Arab-Israeli Karim Younis, who spent 40 years in prison for killing an Israeli soldier, was released yesterday and greeted by hundreds of supporters in his home village.
With a black and white keffiyeh around his shoulders, 64-year-old Younis was met by a crowd singing the Palestinian national anthem in Ara in northern Israel.
“It was 40 years full of stories, prisoners’ stories and each story is a story of a nation,” Younis said. “I am very proud to be one of those who made sacrifices for Palestine and we were ready to sacrifice more for the sake of the cause of Palestine.”
He was convicted in 1983 of the murder three years earlier of an Israeli soldier, Avraham Bromberg, in the occupied Golan Heights.
His death sentence was commuted to a 40-year jail term.
“Forty years have passed as if they were nothing, because we consider this to be one of the main pillars of the struggle,” said Younis, who was carried through the village while holding a Palestinian flag.
Younis is part of Israel’s Arab minority, many of whom identify as Palestinians.
Arabs in Israel account for around a fifth of the population and most are descendants of Palestinians who remained within the newly founded state after its 1948 war of independence.
They have long debated their place in Israel’s politics, balancing their Palestinian heritage with their Israeli citizenship, with many identifying as or with the Palestinians.
His decades in prison made him the longest-serving Palestinian detainee, either from Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group.
The organisation said Younis was among a group of prisoners up for release a decade ago as part of a deal mediated by the then-US secretary of state John Kerry, but the negotiations ultimately collapsed.
Younis’s brother said his joy was “unlimited” but “incomplete” as their parents died during his sibling’s detention.
“His hair and wrinkles have changed, but his resilience increased and multiplied dozens of times,” Nadem Younis said. – AFP/Reuters