When Zakaria Zubeidi was suddenly released from an Israeli prison in early January, it was a rare and short-lived moment of joy for Palestinians.
Hundreds of people gathered in Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to celebrate Zubeidi's return from prison, hailing him as a hero. They chanted his name as he took his first steps into freedom, and some lifted him onto their shoulders. One child clutched a can of hair gel that Zubeidi had given him six years ago, before he was arrested. "I wanted to show Uncle Zakaria that I saved it," said 11-year-old Watan Abu Al Rob, "and I will only use it now that he is free."
Zubeidi, 49, is the most famous of the Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for Israeli hostages during a brief Gaza truce earlier this year. In the early 2000s, he inspired Palestinians and terrified Israelis, leading a militant group affiliated with Fatah, Hamas's secular rival.
He gained international attention a few years later when he gave up the fight and helped found a theater. A decade later, he was imprisoned again, his legendary status cemented when he briefly escaped through a tunnel, only to be caught and returned to prison.
Now, months after his release, Zubeidi has become a symbol of something else: the sense of hopelessness that pervades Palestinian life. In a recent interview with The New York Times — his first major interview since his release — Zubeidi said he felt his life as a fighter, a theater leader, and a prisoner had ultimately been in vain. None of it, he said, helped create a Palestinian state, and perhaps never will.
"We need to reconsider our means," Zubeidi said in an interview in Ramallah. "We started a theater, we tried cultural resistance - what did that bring?" he asked. "We tried the rifle, we tried shooting. There is no solution."
As if to prove his point, Zubeidi pulled out several dentures from his jaw — showing that he had no teeth. Zubeidi said his teeth and jaw were broken during a recent prison stint. He had already been detained during the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. In the weeks that followed, he said, guards repeatedly beat him. His description of the treatment echoes the accounts of at least a dozen other detainees in Israel since the war began, whom The New York Times interviewed.
The Israeli Prison Service said in a statement that it "is not aware of the allegations you describe and, to our knowledge, such events have not occurred."
Cut off from the media while in prison, Zubeidi emerged after 16 months of war to find Gaza devastated by an Israeli counteroffensive. In Jenin, his hometown in the northern West Bank, he found large areas destroyed and devastated by Israeli incursions. His home in the part of the city that the Israeli army had sealed off was inaccessible. His 21-year-old son, also a fighter, had been killed in an Israeli attack. On all fronts, Palestinian strategies seemed to be failing.
"But what is the solution?" Zubeidi asked. "I asked myself that question too."
As a young fighter, Zubeidi had a clearer sense of mission.
In the early 2000s, after the collapse of peace talks, he joined the Jenin militia, believing it was the best way to achieve Palestinian sovereignty. The immediate trigger was a provocative visit by an Israeli leader, accompanied by hundreds of police officers, to the large mosque complex in Jerusalem, built on the site of the ancient Jewish temple. Protests and riots broke out in Arab parts of Israel, and the deadly Israeli crackdown horrified Zubeidi.
As the protests turned into an armed uprising, known as the Second Intifada, Zubeidi joined the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the main armed group in Jenin affiliated with Fatah, quickly rising within its ranks to the position of leader.
To the Israelis, Zubeidi was a terrorist. During the five-year intifada, Palestinians killed about 1.000 Israelis, as the uprising morphed from protests into bombings and armed attacks on Israeli buses, nightclubs, hotels and cafes. Zubeidi denies involvement in any of the killings, but he was accused of ordering several such attacks, including a shooting at the offices of a political party in which several people were killed. He was eventually charged with 24 counts, mostly related to violence, but no verdict was reached before his release.
"His release is dangerous," Bela Avraham, the wife of the victim of the attack, told Israeli media after Zubeidi was released. "I expect the state to pursue him until the last day."
To Palestinians, however, Zubeidi was a freedom fighter who led the defense of Palestinian land against the occupying army. During the Second Intifada, the Israelis killed an estimated 3.000 Palestinians. When the Israeli army invaded Jenin in 2002 and destroyed much of Zubeidi's neighborhood, he led a group of armed men who tried to repel the attack. He gained international attention after appearing in the documentary "Arna's Children," which chronicled some of the paramilitary activities.
