Mohammed Attiya Abu Warda, also known as Abu Hamza, has a long history intertwined with Palestinian resistance.
As a son of refugees, born into conflict and initially drawn to the Fatah Party, Abu Warda would go on to become a commander in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas and face the third heaviest sentence of any Palestinian prisoner.
He has now been released as part of the ongoing Hamas-Israel exchange of captives.
From Refugee Camp to Resistance Fighter
Born on January 17, 1976, Mohammed Attiya Abu Warda, otherwise known as Abu Hamza, was raised in the Fawwar refugee camp in Dura, near the city of al-Khalil inside the occupied West Bank.
His family was displaced from the village of Iraq al-Manshiyya which was ethnically cleansed in 1948, forcing Abu Warda’s family to take refuge in what would become the West Bank.
His release has been met with outrage amongst much of the Israeli public, as he is known to them as the man behind a string of bombing attacks that killed 45 Israelis. However, his story goes much deeper than that of a simple military commander.
“I grew up in the narrow alleys of the camp crowded with its people”, Abu Warda stated in a piece published in the Dunya al-Watan newspaper in 2016.
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Joining the Fatah movement at a young age and being immersed in its symbolism, he described how his mother raised him to memorize verses of the Quran and encouraged religious education. His adoration of Fatah, along with much of the Fawwar refugee camp’s youth, became a coping mechanism to the violence they routinely faced.
Abu Warda recalled that from his early years, he and his friends “began to carry stones in our bags to confront the brutality of the army adjacent to our camp at its points of concentration.”
“We grew up with the stones, and the bullets of the (Israeli) army and the slogans that my little hands wrote on the walls, wrapped in the scarf of the Palestinian Liberation Movement – Fatah – until I was nicknamed the little Fatah sheikh,” he continued.
He completed his primary and secondary education in UNRWA schools, then joined the Sharia school in al-Khalil where he studied under the science section for Tawjihi and obtained a score of 83%. This led him to study Physics at the University of Bethlehem and al-Quds University in Abu Dis.
Palestinian prisoner Mohammed Abu Warda, freed as part of the third batch of the prisoner exchange deal, reunites with his family after 23 years in Israeli prisons. pic.twitter.com/ONG8QBoSRl
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) January 31, 2025
Life Imprisonment, Torture, and Release
Abu Warda was first arrested in 1992 at only 15 years of age and while he was still aligned with the secular-nationalist Fatah movement. The charge was for spray painting nationalist slogans and allegedly throwing stones.
After serving three months in military detention and suffering physical abuse, he said that he decided to resume “the same path after liberation, but with a new vision”. His pursuit of higher education then led him to study at the Dar Al-Mu’allimin College in Ramallah, where he completed his education with a primary education major.
During his time at Dar Al-Mu’allimin College, Abu Warda began his involvement with Hamas as part of the Islamic Bloc of the student movement between 1993 and 1996. In order to pay for his tuition and the activities of the student movement, he worked in construction and other manual labor jobs in Ramallah.
In 1996, Abu Warda worked with the Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas) to plan three bombing attacks against Israel in retaliation for the assassination of Yahya Ayyash. Ayyash was the chief bomb maker of the Qassam Brigades and earned his name “the first engineer”. Abu Warda helped plan the bombing attacks under the supervision of Hassan Salameh, while only 19 years old.
PA’s Arrest
Following this, Abu Warda was arrested again, but this time by the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s security forces, who subjected him to unprecedented torture. The PA accused him and other Hamas members of being responsible for the fall of the Israeli Labor Party and thus the collapse of the Oslo Process which was supposed to lead to its desired two-state solution.
This view did not take into consideration that it was an Israeli right-wing extremist who assassinated former Israeli Labour Party PM Yitzhak Rabin and that Likud’s campaign had already gained traction prior to the bombings.
Nevertheless, the PA sentenced Abu Warda to life imprisonment and he spent six years under their detention, until the outbreak of the Second Intifada, which forced them to release him temporarily in 2001.
🇵🇸 Hier, Mohammed Attiya Abu Warda, a été arraché des prisons sionistes par la Résistance et la fière et inébranlable population de Gaza lors du troisième échange de prisonnier·es dans le cadre de l’accord Toufan al-Ahrar, le Déluge des Libres !
Thread ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/zldEtwILQZ
— Samidoun Paris Banlieue (@SamidounPB) January 31, 2025
That same year, he attempted to participate in more military activities under the Qassam Brigades, after returning to his home in the Fawwar refugee camp, but was later arrested again by the PA’s Preventative Security Services.
Once again, he was put through a kangaroo court trial and sentenced to life imprisonment, even marrying his wife while under detention in 2002, but then escaped jail briefly due to a PA loss of control of the jail he was held in during an Israeli invasion of Al-Khalil in April of that year. In total, he was only ever able to spend two months living with his wife, until the Israeli occupation forces arrested him.
48 Life Sentences
Abu Warda was transferred to a torture interrogation center in the occupied city of Asqalan (Ashkelon), a process that lasted 40 days, before he was sentenced in an Israeli military court – with a 99.9% conviction rate – to 48 life sentences.
Two months into his detention, he received the news that his wife was pregnant with his son, who they named Hamza. Abu Warda wasn’t permitted to see his son until he was one and a half years old, then rarely being allowed visits ever since.
During his time under military detention, he underwent various hunger strikes with his fellow prisoners, the most prominent of which was the 2012 strike that he helped lead and organize. The hunger strikes took place against the cruel and illegal treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli military jails, many of whom are held without charges, including women and children.
His release will allow him to see his son for the first time outside of a prison facility, and permit him to reunite with his wife. Abu Warda is considered to be one of the most prominent Palestinian prisoners, due to his story and military involvement.
He was subjected to illegal arrest and physical abuse as a minor, also growing up in the harsh conditions of a refugee camp and the constant reminders of his family being ethnically cleansed from their lands.
This led him towards militancy, amidst a life of jail and torture, something that has made him a symbol amongst Palestinian prisoners and the Hamas movement specifically.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
