A well-known Palestinian terrorist active during the Second Intifada and released this year as part of a ceasefire deal with Hamas, lamented the futility of Palestinian attempts to achieve a sovereign state, in his first interview since his release, published in The New York Times on Tuesday.
“We [the Palestinians] have to reconsider our tools,” said Zakaria Zubeidi, who was arrested for organizing dozens of attacks during the Second Intifada while heading the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in Jenin. Zubeidi was released in exchange for hostages held by Hamas in January.
“We founded a theater, and we tried cultural resistance — what did that do?” he continued, referring to a theater program he co-founded in Jenin alongside a left-wing Israeli actor and Swedish activist. “We tried the rifle, we tried shooting. There’s no solution,” he said. According to the paper, Zubedia felt that, “None of it had helped forge a Palestinian state [and] it may never do so.”
He emphasized that his involvement with the theater was not a transition from or denunciation of armed Palestinian activity, saying: “It’s not about being one thing or another…How did I open the theater door? I broke it with my rifle.”
The Times also wrote that since his release, he has started a Ph.D. at Birzeit University in the West Bank in Israel studies.
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During the rise of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, Zubeidi “joined a militia in Jenin in the belief that it was the best way of achieving Palestinian sovereignty,” according to the interview, eventually becoming the head of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in the city.
Zakaria Zubeidi (C), who escaped from Israel’s high-security Gilboa prison, surrounded by prison guards as he arrives for a court hearing in the northern Israeli city of Nazareth, May 22, 2022 (Oren Ziv/POOL)
Zubeidi denied involvement in any murder, according to the newspaper, though Israel held him responsible for ordering several attacks that resulted in multiple deaths, and for 24 offenses, mostly related to violence. Zubeidi was also among six prisoners who escaped from Gilboa prison in 2021, before being recaptured days later.
Zubeidi also said that he lost his teeth and was repeatedly beaten by Israeli guards during his imprisonment, though the Israel Prison Service denied this and similar claims from other releasees in a statement to The New York Times, saying it was “not aware of the claims [described], and as far as we know, no such events have occurred.”
Upon witnessing after his release Israel’s strikes in Gaza in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, as well as the aftermath of Israeli raids in the West Bank, Zubeidi assessed that “On every front, Palestinian strategies seemed to be failing,” according to the paper. Zubeidi’s son was also among five Palestinian gunmen killed in an Israeli strike on the West Bank last year.
Zubeidi claimed that “There is no peaceful solution and there is no military solution” for Palestinians, “because the Israelis don’t want to give us anything.”
“It’s impossible to uproot us from here,” he continued, “And we don’t have any tools to uproot them.”
Zubeidi was granted amnesty by Israel in 2007, but in 2019, he was arrested again and charged with taking part in two shooting attacks against Israeli buses in the West Bank, with additional allegations dating back to the early 2000s added to the charge sheet.
After his escape from prison in 2021, five more years were added to his sentence.
When the former Jenin terror chief was released in January, he was greeted in Ramallah by a jubilant crowd of hundreds of Palestinians, who hoisted him on their shoulders in celebration.
After his release, Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened Zubeidi, he would “meet old friends” if he made the mistake of returning to carry out terror activities.
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