Walid Daqqa

Walid Daqqa (Arabic: وليد دقة; 18 July 1961 – 7 April 2024) was a Palestinian prisoner and novelist who was imprisoned for 38 years after he was convicted of commanding a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)-affiliated group that abducted and killed an Israeli soldier.

[7][6] He authored several prison literature works, including a children's novel in 2018 that narrates the story of a boy, who uses magical olive oil from the Israeli-occupied West Bank to visit his imprisoned father.

He was radicalized by the shock of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and subsequently joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1983.

[8] The Palestinian state news agency Wafa described Daqqa as a "freedom fighter"[2] and described the PFLP members convicted of killing Tamam as "his companions".

[13] According to Amnesty International, his conviction was based on emergency regulations enacted by British authorities in Mandatory Palestine, which allow for a lower threshold for proof than the criteria used in Israeli criminal law.

The latter book, together with material from a long letter he had written to former MK Azmi Bishara,[9] was adapted into a play and staged at the Al-Midan Theater in Haifa, and talks about the psychological state of prisoners.

It begins as the boy prepares to meet his father for the first time in prison, but Jude receives news that, "due to security reasons," his visit had been cancelled.

Jude, who is heartbroken, goes for a walk in the countryside, engaging in a conversation with different species, including a rabbit, a cat, and eventually an olive tree named Um Rumi, who is 1,500-year-old.

[6] Um Rumi, the olive tree, tells the boy of her experience when Israel had threatened to uproot her so that she could be moved from the West Bank to the Israeli city of Afula.

[8][16] Amnesty International reported that Daqqa's lawyer who had visited him on 24 March 2024 was "shocked by his sharp weight loss and visible fragility," and accordingly, said that denying prisoners from access to medical care may constitute torture.

[9] The day after, the penultimate of Ramadan, with authorities ignoring requests for the release of his body, chairs had been arranged in the garden for visitors bringing condolences.

[17] Israeli police are reported to have intervened forcefully to disperse visitors who had approached his home in Baqa al-Gharbiyye to pay their respects to his family after his death was announced, arresting five mourners.

Daqqa's brother stated that Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli Minister of National Security had delayed the restitution of his body to his family for burial.

[11] Senior researcher Erika Guevara Rosas at Amnesty International wrote upon Daqqa's death that:[4] Even on his deathbed, Israeli authorities continued to display chilling levels of cruelty against Walid Daqqah and his family, not only denying him adequate medical treatment and suitable food, but also preventing him from saying a final goodbye to his wife Sanaa Salameh and their four-year-old daughter Milad.In response to an Amnesty International report on Daqqa, the Israeli Foreign Ministry wrote in a social media post: "Amnesty, you have a disturbing obsession with glorifying sadistic murderers.