Israel/Palestine and now Cuba

I was in Ramallah last week where I met with Qadora Fares, who was a member of the Palestinian legislature from Ramallah until the recent Hamas sweep.

In an office on a quiet side street, I sat down for an interview with him. He asked if I'd like him to speak in Hebrew. (He became fluent during his 14-year internment in Israeli prisons, but my Hebrew isn't nearly as good, so we continued in English). Fares heads up two not-for-profits: the Palestinian Prisoners Club, which he founded when he was imprisoned, and the Palestinian Council for Development, Dialogue, and Democracy.

Fares is a leader of Fatah's young guard. The group built its power around the first Palestinian intifada between 1987 and 1993, and is often in political disagreement with the older Fatah leadership that formed around Arafat and now surrounds Abbas. The camps are separated by issues of tactics, transparency and democracy. He's also known as one of the closest political actors to jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti.

Now 44, Fares is slight, bespectacled and soft-spoken. As a former prisoner, he is held in certain regard. (He was released along with other prisoners as part of the Cairo Agreement, which came about because of the Oslo Accords.) "There are 700,000 Palestinians who have been arrested in the last 40 years," he told me. Speaking of the Palestinians currently in prison, which number close to 10,000, he added, "They are fighters, and they are suffering in the Israeli jails."

The fate of the incarcerated Palestinians has moved front and center in the current crisis that began with the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, abducted from just inside Israel's border with Gaza on June 25, ostensibly to be traded for Palestinian prisoners.