In one striking scene, the filmmakers captured a discussion about guerrilla tactics between Zubeidi and his comrade, Ala Sabag. Zubeidi survived the Israeli incursion by hiding in the rubble, and disapproved of Sabag's decision to survive by surrendering to the soldiers.
"I would never give up," Zubeidi boasted to his friend. "Never!"
"I would rather die," he added later.
Zubeidi eventually took a more nuanced approach to fighting Israel. As Israeli and Palestinian leaders attempted to restore peace, Israel in 2007 offered amnesty to hundreds of fighters, including Zubeidi, on the condition that they lay down their arms.
Zubeidi accepted this, saying in interviews at the time that the intifada had failed. He shifted his focus to the theater he founded with an Israeli leftist actor and a Swedish activist. The Jenin Freedom Theater organized drama workshops for the city's youth - a program that continues today - and performed adaptations of works such as "Waiting for Godot" and "Animal Farm."
Zubeidi did not direct any plays, but his participation in the theater's management helped protect it from opposition from conservative Jenin residents.
He said that his ultimate goal remains the end of the Israeli occupation. But his engagement in theater reflects the development of a new approach to achieving that goal. His intention is not to replace or abandon Palestinian activism, but to provide it with an intellectual and cultural foothold.
"The media said Zakaria had moved from armed struggle to cultural struggle," Zubeidi told us, referring to himself in the third person. "But it's not about being one or the other," he added. "How did I open the theater door? I kicked it open with a rifle."
Accusing him of violating the terms of his amnesty, Israel arrested him again in 2019, paving the way for his most memorable exploits. While awaiting trial in 2021, Zubeidi escaped from his prison cell through a 30-meter-long tunnel that a group of his comrades had dug from the cell's bathroom.
Although all six escapees were recaptured within days, and Zubeidi was convicted of escape, their desire for freedom captivated and inspired Palestinians, cementing Zubeidi's cult status. Until the Israeli bombing, which devastated the territory, murals dedicated to the escape could be seen on walls as far away as Gaza City.
Zubeidi believes that Israel is too strong to be defeated by violence and too selfish to reward sincere Palestinian partnership with a state. There is no peaceful solution and there is no military solution. Why? Because the Israelis don't want to give us anything.
Yet Zubeidi views the escape ambiguously - both as a necessity and as a move that was counterproductive.
"It was impossible for me to be in prison without seeking freedom," he said. "A prisoner who doesn't think about escaping from prison doesn't deserve freedom."
He said he was stuck in the tunnel for ten minutes and had to be pulled out by one of his fellow escapees. When he finally felt the warm night air on his skin, he said, it was like "freedom seeping into my veins."
Still, the escape didn't accomplish much in the end, he said. He always knew it would end in death or recapture, and so it did - Israeli police found Zubeidi a few days later, hidden in a truck.
The incident prompted the Israeli Prison Service to impose even stricter conditions on Palestinian prisoners, and Zubeidi was placed in solitary confinement.
For Zubeidi, it is the outcome that best illustrates the trap in which all Palestinians find themselves, regardless of whether they oppose Israel peacefully or violently.
The Intifada failed to oust Israel. But the Palestinian Authority, a semi-autonomous body that cooperates with Israel in governing Palestinian cities in the West Bank, failed to achieve statehood through its peaceful approach.
For many Israelis, the reason is that the Palestinian Authority is too dishonest, incompetent, and weak to be trusted with running a state.
However, Zubeidi says that Israel is the obstacle - too powerful to be defeated by violence and too selfish to reward sincere Palestinian partnership with a state.
"There is no peaceful solution and there is no military solution," he said. "Why? Because the Israelis don't want to give us anything."
"It is impossible to remove us from here," Zubeidi concluded. "And we have no means to remove them."
Still, Zubeidi has not given up his search for answers. Since his release, he said, he has begun doctoral studies at Birzeit University, one of Palestine's leading colleges, hoping it will help him better understand the complexities of the conflict.
Him?
Israeli studies.
Prepared by: A. Š.
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