Palestinian Prisoner Thabet Mardawi, a PIJ member first arrested for four years in April 1994 due to his resistance effort against the Israeli occupation, sent a letter on the occasion of Al-Quds Day to Al Mayadeen in a bid to vocalize his words to the world as a whole.

Mardawi, 41, from Jenin, has been in prison since April 11, 2002, after the Israeli occupation forces raided the Jenin refugee camp and brutally assaulted its residents until they were able to capture the prisoner and various other resistance commanders at the time.

Commander Thabet Azmi Suleiman Mardawi (Abu Osama) was born on July 21, 1976, in the town of Arraba, Jenin District, in the occupied West Bank. He got married and had a single child, whom he named Osama, and he did not get to live with him except for about a year; it was also intermittent due to him always having to be on the run because the Israeli occupation forces were always chasing him.

The beginning of his career as a freedom fighter was with the outbreak of the First Intifada.

The prisoner became an intellectual among the prisoners. He devoted his time and continued to study, read, and write throughout his incarceration. He was released in February 1998 only to pursue freedom fighting and resistance in all ways and means. 

He joined Al-Quds Open University to study economics, and before completing his studies and obtaining his degree, he was arrested by the authority’s apparatus along with the rest of his fellow martyrs, the leaders of the Islamic Jihad Movement and its military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades in the West Bank. He was then released from prison with the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000.

The captive commander supervised several major operations carried out by the Al-Quds Brigades, including suicide operations, armed confrontations, and the detonation of explosive devices.

Mardawi's letter, written after 21 years in prison, reads as follows:

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,

Praise be to Allah, and prayers and peace be upon the Messenger of God, His family, and those who follow Him,

Many days have passed between knowing about addressing you in this letter and me writing it. Many things happened between these two days.

Our organizational and belief conditions were arranged after our transfer to the recently opened prison. We fortified ourselves with numerous steps of resistance against the Zionist prison administration. During these days, I saw my dad using crutches and using my brother for support. He came to visit me for the first time in six years. I had left him in perfect health upon my arrest. He was furious. I went out to the yard dozens of times, I read two books and everything available to me about the Saudi-Iranian agreement, and [...] I still had enough time to get the flu twice and watch a show about people arguing whether the earth is flat or round on official Palestinian TV!

[...] Gentlemen,

One of the most common facts in the history of human society and one that long had minds and swords preoccupied had started in our behavior and in our shifts as a society.

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Palestine the tragedy is not the result of an imbalance of power or the loss of a war... It is the result of shifts that accumulated over hundreds of years, ruining the cornerstones of society and politics and everything that stems from them, affecting what comes out of them. It affected our knowledge so much that we no longer agree on the meaning of a single text or term.

Palestine the cause, on the other hand, and its characteristics and place in our religious beliefs and readings of history, the present, and the future, ensures that Palestine is the framework from within which our desired awareness is formed.

Gentlemen,

If nations and groups need foundational and umbrella issues for their existence and as a guarantee to ensure their continuity, determine their effectiveness, and control their movement, as well as the repercussions of full awareness and existence and its kinesiology, Palestine is this issue, and it is the gate of our passage into active cultural presence. It takes our consciousness and perception to the next level.

This is the Palestine we understand.

This is what Al-Quds means to us.

This is the burden I lay upon your shoulder, gentlemen. In this gathering of yours on your Al-Quds day. It is your duty to publish this among the Muslims and the people of the world as a whole and to ensure that Palestine levitates the human and Muslim awareness and to assess with it the level of awareness your people have. You must use it to judge history and the present.

Allow me to claim here that this is the only understanding that can rise to the level of Palestine's cause and meaning and the only one, which every campaign aimed to serve this nation must be based upon. It is the only one that would be able to liberate Al-Quds and Palestine. Liberation will span more than the reclamation of a geographical spot. It will witness the restoration of our nation's life and civilizational existence, rectifying the course of a long history of shifts. It will return the course of history to the path that satisfies God.

And I believe that Imam Khomeini, who had the idea, meant it to this depth. May Allah grant him on our behalf and the behalf of Palestine and Al-Quds the best reward and bless him with his mercy and abundant home.

May God help you and grant you success for what is good for Al-Quds and the Ummah.

May Al-Quds be satisfied with us and you. May Allah accept our acts of worship and obedience, as well as our good work and pertinence.

May God's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you

Prisoner Thabet Mardawi,

From inside the prisons of the occupation.