In 2011, I was released from Israeli prison as part of the prisoner exchange that saw the liberation of more than 1,027 Palestinians from Israel’s colonial system of punitive imprisonment. Having been incarcerated for nine years, from age nineteen, I was now keen to get on with my life, to study, have a family, to catch up on the years that the occupation authorities had taken from me. Little did I realize, my release was only the start of an ordeal in which I was to become a testing ground for Israel’s escalating and ceaseless attacks on Palestinians.

After my release, I traveled to France, my mother’s home country, to meet with those who had campaigned tirelessly for my freedom. In France, my imprisonment had become something of a cause célèbre on the Left, and I met numerous public figures and politicians who had spoken out on my behalf. It was there I also met Elsa Lefort, the woman I was to marry and who was to become the mother of my two children. On my return to Palestine, I switched my studies from sociology to law, hoping to become a lawyer and defend those who, like myself, were held prisoner by the Israeli occupation. I began to see how, despite the crushing weight of Israel’s brutal colonial regime, I might carve out a life for myself in my home city of al-Quds (Jerusalem).

But Israel had other plans. In 2015, the military commander of the West Bank, Nitzan Alon (trained by the French military), banned me from entering the West Bank from Jerusalem, a move that prevented me from sitting my legal exams. The following year, my pregnant wife was stopped at the airport en route to our family home in Jerusalem, interrogated by Israeli police, and then deported to France. In 2017, I was rearrested and held for thirteen months without trial. In 2020, I was also subject to incarceration for nine weeks before being “conditionally” released on vague terms.