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- Country of residence: Palestine
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Today, Wednesday, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club and the Ministry of Education launched the campaign "40,000 Loyalty Letters from Palestine Students to the Dean of Prisoners, Karim Younes," from the new Al-Bireh Girls' Secondary School.
Younis, a member of the Central Committee of the Fatah movement, was arrested on January 6, 1983, and the occupation authorities issued a life sentence against him, which was later set at 40 years.
Inside one of the school halls, blank lined papers were distributed to the students, with a picture of the prisoner Karim Younis on the letterhead, to write their messages to him under the title: “A telegram of congratulations on the freedom of the dean of Palestinian prisoners, the fighting leader Karim Younis.”
The students listened to a lecture given by the freed prisoner, Louay Al-Mansi, about Karim Younis, the prisoner movement, and the conditions of prison and detention. In the outer lobby, students were drawing pictures of faces and other expressive pictures of the detention of children, and others were playing the oud and chanting patriotic songs.
Student Layan Ali said that she had been hearing a lot about the prisoner Karim Younis, and she wanted to participate in writing a letter to him in which she indicated that she would be like a daughter to him because he did not marry or have children.
Layan wrote that she was very much looking forward to meeting Younis after he was liberated a few days later, so he could tell her about his suffering in prison and his sacrifice of his freedom for the sake of Palestine.
As for the student Lynn Saadeh, as she says, she used to see pictures of the prisoner Karim Younis next to pictures of the martyr leader Yasser Arafat. This sparked her curiosity to search for this person, and she began reading and asking about him and learning about the details of his national experience.
Lynn stated that in her letter addressed to the prisoners in general, she tried to translate her feelings towards them, urging them to be patient and not to despair, because God is with them and their families are as well, and the entire people will not let them down because they sacrificed for him.
The student, Inaam Tahan, knows that Karim Younis is one of the oldest prisoners in the occupation prisons, and he spent forty years in prison. She wrote to him: “O our revolutionary hero, O educator of great generations, you are not just a human being imprisoned, but rather a legend that history cannot contain. Every wrinkle in your pure face has a story.” A prisoner, the story of a nation, the story of a people. You sacrificed your life to raise the word of truth so that you would not allow an unjust occupier to rape your homeland.”
The Prisoner's Club and the Ministry of Education will select the best 20 letters written by students from the nation's schools, and deliver them to prisoner Karim Younis at his reception, which will be held in Ramallah.
During the event, which was attended by political figures and representatives of prisoners’ bodies and institutions and ex-detainees, the head of the Prisoner’s Club, Qaddoura Fares, explained that Palestinian Teacher’s Day was chosen to launch a campaign of messages of loyalty to the prisoner Karim Younis, who was arrested before completing his university education, but he entered the prison cultured and educated.
He added that Younis was aware that the occupation sought to make its prisons graves that undermined the certainty, determination, and faith of the fighters, so that they would emerge from them broken, desperate, and frustrated, and burdened with diseases and worries, to serve as an example for future generations.”
However, according to Qaddoura Fares, he believed that the cell could be transformed into an area of clashes with the enemy and a field of conflict. The first battles that the prisoner movement fought were with the prison administration inside the prisons, for the sake of pen, paper, book, and education, all the way to seizing the right to enroll in universities.
The head of the Prisoner's Club confirmed that the occupation prisons were transformed into revolutionary schools and institutes, and Karim Younis was one of the teachers who poured their spirit, awareness and experience into all the generations that were in prison, and taught them to spread culture and science and raise the cognitive level of the prisoners, until the National Movement carried The prisoner has this name and has become worthy of this title, which is full of implications.
Fares continued: “On the 5th of next month, the town of Ara within the 48 regions will receive Karim Younis, after his liberation, as a hero and a symbol, and although the gang of racist, fascist criminals wish that Karim would emerge frustrated after 40 years of oppression, torment, hunger and cold, he will raise the sign of victory and say Long live free, Arab Palestine.
Prisoner Karim Younis is scheduled to be released on January 5, 2023, after 4 decades of detention in Israeli occupation prisons.
Karim Younis was included as one of the prisoners of the last batch of veteran prisoners detained before the Oslo Accords, whose release the Palestinian leadership demanded under understandings concluded with Israel, which disavowed the obligation to do so.
This batch included, in addition to Karim Younis, 29 prisoners, the oldest in the occupation prisons, about half of whom were from the 1948 regions.
The head of the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Authority, Qadri Abu Bakr, stated that the number of veteran prisoners detained before the signing of the Oslo Accords was 25, the oldest of whom were the two prisoners, Karim Younis and Maher Younis, who have been detained continuously since 1983, and whose sentences end next month.
He explained that the number of prisoners who were sentenced to life imprisonment reached 551, while the number of martyrs of the captive movement reached 232 martyrs, the occupation authorities continue to detain the bodies of 10 of them, the oldest of whom is Anis Dawla from Tulkarm, who was martyred in Ashkelon prison in 1980.
The head of the Prisoners' and Ex-Prisoners' Affairs Authority touched on the medical cases in the occupation prisons, and their number reached more than 600 prisoners, including 24 suffering from cancer and tumors.
He added: "At the beginning of this year, there were 8 prisoners in the occupation prisons suffering from cancer, and now the number has reached 24, and this is due to the lack of treatment by the prison administration and deliberate medical negligence."
In this context, he pointed out that the Commission for Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs called on the World Health Organization and the United Nations to conduct a periodic examination of prisoners, once every 6 months, and this helps in detecting diseases and treating them early, but the occupation authorities refuse this.
For his part, the Assistant Undersecretary for Educational Affairs at the Ministry of Education, Ayoub Alian, confirmed that education shares the national concerns of other bodies and ministries and the Palestinian people, in terms of the crimes committed by the occupying state.
He explained that 151 students and 17 teachers are detained in Israeli occupation prisons, in addition to two students subject to house arrest by the occupation authorities.
Alian touched on the fierce campaign launched by Israel against education in Jerusalem and the Palestinian curricula in the city’s schools, stressing that this campaign began since the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967 and escalated until the extremist settlers took over the reins of the occupying state.
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