Zakaria Zubeidi
This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Zakaria Muhammad 'Abdelrahman Zubeidi (Arabic: زكريا محمد عبد الرحمن الزبيدي; other spellings include Zakariyah Zbeidi, Zacharia and Zubaidi) (born 1976) is the former Jenin chief of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.
On 27 February 2019, Zubeidi was arrested again and in May charged before an Israeli military court with carrying out at least two shooting attacks on civilian buses in the West Bank.
[4] In an rare interview with a British reporter, Zakaria recalled his father, an English teacher, was prevented from teaching by the Israelis after he was arrested in the late 1960s for being a member of Fatah.
Dozens of Israeli volunteers ran the events, and Samira, believing that peace was possible, offered the top floor of the family house for rehearsals.
He became a sergeant, but left, disillusioned, after a year, complaining: "There were colleagues whom I had taught to read who were promoted to senior positions because of nepotism and corruption."
He went to work illegally in Israel, and for two years earned a good living as a contractor for home renovations in Tel Aviv and Haifa.
He became a truck driver, transporting flour and olive oil, but in September 2000 lost his job when the West Bank was sealed off due to the Second Intifada.
[15] Zubeidi himself traces his entry into armed militancy back to late 2001 when, after the killing of a close friend, he learned how to make bombs.
On 3 March 2002, one month before the main assault on the refugee camp, his mother was killed during an Israeli raid into Jenin.
The Israeli Army then launched a full-scale offensive in the Jenin refugee camp, demolishing hundreds of homes, leaving 2,000 homeless.
[15] Losing hope in the Israeli peace camp, he joined the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed wing of Fatah and became a leader of the group.
[17] Arna's son, Israeli actor Juliano Mer-Khamis, did return to Jenin in 2002 and looked for the boys who had been in the theater group.
Although he developed a friendly relationship with the former Palestinian president and Fatah head, Yasser Arafat, recalling him saying "'Zakaria, buddy, I love you, we're marching to Jerusalem!
In one such attempt in 2004, an Israeli police unit killed five other brigade members, including a 14-year-old boy, in a jeep carrying Zubeidi.
The two were in contact with each other and Zubeidi, despite being considered a loose cannon and dangerously outspoken, appreciated Abbas' "subdued no-nonsense style.
"[19] In September 2005 he declared that his group's cease-fire was at an end after Samer Saadi and two other militants were killed by Israeli forces in Jenin.
[22] On July 15, 2007, the Office of the Israeli Prime Minister announced that Israel would include Zubeidi in an amnesty offered to militants of Fatah's al-Aqsa-Brigades.
[24] Although he was accredited as one of 2,000 Fatah delegates to the conference in Bethlehem, Zubeidi was momentarily denied entry to the meeting hall.
al-Aqsa Brigade members in Nablus and Jenin, as well as those outside of the Palestinian territories, protested the rebuff, describing it as "stabbing the resistance in the back."
[26] In the speech he delivered at the conference, Zubeidi suggested the Fatah-ruled West Bank reunite with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip through force, if necessary.
He criticized the "old leadership," condemning them for failing the Palestinian people, stating that "(d)uring 18 years of negotiations [under Fatah], no hope has been created."
During this period, Zubeidi undertook to study for a master's degree from Birzeit University, where he was supervised by Abdel Rahim Al-Sheikh, Professor of Cultural Studies, with a thesis entitled The Dragon and the Hunter, that focused on the Palestinian experience of being pursued from 1968 to 2018[30] [31] and was helped in collecting materials by his friend Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist, who provided him with documents from Haaretz's archives.
[32] On 27 February 2019, before he could complete his dissertation,[30] Zubeidi was arrested again, on suspicion of having engaged in terrorist activities, and in May he was charged before an Israeli military court with carrying out at least two shooting attacks on civilian buses in the West Bank.
He was captured by the police on 11 September, with Mohammed Qassem Ardah, in northern Israel at a truck stop near the town of Shibli–Umm al-Ghanam.
