Zakaria Zubeidi leaned against the wooden railing in the courtroom for extra support, listening intently to the Palestinian Authority judge’s ruling: Zubeidi would be detained for a further 19 days.
“This court has made an unfair decision against me,” Zubeidi said in an extremely weak voice to a Jericho courtroom full of friends, colleagues and supporters from approximately ten different countries on Monday.
Zubeidi is currently refusing to consume food and water in protest of his detention without charge or trial.
“I’ve been in prison for a long time without evidence. I started a food strike a week ago, and this morning I had a meeting with the doctor in the prison. He told me I have three days to live if I don’t take water. So the court has decided to kill me,” he said.
Zubeidi, formerly the head of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in Jenin during the second intifada, co-founded the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp in 2006 along with Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was gunned down on 4 April 2011 by an unknown assailant.
Zubeidi had been one of the child actors who was active in the forerunner to the Freedom Theatre. The Stone Theatre, as that project was called, was started by Mer-Khamis and his mother, a Jewish-Israeli anti-occupation activist named Arna. In fact, the theater was built on the top floor of Zubeidi’s home, and Zubeidi’s mother (who was killed during the second intifada, just hours before his brother was also killed) worked closely with Arna. more
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