A Palestinian convicted in bombing plot is now an award-winning novelist, and free

CAIRO, Egypt — He entered jail 21 years in the past for planning a lethal suicide bombing. He left jail in October as an award-winning novelist.

Bassem Khandaqji, 41, was certainly one of almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees launched by Israel within the Gaza ceasefire deal. In alternate, Hamas launched the remaining residing hostages captured when the militant group attacked southern Israel in October 2023.

Khandaqji was serving three life phrases in an Israeli jail for dispatching a suicide bomber to an outside market in Tel Aviv in 2004, killing three Israeli civilians.

In jail, Khandaqji wrote a number of works of fiction together with A Masks the Coloration of the Sky. It gained Arabic literature’s most prestigious fiction prize final yr. The novel is popping out in English in March.

“I try to convince my readers by my text that I’m a new man now,” Khandaqji informed NPR at a Marriott lodge in Cairo, the place he was despatched upon his launch.

In a wide-ranging interview, Khandaqji spoke concerning the bombing that landed him in jail, the novel that introduced him literary fame behind bars, and what he has been doing since his launch.

The bombing

In 2004, Khandaqji was 20 and in his third yr of college within the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution when he was arrested.

It was through the second intifada, a Palestinian rebellion that lasted from 2000 to 2005 in protest of Israel’s persevering with occupation regardless of years of peace talks. Throughout that point, Palestinian militant teams killed greater than 1,000 Israelis, and the Israeli army killed a number of thousand Palestinians.

It was a “terrible war,” Khandaqji mentioned. “When I saw all the people around me … being killed by the Israeli airplanes and tanks, that [made] me very angry. I was a young man.”

Khandaqji and two different fellow members of the Well-liked Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) militant group had been convicted for serving to plan the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

At his 2005 sentencing, Khandaqji addressed the Israeli army courtroom judges, telling them he had studied about Jewish struggling beneath the Nazis, and that Israel had grow to be just like the perpetrators of the Holocaust in the best way they handled Palestinians.

“You are a victim who became a monster,” he mentioned in courtroom, based on the transcript of the proceedings. “Let me say with sorrow and pain that on this land there are new Nazis who are leading their people to destruction.”

Of their verdict, the Israeli judges addressed Khandaqji’s remarks: “We have no interest in addressing these delusional claims; it is enough to say with certainty that no expression of remorse can be found in them.”

Out of jail twenty years later, Khandaqji informed NPR he had needed the bomber to assault a army goal, not civilians. “From the beginning, I told my friends or my comrades in the cell of the PFLP … I don’t believe in targeting the civilians,” he mentioned. “I told them we should attack just a military target. Checkpoints, camps, bases.”

He mentioned he didn’t really feel remorse for his actions, but when he might flip again the clock, he wouldn’t have resorted to violence.

“Did I mean … to send this suicide bomber to Tel Aviv to kill these people? No! I don’t believe in targeting the civilians,” Khandaqji informed NPR. “It was a horrible period. It was a complicated period. And if the history will return back, I will never use the same tools.”

Writing behind bars

In jail, Khandaqji started writing novels, discovering methods to smuggle them out for publication — he would not say how.

In 2024, whereas nonetheless behind bars, he gained the Worldwide Prize for Arabic Fiction. Typically known as the Arabic Booker prize, it is thought-about Arabic literature’s highest honor.

His award-winning novel, A Masks the Coloration of the Sky, is a few Palestinian man with a level in archaeology who’s writing a novel about Mary Magdalene. He finds an Israeli man’s ID card — coloured blue, just like the sky — and makes use of it, like carrying a masks, to pose as an Israeli, to be able to cross from the occupied West Financial institution into Israel. He joins an archaeological dig, gaining insights into the lives of Israelis whose world is often off-limits to him as a Palestinian.

Equally, Israel convicted Khandaqji, who was finding out journalism at a West Financial institution college on the time, for utilizing press credentials to enter Israel and put together for the 2004 bombing. Khandaqji declined to remark to NPR on the declare.

