Nasser Abu Srour, whose prison memoir has been translated into seven languages and is tipped to win a major international literary prize this month, was among more than 150 Palestinians serving life sentences who were freed as part of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and then immediately exiled to Egypt<\/a>, where most remain in limbo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abu Srour, 56, recounted a sharp increase in the use of beatings and the deprivation of food and warmth after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe prison guards uniform changed, with a tag on the chest written on it the word \u2018fighters\u2019, or \u2018warriors\u2019, and they started acting like they were in a war and this was another front, and they started beating, torturing, killing like warriors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A UN commission listed 75 deaths of Palestinians in Israeli custody between 7 October 2023 and 31 August 2025. The Israeli prison service has repeatedly denied the use of torture in its jails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking to The Guardian by phone from Egypt, Abu Srour also described the \u201cdizzying shock\u201d of being driven straight from the brutal conditions of Israeli incarceration to a five-star hotel in Cairo as guests of the Egyptian authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a young man, Abu Srour took part in the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising between 1987 and 1993, when he was charged as an accomplice in the death of an Israeli Shin Bet security police officer who had been trying to press Abu Srour\u2019s cousin into becoming a collaborator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the basis of a confession he made under torture, Abu Srour was sentenced in 1993 to life in prison without parole. During decades marked by extended periods of solitary confinement, he gained a bachelor\u2019s degree and then a master\u2019s in political science and began to publish poetry and other writings that were smuggled out of prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His prison memoir, The Tale of a Wall<\/a>: Reflections on Hope and Freedom, was mostly dictated in phone conversations with a relative over more than two years. It has been translated from Arabic for publication in seven languages and is a finalist for the Arab literature prize<\/a> awarded each year by the Institute of the Arab World in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Appeals for his release went unheeded over the decades, so when officials came to the prison after the 10 October ceasefire with a list of prisoners to be freed, Abu Srour tried to ignore them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey were calling out cell numbers and I was sitting on my bed in room No 6 feeling like I am not part of it,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were so many times when I should have been part of it over all those years. But the whole thing is so huge and so painful, I didn\u2019t want to interact. It was a defence mechanism. I was saying it has nothing to do with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut then they came to my cell and they said: \u2018Nasser, prepare yourself.\u2019 God\u2019s grace finally reached me. My friends were hugging and kissing me and I was in disbelief.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abu Srour said that after the outbreak of the Gaza war, triggered by the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, the treatment of long-term Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails worsened significantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAny place where there are no cameras was a place for brutality,\u201d he said. \u201cThey would tie our hands behind our heads and throw us on the floor and then they would start trampling on us with their feet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Nasser](\"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1111.jpg\")
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