free compared to my life in isolation," says Hamdouna.

In September 1992, Hamdouna was on a date with a struggle station, accompanied by prisoners in all prisons. They went on a 17-day strike, to extract demands to improve the standard of life inside prisons, most notably the right to university education.

He says, "We extracted many rights that had a positive impact on the lives of prisoners inside prisons, including allowing the occupation of those who wish to obtain university education at the Open University in Israel, after our demand for distance education in Palestinian universities was rejected."

At that time, Hamdouna was not fluent in the Hebrew language, and was busy with organizational tasks, until he decided in 1999 to enroll in the university, and graduated with distinction in sociology, and says, "Prisoners outperformed the occupation soldiers who were studying at the same university by affiliation, despite the difficult circumstances." For study and examinations inside prisons.

Books and novels by the liberated prisoner Raafat Hamdouna, who believes that the novel preserves memory and tells the story for future generations (Al-Jazeera)

Prison literature

The university degree is not Hamdouna's only achievement inside prison, as he had a "fingerprint" in what Palestinians know as "prison literature", through 4 novels he calls the "National Quartet", namely: The novel "A Lover from Jenin", which tells the story of the steadfastness of this camp and its resistance during The Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, and the novel “My Heart and the Camp,” which tells the story of the Jabalia refugee camp, the cradle of the first intifada in 1987, which witnessed Hamdouna’s childhood and upbringing, and the novel “The Dream Will Not Die,” which deals with the stories of the struggle of the people of the city of Rafah, which is the southern gate of Palestine and had a prominent role in the uprisings. .

The fourth of these novels is “The Diaspora” and it has its place in Hamdouna’s soul, as it is the last thing he wrote behind prison bars. It narrates the narrative of Palestinian homelessness and diaspora during the Nakba in 1948, and non-stop struggles in the lives of Palestinians who inherit the struggle against the occupation generation after generation. Hamdouna says that This novel has been translated into English, and "was the title of research presented at scientific conferences."

In addition to the four novels, Hamdouna has written 10 other books, two of which he wrote in prison, the most prominent of which are: “Between Prison and Exile Until Martyrdom,” “Stars Above the Forehead,” “A Cry from the Depths of Memory,” and “Management and Organization of the Captive Movement,” with the participation of Head of the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, Minister Qadri Abu Bakr.

Daily tasks

In 2005, Hamdouna left prison and did not leave him, so he remained closely associated with the registration companions, and the first stations of loyalty to them and the struggle for their freedom was his self-initiative to establish a specialized website called the “Prisoners’ Center for Studies”, and he joined the work of the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority as director of the International Law Department, and he says "Novel, literature and scientific research are important weapons for preserving memory and keeping the issue of prisoners alive."

A few weeks after his release, Hamdouna was among the first class to obtain a master's degree in "Israeli Studies" at Al-Quds Open University, and then joined the study at the "Institute for Arab Research and Studies" of the League of Arab States in Cairo, where he obtained a doctorate degree with honors. The first is a recommendation to print the thesis, and its title is: "Creative Aspects in the History of the Captive Palestinian National Movement."

The Ministry of Information in the Palestinian Authority has undertaken to print the letter in a book that is considered the first of its kind, and deals with the bright aspects of prisoners in the darkness of prisons, and their transcendence to the injustice of the jailer and breaking his will, through education, arts, music and literature.

Since his liberation, the prisoners have occupied an integral part of Hamdouna's daily routine, and he says, "The day that makes me tired of talking and working for this just cause is the day when I feel content and go to sleep with a clear conscience."

He added, "If I had not experienced detention in the occupation prisons, I would not be the person you see now. The prisoners are credited to us, and we do not bestow upon them what we do."

Hamdouna has significant media and educational contributions, such as his establishment of "Sawt al-Asraa Radio", whose idea accompanied him inside the prison, and his presentation of specialized radio programs, most notably "Despite the Restriction", "On the Wing of the Bird", and "The Other Scene".