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Death threats, arrests, and self-censorship are creating a repressive environment for Palestinian cultural figures and institutions in Israel.

Walid Daqqah saw the “little prison” where he spent most of his life mirrored in the “big prison” that housed the rest of his people. His challenge to us and to himself was to free ourselves from the prison inside of us.

Imprisoned since 1984, Walid’s work on the inside resembled the path of “total resistance” attributed to Kanafani.

Daka died at the age of 64, less than a year before he was scheduled to be released in March 2025. 

Walid Daqqa, 62-year-old Palestinian activist and novelist who spent 38 years in Israeli jails and battled cancer, dies of medical negligence and custodial torture.

Daqqa was arrested by Israel in 1986 for killing an Israeli soldier and has remained in prison since then.

Walid Daka, Who Took Part in the Killing of an IDF Soldier in 1984, Has Filed for an Early Release Multiple Times in the Two Years Since He Was Diagnosed With Cancer, but Was Denied. He Served Nearly 40 Years in Israeli Prison, and Died at 62-years-old

Daqqah, a Palestinian who has spent almost four decades in an Israeli prison, served his full sentence but it has been extended. He is also terminally ill and being denied adequate care. These are some of his writings.

"For a long time whenever Milad asked me on the phone, 'Daddy, where are you?' I avoided using the word 'prison.' I feared that it might be too much for her at her tender age to begin to live with this word and its weighty implications,” writes Walid Daqqah in his essay, “A Pace without a Door.” The 61-year-old Palestinian political prisoner and writer was arrested in 1986 and sentenced to a 37 years in Israeli prison. His sentence should have come to an end in 202...

Walid Daqqah broke free during his nearly four-decade imprisonment through his writings, his resistance, and the birth of his daughter, Milad. His lifetime of refusing the prison’s walls has brought us all closer to freedom.