For 21 years, Basem Khandakji’s world was defined by the concrete walls of Israeli prisons. Arrested in 2004 at the age of 21, the Nablus-born journalist and novelist spent more than two decades navigating a system he describes as designed to strip away Palestinian humanity. Yet, while the state sought to silence him, Khandakji turned his cell into a sanctuary of literary production, authoring a body of work that would eventually capture the attention of the global literary community.
Khandakji’s resilience reached a historic peak in 2024 when his novel, A Mask the Color of the Sky, won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction—one of the most prestigious literary awards in the Arab world. The victory was surreal. the author was still a prisoner when the announcement was made. Released in October 2024 as part of a prisoner exchange, Khandakji now speaks from exile in Cairo, where he continues to frame his experience not as an isolated legal battle, but as a symptom of a century-long colonial project.
In a recent conversation with former political prisoner and Black Panther Mansa Musa, Khandakji challenged the prevailing narrative that the current catastrophe in Gaza is a standalone event. For Khandakji, the violence witnessed since October 2023 is the culmination of a process that began with the Nakba in 1948. “Genocide didn’t start just in Gaza in 2023,” he asserts. “The genocide against us started since 1948.”
The Architecture of Dehumanization
Khandakji’s journey into the Israeli penal system began during the Second Intifada. A student at Najah University and a member of the Palestinian Communist Party, he eventually joined a military cell associated with the Palestinian Popular Front. He describes his early years of activism as a response to the assassination of friends and the pervasive violence in the West Bank.
Central to his grievance is the legal mechanism used to incarcerate Palestinians. While Israeli citizens are tried in civil courts, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are subject to military courts established after 1967. Khandakji refused to recognize the legitimacy of these courts during his trial, arguing that the proceedings were based on forced confessions and presided over by military officers rather than independent judges.
During his sentencing to three life terms, Khandakji used his final moments of address to the court to confront the judge, stating, “You killed my humanity and now you judge me about that.” This struggle to reclaim a sense of self became the driving force behind his writing, which he views as an act of “salvation” and resistance.
Smuggling Words: The Process of Prison Literature
Writing in an environment where pens, paper and books are frequently confiscated requires a level of ingenuity that borders on the clandestine. Khandakji describes a network of solidarity among prisoners to ensure that manuscripts could leave the prison walls.
- Secret Composition: Works were written in hidden spaces, often in direct defiance of jailers’ searches.
- Human Couriers: To get the texts out, prisoners would sometimes swallow pieces of paper or hide them on the persons of those being released.
- Family Networks: Once outside, family members—specifically his brother, Yusef—took on the role of archivists and publishers, ensuring the works reached editors in Beirut and beyond.
His award-winning novel, A Mask the Color of the Sky, employs a sophisticated narrative technique inspired by the theories of Frantz Fanon. The story follows a Palestinian archaeologist who adopts a “white mask”—an Ashkenazi identity—to infiltrate Zionist conceptual frameworks and expose the underlying racism and discrimination of the movement. By using the mask as a literary tool, Khandakji explores the tension between the identity imposed by the colonizer and the inherent humanity of the colonized.
The Cost of Exile
Though no longer behind bars, Khandakji describes his current existence in Cairo as a different form of incarceration. Under the terms of his release, he was exiled, meaning he is barred from returning to his home in Nablus. This separation has manifested in a series of “small details” of cruelty that he identifies as hallmarks of colonialism.
Most poignant is the denial of family reunification. Khandakji reveals that Israeli authorities have repeatedly blocked his mother, who is battling breast cancer, from crossing checkpoints to visit him in Egypt. “The strongest army in the Middle East… They refuse to just to let me hug her,” he says, highlighting the psychological toll of state-mandated separation.
| Phase | Timeline | Key Event/Status |
|---|---|---|
| Incarceration | 2004 – 2024 | 21 years in Israeli military prisons; three life sentences. |
| Literary Recognition | 2024 | Wins International Prize for Arabic Fiction while imprisoned. |
| Release | October 2024 | Released via prisoner exchange; deported to Egypt. |
| Current State | Present | Living in exile in Cairo; barred from returning to Palestine. |
A Warning for Those Remaining
Khandakji’s release has not dampened his concerns for those still inside. He warns of a shift in the treatment of Palestinian prisoners since October 2023, describing a transition toward “necropolitics”—a system where death is managed as a tool of control. He reports that prisoners are currently facing systemic starvation, outbreaks of scabies, and total isolation from their families.
He argues that the international community and human rights organizations have been largely sidelined because the Israeli security services restrict access to the prisons. For Khandakji, the pen remains the most potent weapon available to those in the dungeons, serving as a way to document atrocities and maintain a connection to a world that often forgets them.
As the international legal community continues to debate the classification of the conflict in Gaza at the International Court of Justice, the testimony of figures like Khandakji provides a longitudinal view of the crisis, suggesting that the current violence is not a rupture, but a continuation.
The next critical juncture for Palestinian prisoners remains the ongoing negotiations for further hostage and prisoner exchanges, which may determine the fate of thousands still held in administrative detention without formal charges.
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