Writing about Israelis as a Palestinian

In jail, Khandaqji studied political science by correspondence, specializing in Israeli research. He nonetheless considers himself as engaged within the Palestinian wrestle towards Israel, now utilizing phrases, not weapons. He calls himself anti-colonialist and believes in a shared future in a single state, Palestinians and Jews collectively.

“Unfortunately in Palestinian literature, there is no clear presence inside the Palestinian stories or novels of the other, of the Jews. … It’s a stereotype presence. It’s not talking about the true life … the Israeli, he’s a human, like us. He is not just a soldier,” Khandaqji mentioned.

Israeli literature, he argued, portrays Palestinians as villains. “So I can’t treat the Israelis inside my text like that. I’m looking for a new ethic discourse.”

An estimated a whole bunch of hundreds of Palestinians have been incarcerated and detained in Israel over the a long time for alleged offenses starting from membership in militant teams to rock throwing to homicide. Books and essays written in or about Israeli prisons are a defining characteristic of up to date Palestinian literature. Khandaqji’s award-winning ebook stands out amongst different Palestinian jail literature, mentioned Issa Qaraqe, the previous head of the Palestinian nationwide library and a former prisoner himself.

“This book doesn’t directly address the prison experience like the majority of literature by Palestinian prisoners,” Qaraqe informed NPR. “The book steps out of the prison and talks about Palestinian history and identity in confronting the Zionist and Biblical identity.”

“They want my words”

On the literature prize award ceremony in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, final yr, the pinnacle of the jury, Syrian novelist Nabil Suleiman, introduced the ebook had gained the $50,000 prize for intertwining “the personal and political in innovative ways … with new narrative forms,” and for exploring self-awareness and the attention of the opposite.

Khandaqji’s brother accepted the award on his behalf. In jail, Khandaqji mentioned he came upon about his prize from his “very angry” interrogators, who took him out of his cell to query him.

“I told my investigator that if I [had known] that my words will hurt you like that, I [would have decided] to write a hundred years ago,” Khandaqji mentioned.

Since then, he has written one other novel in the identical sequence, however from the angle of the Israeli character whose ID was discovered.

In jail, Khandaqji mentioned, he would write at 4 or 5 within the morning, when the opposite prisoners had been asleep, hiding his writing from them and his jailers.

“That’s the most fascinating thing. I can’t write without this secrecy, without feeling that I am wanted [by] the jailer,” Khandaqji mentioned. “I turned [into] a wanted man, and my words too, they want my words.”

A novel in his head

After the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Palestinian prisoners had their private belongings confiscated, together with pen and paper. Khandaqji mentioned he wrote a whole novel in his head about one other prisoner. The a ebook was based mostly on his buddy Walid Daqqa, a fellow author who turned in poor health with most cancers and was denied clemency. Daqqa died in jail final yr.

“It’s an amazing experience to write inside your head without any pen,” he mentioned. “I took my novel with me when I was released.”

Greater than 100 of the prisoners serving lengthy sentences for lethal assaults who had been launched in October have been banished to Egypt on the situation, demanded by Israel, that they by no means return to their houses within the Palestinian territories.

Among the launched prisoners mentioned Israeli authorities prevented their fast kin from leaving the West Financial institution to go to them in Egypt. Being exiled removed from their households and communities imposes a way of isolation on the prisoners’ sudden freedom after a long time residing behind bars.

“I’m so scared from the exile,” Khandaqji mentioned. “Maybe the prison, it’s … easier for me.”

Out of jail

Since he was launched, Khandaqji has appeared at ebook talks in Cairo the place he autographs his novel. He plans to pursue a doctorate in Israeli research.

“I’m working to continue my project of writing, how to write an anti-colonial narrative inside the colonial context,” he mentioned.

Earlier than he was launched from an Israeli jail, an Israeli investigator requested him if he would communicate with the households of the individuals killed within the suicide bombing he helped plan.

“I told him, yeah, maybe in the future,” Khandaqji mentioned. “Maybe I will call them.”

Ahmed Abuhamda reported from Cairo, Nuha Musleh reported from Ramallah, West Financial institution, Sawsan Khalife reported from Jerusalem and Daniel Estrin reported from Tel Aviv.