Israel seeking to crush will of prisoners

PIC reported:

The vindictive Israeli occupation is trying, in vain, to break the will of the Palestinian prisoners, and to make them an economic burden on society after their release from prisons.

However, the prisoners insist on improving their conditions academically, intellectually and economically, challenging the occupation's schemes.

The two released prisoners, Khaldoun Barghouti, 43, and Abdel-Rahman Beibi, 35, are thinking of their future career with hope, passion and ambition.

They have launched and developed a small enterprise to be their source of livelihood for their families, in light of the difficult living conditions engulfing the occupied Palestinian territories.

"Food Train" Barghouti and Beibi have invented a new idea, which is the "Food Train", a mobile restaurant that roams the streets of the city of Ramallah and its suburbs to sell food.

They made use of their experience in preparing food they had practiced while in prison, as they were preparing food for the prisoners.

The two released prisoners lived many years of suffering together behind Israeli bars, but they did not surrender, they insisted since that time to continue on their way of creating a source of livelihood for them and their families, so they came up with the idea of a "mobile restaurant" which requires frequent mobility and roaming, which they had been deprived from during years of imprisonment.

Ex-prisoner Barghouti, from Kubar, a village north of Ramallah, said that the idea was born inside the prison, where he was thinking with his companion Abdul Rahman, of a distinctive project.

Quds Press quoted Barghouthi as saying that "the Prisoners' Affairs Committee did not skimp on offering them the required assistance, it provided them the necessary paperwork to facilitate their procedures in the competent departments, and assisted in getting the financial loan through a bank under the so-called financing projects for prisoners."

Barghouti, eight years in Israeli jails, pointed out that he shared with his colleague Abdul Rahman, nine years in Israeli jails, the arrangements and the tasks of equipping, preparing, and designing the bus in a beautiful and attractive way to serve as a mobile restaurant.

Eco-friendly project Barghouti indicated that their project is environmentally friendly, as it generates electricity through solar cells set up on the roof of the bus, asserting that this system is used in order to dispense with costly and annoying electricity generators that produce sounds and smoke that might bother the people of the area where the mobile restaurant will park to sell food, but also they equipped their restaurant with batteries that store electricity, which can be used when the weather is not suitable for the generation of electricity from solar energy.

Barghouti said that he and his fellow Beibi, spend long hours at work starting from the early morning hours to late night.

He said in an interview with Quds Press, "We try to be present in the places where people gather at some times of the day for example, we move the restaurant in front of schools in the morning, to the vicinity of ministries at noon, and then to places where citizens gather in the evening, and we are keen to be present in the tourist places and parks in the weekends."

Barghouti and Beibi pointed to "the possibility of extending the project, setting up new mobile restaurants, and involving other ex-prisoners."

Barghouti stressed that the idea of the mobile restaurant drew the people's admiration and a great popularity in a short period, pointing out that the restaurant is providing several services including fast food, in addition to juices and various drinks.

He pointed out that they were preparing a corner of the bus, to provide assistance to families in need, by allocating that corner for the promotion of sweets made by Palestinian families which lost their breadwinner.

Barghouti sees that imprisonment "is not an obstacle to the creativity of the prisoners after their release," in spite of the suffering inside the prisons, but they are often "a springboard for creativity and expertise."

Ex-prisoner Khaldoun Barghouti said that he and his friend faced some obstacles in this project, but they did not stop them instead they "have strengthened their determination to complete the project”.

He called on the various public and private institutions to support the released prisoners and provide them with everything they need to be able to reintegrate into the realm of life again.