“Israeli guards particularly targeted him because of his Jewish background,” he says.
Samaritans, who have long lived in the northern parts of the occupied West Bank, are an ethnoreligious group with some distinct features from modern Judaism. Said considers them as part of Palestinian identity. “We grew up and lived together for many years,” he says.
Every movement has one representative in each Israeli jail and different representatives come together in a prisoner council to manage Palestinian issues across the prisoner population, according to the former detainees.
“This is the beauty of our resistance,” says Hajhusein. “No matter which movements fellow prisoners come from, we are all united there.”
Marwan Barghouti, Fatah’s charismatic young leader in the West Bank prior to his imprisonment in 2002, is a towering figure for the prisoner movement.
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Barghouti has now spent more than two decades in Israeli jails, repeatedly tortured and mistreated by his guards. In a recent video, Ben-Gvir was seen insulting him.
“We consider him as our leader,” Fahed Shouludi, another of the three Palestinian ex-prisoners, tells TRT World.
Shouludi, a 55-year-old Palestinian from occupied East Jerusalem’s Silvan neighbourhood, says that he met Barghouti in jail once, besides the late Hamas leaders Ismael Aliyah and Yahya Sinwar.
Barghouti was at the top of Hamas’s list for recent swap deals, but Israel refused to release him.
Shouludi, who was released in 2011 by Israel through another swap deal, is politically closer to Hamas, believes that the Palestinian resistance group will “recognise” Barghouti’s leadership if he is released. “In a free election, he will definitely be elected as the next Palestinian leader,” he says.
Many analysts believe that Barghouti could bring the different Palestinian factions together under his leadership and even serve as a peacemaker between Israel and Palestine.
Like Shouludi, Said, who also met Barghouti, highly praises the Palestinian leader’s long-term commitment to their cause and his continuing struggle in Israeli prisons.
“We have learned a lot from his struggle,” he says. “While I do not agree with some of his political views, I have the utmost respect for his stances.”
“He is probably the cleanest Palestinian voice. He is the symbol of Palestinian prisoner resistance.”
How do ex-prisoners see Israel’s future?
The three ex-prisoners do not see much of a future for Israel’s most extremist government under Benjamin Netanyahu.
Extreme religious groups with Zionist ideology are now ruling Israel, says Hajhusein. Behind Israel’s notorious attacks from Gaza to Syria, Lebanon, Qatar and Iran, he sees this Zionist agenda.
These Israeli far-right groups believe that Israel can expand from Palestine to other Middle Eastern areas like Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt between the Euphrates and Nile rivers, forming “Greater Israel”, he says.
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Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, has publicly asserted that the Zionist state aims to form Greater Israel. Netanyahu also backed this extremist stance.
This kind of extremist agenda will be instrumental in bringing down the Israeli state, according to Shouludi, who was first arrested when he was only 14. He has spent time in 20 different jails during his imprisonment.
“In my entire life, I have not witnessed an Israel with this much division. They have no future. Their doom is inevitable,” he says. Shouludi, who is fluent in Hebrew, follows Israeli news daily.
“Life is good, but without dignity you can’t feel its beauty.”
“We have fought different occupations since British colonialism began in Palestine after WWI, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Whatever Israelis do, we will continue to fight them. We transfer not only our cultural values but our fighting skills from one generation to another to make sure we continue to fight,” he says.
“If you asked my 7-year-old daughter what Palestine stands for, she would definitely tell you what it is.”
