RAMALLAH, Thursday, September 08, 2022 (WAFA) – The Israeli occupation authorities today banned a formerly-detained Palestinian novelist from traveling to Jordan.
Esmat Mansour, 45, said that Israeli forces manning the Al-Karama border crossing, the only border crossing available to West Bank Palestinians, prevented him from traveling to Jordan.
Masnour, who spent 20 years in Israeli jails, was on his way to the Jordanian capital, Amman, at an invitation to attend Amman International Book Fair 2022 and sign his new novel titled Al-Khazneh.
Al-Khazneh, the Arabic word for a vault, treasury, or safe, speaks of escape attempts from Israeli jails, aside from the one that took place at the Gilboa prison in September 2021.
Masnour used the term “Al-Khazneh”, because in Israel, they consider Gilboa prison a safe, yet six prisoners were able to break out even though it was a fortified safe.
The Palestinian Writers’ Union condemned the decision to ban Masnour from travelling as intended to muzzle the freedom of expression and a form of terrorism designed to disseminate the Israeli false narrative.
During his imprisonment, Mansour, a resident of Deir al-Jir village, east of Ramallah in the West Bank, authored three novels about the situation of Palestinian prisoners, prison literature, and Palestinian prisoners’ message to the world.
K.F.
