Parallel Time – for a Palestinian imprisoned by Israel

JVL Introduction

Walid Daqqa was a Palestinian philosopher, political theorist, playwright, and armed resistance fighter. Despite evidence to the contrary, Daqqa was accused, charged, and convicted of involvement in a 1984 PFLP operation that captured and killed an Israeli soldier, for which he was sentenced to life in prison, where he stayed until his death on April 7, 2024.

Here he writes of life behind bars, of the ways that time is noted as a prisoner and of learning about changes outside from newly arrived prisoners who tell him there are no longer rotary dial phones, that car tyres are now tubeless.  He notes also that his mother dyes her hair with Henna, perhaps to hide her aging from him. This letter was written in 2005 after he had spent 19 years in jail.

When we consider how many Palestinians are now languishing in Israel’s jails, about a third of them without even an idea of what they are charged with or when they will be released and mostly experiencing torture, it is also important to consider the toll of incarceration itself.

LL

This article was originally published by Mizna on Fri 25 Apr 2025. Read the original here.