The red-bearded man is both feared and respected by Israel jailers because the hardness they see on his face reminds them of their fragility and preordained departure from the land of Palestine.
This man is MP Mohamed Abu Tir who has spent half of his life nearly 34 years in Israeli jails. Israel thought his exile from his beloved Jerusalem would weaken him and muzzle his voice but its plans always went awry.
His exposure to persecution and detention by Israel has been ongoing before and after his exile from Jerusalem to Ramallah. When he was in the holy city he could barely rest for a few days in his home without getting arrested.
In Ramallah he recently spent only two months with his family after his last release from prison and his wife says his suffering from repeated imprisonment started in the early seventies. However the man with the red beard says “he will never yield to his oppressors or allow them to defeat him.”
His early life
MP Abu Tir finished his high school in Jerusalem in 1971 but instead of joining a university he decided to engage in the national struggle for Palestine. At the time he became for some time an activist for the Fatah Movement and received training in its camps in Lebanon before returning to Palestine where he was arrested in 1974 and sentenced to 13 years in jail.
Following the Hamas Movement’s emergence in 1987 he decided to join it after he found it as the hope he had long sought but it was not long before he was jailed again in 1989 during the first Palestinian intifada (uprising) against the Israeli occupation.
After spending one and a half years in prison at the time he was released but soon rearrested and sent to jail once again for six months in 1990. After completing that prison time he actively involved himself in the armed resistance against Israel in the West Bank and was later captured and sentenced to six years and a half on charges related to his affiliation with al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas and resisting the occupation.
In June 2006 Israel arrested him along with several Hamas-affiliated lawmakers and ministers in the West Bank and Jerusalem and locked him up for 52 months.
Shortly after his release Israel’s intelligence service the Shin Bet decided to exile him from the holy city along with other two fellow Jerusalem lawmakers Mohamed Toteh and Ahmed Attun and former minister Khaled Abu Arafah.
Later he was held under administrative detention for one year and released in May 2012 expelled to Ramallah and not allowed to enter Jerusalem. After that he was jailed and released more than once and the most recent arrest happened on Friday August 4 2017.
