Zakaria Zubeidi, a senior leader of the Fatah movement and commander of its armed wing the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in the West Bank, is carried by supporters in Ramallah, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, after being released from an Israeli prison on January 30, 2025. (Photo by AP)
One of the high-profile Palestinians released as part of the third batch of an agreement between Hamas and Israel on the exchange of Palestinian prisoners with Israeli captives under a Gaza ceasefire agreement was Zakaria Zubeidi.
Zubeidi, a senior leader of the Fatah movement and commander of its armed wing the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in the West Bank, was freed on Thursday alongside 109 other Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Their release came after Hamas and its ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad released three Israeli captives along with the five Thai nationals. They were handed over to the Red Cross.
“Today I say thank you to Gaza, which liberated me and brought me back to my family. I was isolated, tortured and beaten, and repeatedly humiliated, and the situation of all prisoners is the same,” Zubeidi said in his first remarks after the release.
He went on to describe Israeli prisons as centers of killing and daily torture.
“Gaza now needs reconstruction, and all levels of the Palestinian people must come together to accomplish this, and return our people to their homes safely,” the former Palestinian prisoner pointed out.
Zubeidi was born in 1976 at Jenin refugee camp in the northern part of the occupied West Bank. He became a military commander for the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades during the Second Intifada (2000–2005), leading armed resistance.
He lost his mother Samira and his brother Taha in 2002, as Israeli occupation forces stormed the camp.
Zubeidi was constantly pursued by the occupying Tel Aviv regime.
On July 15, 2007, Israel granted amnesty to several al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade members, including him, in exchange for their surrender to the Palestinian Authority.
Following the amnesty, Zubeidi got married and had two children – a son and a daughter. He shifted his focus to theater arts, and became a prominent advocate for Palestinian arts with the Freedom Theater in Jenin.
He met with many international activists and supporters of Palestinian rights.
But four years later, on December 29, 2011, Israel revoked his amnesty, despite Zubeidi's insistence that he had not violated its terms.
He was detained without charge by the Palestinian Authority (PA) for six months, and then later held in a PA jail in “protective custody.”
In 2018, he pursued a master’s degree at Birzeit University.
He and his lawyer, Tariq Barghout, were arrested in January 2019 and charged with engaging in “new incitement activities” and armed resistance against the Israeli regime.
Zubeidi finally obtained his master’s degree behind prison bars.
On September 6, 2021, he escaped from the Gilboa maximum security prison in the northern sector of the Israeli-occupied territories alongside 5 other Palestinian inmates by digging a tunnel from their cell.
Israeli forces recaptured all six Palestinian inmates days later, but the daring escape, known as Operation Freedom Tunnel, was widely praised as legendary among Palestinians and Muslim nations.
Last May, Zubeidi’s son Dawoud succumbed to injuries sustained in an armed confrontation with Israeli forces in Jenin.
Last September, his other son Mohammad was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the West Bank city of Tubas along with several other Palestinians.
