Fighting Bishop in the 1970s: Days in Ramle Prison

An hour ago, Ilarion Kabuji reunited his Palestinian comrades in Ramla prison in 1977. Fatigue and exhaustion seemed to appear on the face of the Syrian bishop who started a hunger strike to protest the torture and psychological abuse to which he was subjected within the Israeli prison. This meeting is reminiscent of Yacoub Odeh, who was born in the village of Lifta in occupied Jerusalem, and was arrested between 1969 and 1985. A brief and brief meeting, in which the abbreviation of the words was spoken, also reminds of Mahmoud Jeddah and Nabeel Abu Sunaina, two prisoners from Jerusalem, who witnessed the peace of the prisoners Ali Kabuji, who related in “My memories in prison” the experience of their detention, which ran from August 1974 to October. November (1977).

This period is being restored by the series “The Guardian of Jerusalem”, which tells us the story of Kabuji’s life, which stretches between the cities of Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria), of Aleppo, where he was born in Beirut, Damascus and Jerusalem, before being torn apart by colonialism and then by the Zionist occupation.
In the summer of 1974, the Israeli occupation forces arrested Kabuji, bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Jerusalem, as he smuggled some weapons and explosives into his occupied land from his car. According to his memoirs, Kebugi worked as a liaison between the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leaders within Palestine. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
From the moment he entered Ramla prison, Kebouji was isolated in the cell block located in the prison administration corridor, and he was banned from books and banned from celebrating mass, forcing him to go on hunger strike several times in protest. His fellow captives smuggled letters he wrote for publication in the newspapers, and sewed their priestly garments.
Yaqoub Odeh says that some of the representatives of the Palestinian prisoners asked the prison administration to meet with Kabbuji to speak to him, because he is the only resident of the dungeon, and if he is allowed to flee (the rest) in the prison yard, then the prisoner takes him out alone.
“Sometimes I would see him from afar if he went to trial or to the prison clinic … When we received him once in Section C or the Infiltrators Department at Ramla prison, he was magnanimous, his strong and smiling force at despite the attack. “
Palestinian prisoners were squeezed by Kabuji. Odeh says: “In that meeting, we praised your principle and importance, and how much we need your type, and we told you that we are with you and with your decision to attack … We chatted for about an hour and then we went to the solitary cell, and we never saw him again.
After months of this meeting, Kabuji was released under conditions after negotiations and mediation by the Vatican State with “Israel” and the intervention of Pope Paul XVI, and he was exiled to Rome.
Kebugi dedicated his priestly meal to liberation and resistance, and his religious and militant experience is inspired by “liberation theology,” a movement led by the Catholic clergy in South America where they advocated for the establishment of social justice and equality through political and militant action, and reread the Bible in the light of revolutionary writings, as a book of liberation. Poor and oppressed by economic and social injustice. Thus, Kebugi saw his position as a cleric, believing that the Syrian Messiah was the “first Palestinian guerrilla.”