Freedom Tunnel to Al-Aqsa Flood: Prisoners, Resistance and Liberation

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network posted this excerpted statement on Sept. 6, 2024.

On September 6, we mark the third anniversary of the great Freedom Tunnel of September 6, 2021, in which six Palestinian prisoners — Mahmoud al-Ardah, Mohammed al-Ardah, Yousef Qadri, Ayham Kamamji, Munadil Nafa’at and Zakaria Zubeidi — liberated themselves from the Zionist occupation regime’s “high security” Gilboa prison. 

The Freedom Tunnel was a harbinger of the Al-Aqsa Flood, exposing the illusory nature of the occupation’s proclaimed technological and intelligence superiority and inspiring collective hope and optimism in Palestine and around the world about the future of the Palestinian cause. 

The heroic Al-Aqsa Flood, launched on October 7, 2023, has exposed the inhuman rampage of the genocidal enemy and its imperialist backers — the U.S., Germany, France, Britain, Canada and more — and highlighted to all the legendary courage, strategic planning and execution, steadfastness and brilliance of the armed Resistance. 

At a time when the bombing of refugee camps, the destruction of hospitals and the slaughter of mangled children have become daily news updates that could provoke despair in all who love life and cherish humanity, it is the ingenuity, resourcefulness, faith and deep dedication of the resistance, its leaders and its fighters, from the depths of the tunnels of Gaza to the paragliders soaring over the colonial fences, that continue to spark not only hope but certainty of victory and empowers a growing global Intifada. 

This anniversary takes on additional significance and profundity in light of the current moment. Al-Aqsa Flood is characterized not only by the heroic Resistance, and most centrally the armed Resistance, and the Zionist genocide in Gaza, but by the invasions throughout the West Bank of occupied Palestine, particularly in Jenin (the home of the Freedom Tunnel heroes), Tulkarem and Tubas. 

Martyrdom of Zubeidi family members

On Sept. 4, Zakaria Zubeidi’s son, Mohammed, was martyred alongside his comrades from both Jenin and Tubas after they were targeted for assassination, as Zionist occupation forces fired three missiles at their car. Mohammed Zakaria Zubeidi was martyred alongside four fellow resistance fighters and leaders from both Jenin and Tubas — Mohammed Nazmi Abu Zagha, Mohammed Awad Abu Jumaa, Qusai Majdi Abdullah Abdelrazeq and Ahmed Fawaz Abu Dawas — as well as the youth Majed Abu Zeina. 

The Zubeidi family has given martyr after martyr for Palestinian liberation, alongside the people of [the] Jenin camp and city, a beating heart of resistance that has never been extinguished by either British or Zionist colonialism. The history, present and future of the Resistance in Jenin was woven into the Freedom Tunnel operation, a legacy that has continued in the Jenin Brigades, through its brave fighters and heroic martyrs who have relentlessly fought to free Jenin — and all of Palestine — from the grasp of the occupation. 

Despite the destruction wrought by the occupation forces — including tearing up 70% of Jenin’s roads — and the precious martyrs taken by their assaults and assassinations, from Mohammed Zubeidi and his comrades to Abu Shujaa in Tulkarem, the Resistance throughout the West Bank continues to fight, to rebuild, to defend their land and people and to advance the cause of liberation.

The great popular Intifada of 1987, launched from Gaza in December, six months after the May 1987 Gaza prison break of Misbah al-Suri and his comrades and two months after their battle in Shujaiyya on Oct. 6, is now commemorated as the official anniversary date of the founding of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement. 

And of course, this was two years after the great prisoner exchange of 1985 conducted by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, which liberated 1,150 Palestinian prisoners, including al-Suri, Kozo Okamoto of the Japanese Red Army; Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, later the spiritual leader of Hamas; and Ziyad Nakhaleh, the current general secretary of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.  

‘Immediate forebear of October 7’

Similarly, it is clear that alongside the Battle of Seif al-Quds/the Unity Intifada, the Freedom Tunnel — and, of course, the Wafa’ al-Ahrar prisoner exchange accomplished by the Resistance in 2011 in which many leaders, including most prominently, Yahya Sinwar, chair of the Political Bureau of Hamas, were liberated — is one of the immediate forebears of October 7, 2023. The light of liberation that shone from the Freedom Tunnel has become a burning sun of the Palestinian revolution, casting away all illusions and exposing the friends and enemies of the Palestinian people, unquenchable until victory and liberation, from the river to the sea. 

It is clear to all that the Palestinian Resistance — alongside the resistance forces in the region, stretching from Lebanon to Yemen to Iraq to Syria to Iran and around the world from the Sahel to Venezuela, with the support of our movements on our campuses, communities, countries and cities everywhere, including in the heart of the imperial core — can and will defeat the Zionist project in Palestine and U.S.-led imperialism in the region, no matter how vicious their genocidal aggression and the irreplaceable human toll that they are determined to extract from the Palestinian and Arab people. 

Today, the six heroes of the Freedom Tunnel are high priorities for liberation in a prisoner exchange conducted by the Resistance, alongside their fellow leaders of the prisoners’ movement: Marwan Barghouti, Ahmad Sa’adat, Abdullah Barghouti, Abbas al-Sayyed, Ibrahim Hamed, Hassan Salameh, Nael Barghouti and their fellow prisoners [serving] lengthy sentences, alongside the steadfast women prisoners like Khalida Jarrar, Hanan Barghouti, Bushra al-Tawil, Shatila Abu Ayad and all of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held behind Zionist, imperialist and collaborationist reactionary regime bars. 

Free Palestinian prisoners now!

The situation inside the prisons has become even worse for Palestinian prisoners, as the Zionist regime carries out a deliberate policy of torture, starvation, medical neglect and abuse. For thousands of Palestinians abducted from Gaza and held in the torture camps like Sde Teiman, Zionist imprisonment has meant extreme physical and psychological torture, rape and [other] sexual assault, conducted as a matter of state policy. 

The internal Zionist front is being torn apart with contradictions, especially after the exposure of the Netanyahu government’s willingness to give up the Zionist captives held by the Resistance in order to prolong their political future — even at the expense of the Zionist project itself. 

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges all in the movement to take this anniversary as an occasion to highlight the struggles of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement as part and parcel of the Palestinian liberation struggle, to demand an end to the genocide, the freedom of the Palestinian prisoners and the liberation of all of Palestine and to celebrate and honour the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people, especially the armed Resistance at the forefront of that liberation. 

Glory to the martyrs, freedom for the prisoners and liberation for Palestine, from the river to the sea. 

Read the full statement at samidoun.net, Sept. 6, 2024.