Israel punitively added two years to Walid Daqqah's sentence of 37 years, and he has now been diagnosed with bone marrow cancer. Having completed serving his original sentence, Walid's family is demanding his release before it is too late.
Walid Daqqah (right), his daughter Milad (center), and his wife Sana’ (left). (Photo courtesy of the Free Walid Daqqah Campaign)
Sana’ Salameh reports in Mondoweiss
A version of this article first appeared in 7iber in Arabic on May 16, and was translated into English by Dalia Taha. It is published by Mondoweiss with permission.
Walid Daqqah, a Palestinian political prisoner from the village of Baqa al-Gharbiya in occupied Palestine, has been deprived of his freedom for 37 years. Walid’s sentence was due to end this spring, on March 24, 2023, but in 2018 the Israeli government vindictively extended the sentence by two years. During this time he was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer.
In the following account, Walid’s brave wife Sana’ Salameh bears witness to their battles during nearly four decades of incarceration. During these years, their family fought relentlessly for all the things that we otherwise take for granted, in and out of Israeli courts; the right to be married, the right to conceive a child, the right of a father to hold his daughter — and finally, the right to life itself. To this day, Walid, Sana’, and their daughter Milad continue to struggle together for Walid’s right to life and freedom. This is their story.
Free Walid Daqqah campaign
Walid was arrested on March 25, 1986, and has, as of the time of writing, lived 37 years in prison. He is one of the oldest political prisoners in Palestine.
Walid completed a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in prison. Like other prisoners, his spirit during years of imprisonment has not flagged. Our prisoners have transformed Israeli jails into universities and schools; into places where the praxis of our resistance is conceived and the human spirit is nourished. There is no better example of this creative defiance than Walid, because he is a writer, a novelist, and a formidable fighter. In all of his battles against the prison authorities, he got the upper hand, prevailing in all of them.
“Parallel Time,” the name of a play that Walid wrote in prison, is also a concept in his writings that has proven inspirational to many writers and students. “Parallel Time” was performed in Al Midan theater in Haifa in 2016, after which the theater was shut down by the Israeli government, because this regime cannot allow our prisoners to speak. After Al Midan was shut down, the Israeli media launched a vicious smear campaign against Walid. Walid also wrote a wonderful children’s story called The Tale of the Oil’s Secret, for which he was punished by the prison administration. He was denied family visitations, they fined him, and he was put in solitary confinement, in the most inhumane conditions. Finally he was charged with smuggling mobile phones into the prison.
Walid finished serving his original sentence of 37 years on March 24, 2023, just a few weeks ago, and he was now supposed to be free among us. But to punish him for this supposedly heinous crime the Israeli authorities added two additional years to his sentence in 2018. In other similar cases, such offenses were punished with a few days of solitary confinement. In Walid’s case they added two years. During these two years he was diagnosed with cancer.
The last case that pushed the Occupation Authorities and Prison Services to target Walid and incite against him was the birth of our daughter, Milad. Milad was born by means of liberated sperm, smuggled out of the prison. Because we became a mother and a father in spite of the occupation authorities, Walid and I became targets of their vindictiveness.
