It was January 6, 1983 when Karim Younis, a Palestinian resident of Ara, an Arab village in Israel, was arrested and later sentenced to life in prison for resisting the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Younis was born on December 24, 1956 in Ara, where he went to primary school and then completed his high school in Nazareth to later go to Ben Gurion University in the Naqab desert to study mechanical engineering, where he was arrested while attending a lecture in college.

While in prison, Younis wrote two books in Arabic – one in 1990 called “The political reality in Israel,” and the other in 1993 and titled “the ideological conflict and the settlement.”

Karim Younis has received his PhD and authored 2 books while in Israeli occupation prisons. Imagine all he could have accomplished for Palestine if he had been free! This mass incarceration tactic by the occupation cripples #Palestine. pic.twitter.com/qsaeJYjNVv

— Palestine (@OccuPalGaza) January 7, 2018

Younis, along with 14 other Palestinian prisoners from inside Israel also serving long jail terms, was among 30 prisoners Israel was supposed to release in the fourth batch of prisoners agreed on as confidence building measure in the 2013 understanding reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority under US Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s auspices.

However, Israel refused to release them, which torpedoed the US-sponsored peace process that was supposed to lead to final Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement.

Thirty-six years later, Younis is still serving time in prison, making him the longest ever political prisoner in history. It is hoped that he will be free after completing his life term, which expires after 40 years in prison, if not sooner.

(Wafa, PC, Social Media)