The night Basim Khandakji’s novel won the 2024 “Arabic Booker Prize”, Israeli prison guards stormed his cell, assaulted him, bound his hands and feet, and threatened him. The 42-year-old was then placed in Ofer Prison’s solitary confinement for 12 days.

It was retaliation, he believes, for embarrassing the Israeli prison system—managing to publish a book under the noses of guards, drawing attention to himself and the conditions he faced. Now, he is out of Israeli prison after serving 21 years of three life sentences.

“I still feel like I’m dreaming, and I’m terrified I might wake up and find myself back in a cell,” Khandakji said.

After his release, he remains unable to return home to his family in Nablus. Exiled from his homeland by Israel, he now waits in Egypt as his family fights to reach him.

### ‘We Saw New Horrors’

As happy as he is about escaping “the cemetery of the living” in Israeli prisons, Khandakji is still trying to process the horrors that he witnessed there and his sadness at leaving other prisoners behind.

He was convicted in 2004 of being part of a “military cell” and of involvement in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, a crime he says he was forced to confess to.

“The lawyer told me I had to sign a confession from the outside world,” he said, although he did receive word of his father’s death while imprisoned.

“I was deprived of my father while he was alive, and after his death I was denied the chance to bury him,” he added.

Nearly 9,000 Palestinians remain in Israeli jails, many taken in mass roundups. More than 3,500 are held under “administrative detention,” a policy Israel created to justify imprisoning people indefinitely without charge or trial.

### Smuggling Out an Award-Winning Novel

In prison, Khandakji says:

“Writing gave me a refuge, a hiding place through which I could escape the brutality of the jail and reclaim my freedom, even if only in my imagination.”

He had to go on hunger strike repeatedly to obtain notebooks and pens.

In 2023, his award-winning novel, *A Mask, The Colour of the Sky*, was published in Lebanon in Arabic and was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, known as the Arabic Booker.

The book tells the story of Nur, a Palestinian archaeologist who finds an Israeli ID and assumes the identity of “Ur,” eventually joining an archaeological dig on an illegal Israeli settlement.

In it, Khandakji reflects on the uncovering of Palestine’s antiquity and contrasts the constrained life of Nur, with his Palestinian ID, to Ur, whose sky-blue Israeli ID allowed him to travel freely.

Hearing of the shortlisting, ultranationalist Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir demanded harsher conditions for Khandakji. Others on the Israeli extreme right even called for his murder.

His award triumph included a $50,000 prize and funding for an English translation, paving the way for a global readership.

When Israel launched its war on Gaza, conditions worsened in the prison. Guards confiscated Khandakji’s writing materials and smashed his reading glasses. He felt “completely powerless,” he says.

“Being deprived of my pens and notebooks felt like being deprived of air.”

### Looking Ahead: Writing and Justice

Now free, Khandakji aims to publish another novel—one he wrote in his head during his final year of captivity. It is based on one of his closest friends, writer Walid Daqqa, who died of cancer after allegedly deliberate medical neglect by prison authorities.

Aside from writing, Khandakji’s only solace in jail was the friendships he made “that even death cannot erase.”

“I live with sorrow and pain because I left behind so many friends in prison, still suffering,” he adds.

One of these friends, with whom he shared a cell, was Fatah politician Marwan Barghouthi, sentenced to five life sentences plus 40 years in 2004. Barghouthi is often compared to South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela due to his long imprisonment as a political prisoner and his unifying popularity among Palestinians.

“Marwan Barghouthi is a great man,” Khandakji said. “If he were released, he could become a unifying national figure.”

The 66-year-old Barghouthi was beaten unconscious last month by Israeli jail authorities. His son, Arab, told international media his father fears for his life as Israel continues to ignore international calls for his release.

### Homeland Lives Within

Khandakji was arrested in 2004 at the age of 21, during his final year studying journalism and political science at An-Najah National University in his hometown of Nablus.

Raised in a family of socialists, he became active in the Palestinian People’s Party as a teenager. He is now an elected member of the party’s political bureau.

During the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, he joined the armed resistance in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Looking back, he reflected:

“In the end, violence in all its forms is inhuman. As human beings, we should first try to solve our issues through peaceful and civilized means.”

“But when someone tries to erase you, to annihilate you, your struggle becomes one of existence.”

“If time could go back, I might look for other ways,” he added, seeking a different path—one that didn’t deprive him of his family for 21 years.

He was one of 250 high-profile detainees freed by Israel on October 13 as part of the United States-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.

Israeli captives held by Hamas were released in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees, most of whom were “disappeared” by Israel from Gaza, according to the UN.

Khandakji described the night of his release as “terrifying,” adding that his body was shaking as he “knew the moment of freedom had finally come.”

When he passed the prison gates and his bus went south instead of towards Nablus, he realized his full freedom would be denied a little longer.

“Being exiled from your homeland is a burning, painful feeling,” he said.

“My first joy, first sorrow, and first dreams were all in my city, Nablus.”

“Palestinians, unlike others, do not live in their homeland; their homeland lives within them,” he added.

### The Road Ahead

For now, Khandakji will continue writing and plans to pursue a PhD after achieving a master’s degree in Israeli studies while imprisoned.

His family is fighting desperately to reunite with him in Egypt, facing repeated obstacles imposed by Israel.

“I still hope that in the coming period, there will be some human justice that allows me to embrace my mother,” he said. “Not as a freed prisoner, but simply as a child searching for the scent of his childhood in his mother’s arms.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/26/award-winning-palestinian-author-on-israeli-prison-exile-and-homeland?traffic_source=rss