Zakaria Zubeidi

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Zakaria or Zakariyah Zubeidi (Arabic: زكريا محمد عبد الرحمن الزبيدي‎; born 1976) is the current Jenin chief of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

Under his leadership, the Jenin section has built strong ties with Hezbollah in Lebanon,^[1] and distanced itself from Yasser Arafat's al-Fatah party. Zubeidi is currently one of Israel's most wanted, and ranks amongst the most popular militia leaders in Jenin.

1 Biography
2 Quotes
3 Sources
4 References

[edit] Biography

Zakaria's father worked as an English teacher. Later, Israel barred him from teaching because he was a member of Fatah, so he worked as a labourer in an Israeli foundry. He died of cancer, leaving Zakaria's mother Samira to raise their eight children alone.

In the late 1980s and early 90s, during the first Intifada, Israeli human rights activist Arna Mer-Khamis opened a children's theatre in Jenin, "Arna's House", to encourage understanding between Israelis and Palestinians. Dozens of Israeli volunteers ran the events, and Samira, believing that peace was possible, offered the top floor of the family house for rehearsals. Zakaria, then aged 12, his older brother Daoud, and 4 other boys around the same age formed the core of the troupe.

At 13, Zakaria was shot in the leg by an Israeli soldier for throwing stones. He went through four operations and six months in hospital, but still has one leg shorter than the other and a noticeable limp. At 14, he was sent to prison for 6 months, and became the representative of the other child prisoners to the governor.

Soon after his release he was arrested again for throwing Molotov cocktails and imprisoned for 4½ years. In prison he was recruited to Fatah. On release after the 1993 Oslo Accords, he joined the Palestinian Authority's Palestinian Security Forces, but was discouraged by corruption in the PA. He worked briefly in construction in Tel Aviv, then as a truck driver in Jenin until September 2000 when the West Bank were sealed because of the Second Intifada.

In 2001 he turned to militancy after he witnessed a close friend being killed by Israeli soldiers. Then, early in spring 2002, his mother was killed during an Israeli raid into Jenin. She had taken refuge in a neighbour's home, but was shot by an Israeli soldier when she looked out of the window, and bled to death. Zakaria's brother Taha was also killed by soldiers shortly afterwards. A month later a suicide bomber from Jenin killed 29 Israelis. The Israeli army then launched a full-scale offensive in the Jenin refuge camp, demolishing hundreds of homes, leaving 2,000 homeless. 10 days of fighting ensued after which 23 Israeli soldiers and 52 Palestinians were dead.

On top of his grief for his family and friends, Zakaria was greatly embittered by the fact that none of the Israelis who had accepted his mother's hospitality, and whom he had thought were his friends, tried to contact him. In a 2006 interview he stated, "That is when we saw the real face of the left in Israel". Losing hope in the Israeli peace camp, he joined the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

Arna's son, Israeli actor Juliano Mer-Khamis, did return to Jenin in 2002 and looked for the boys who had been in the theatre group. Zakaria had turned to armed resistance, Daoud was sentenced to 16 years in prison for terrorist activities, and the other four were dead. In 2004 Mer-Khamis completed a documentary film about the group, Arna's Children.

Zakaria's face is disfigured by fragments of shrapnel from a bomb that he mishandled in 2003. Several attempts have been made to assassinate him. In one such attempt in 2004, an Israeli police unit killed five other Palestinians including a 14-year old boy.

He was at the centre of controversy in 2004 when Tali Fahima, an Israeli legal secretary, was imprisoned because of her contacts with him. She was accused of preventing his arrest by the IDF by translating a document for him. Both of them deny allegations that they had a romantic relationship.

In December 2004 Israeli sources criticised Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian presidential candidate, for meeting Zubeidi.^[2]

In September 2005 he declared that his group's cease-fire was at an end after Samer Saadi and two other militants were killed by the Israelis in Jenin.^[3]

On 6 July 2006, the IDF attempted to capture him at a funeral, but he escaped after an exchange of gunfire.^[4]

On Sunday, 15 July 2007, the Office of the Israeli Prime Minister announced that Israel would include Zubeidi in an amnesty offered to militants of Fatah's al-Aqsa-Brigades.^[5]

[edit] Quotes

“The intifada is in its death throes. These are the final stages....Not only was the intifada a failure, but we are a total failure. We achieved nothing in 50 years of struggle; we've achieved only our survival.” - Zakariya Zubeidi commenting on the Palestinian infifadas against Israel. ^[6]