A statement attributed to freed prisoner Zakaria Zubeidi during an interview with the New York Times has been circulating on social media. Zubeidi said that Palestinians need to reconsider their tools and that the entire Palestinian struggle has been futile. The claim reads: “Zakaria Zubeidi in an interview with the New York Times: We need to reconsider our tools… We tried weapons, but the entire Palestinian struggle has been futile.”
Marsad verified the information and found it to be inaccurate and the translation misleading. Marsad referred to the report published by the New York Times on 12 August 2025, titled: “The Palestinian Who Led a Militia, a Theater, and a JailBreak.”
Zakaria Zubeidi inspired Palestinians and terrified Israelis. After his release from prison during the recent truce, he wonders what his long life has achieved.
In examining the report’s translation, Al-Zubaidi said verbatim: “He feels that his life as a fighter, theater commander, and prisoner was ultimately in vain, as a Palestinian state has not been achieved, and perhaps never will be.”
He said, “We have to rethink our tools… We established a theater and tried cultural resistance, but what did that do? We tried guns and shooting, and there is no solution.”
Al-Zubaidi said: “There is no peaceful solution, nor a military solution, because the Israelis do not want to give us anything… It is impossible to uproot us from here, but we do not have any tools to uproot them.”
Freed prisoner Zakaria al-Zubaidi said that his life as a fighter, theater commander, and prisoner was ultimately futile. He did not say that the entire Palestinian struggle was futile.
Zakaria Zubeidi, nicknamed the “Dragon of the Resistance,” was born on 19 January 1976, in Jenin refugee camp. He led the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Fatah, during the Second Intifada (2000–2005). In 2007, Zubeidi surrendered his weapons and announced his cessation of armed activity. He has co-founded and run the Freedom Theater in Jenin refugee camp since 2006. Israeli occupation forces arrested him in Ramallah in 2019 on charges of carrying out two shooting attacks on buses outside the Beit El settlement in the West Bank. In 2021, Zubeidi and five other prisoners escaped from Gilboa Prison after digging a tunnel in his cell during an operation dubbed “Freedom Tunnel .” However, a week later, he was arrested and his sentence extended for an additional five years. On January 30, 2025, he was released as part of a Palestinian prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and the Israeli occupation.
| Sources of Claim | Sources of Verification |
| Rafah Service “Official Page” · Majdüleen Abdülaziz · Beit Fajjar City Mix | The New York Times Al Jazeera Euronews |
