When the list of prisoners released by Israel in exchange for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit was published on Oct. 18, one name stood out – Iryna Polishchyk.
The Vinnytsia native was set free after serving nine years in an Israeli jail for allegedly helping her Palestinian husband organize a terrorist attack.
In a telephone interview with the Kyiv Post, her first with the Ukrainian media since release, she said she would stay in Palestine as she felt Ukraine had “abandoned” her and said she intends to fight to get her husband, Ibrahim Sarahne, released from jail.
“I want to stay in Palestine because, first of all, my husband is here, and second, because Ukraine abandoned me. Nobody met me in prison – not an ambassador, not a consul, nobody ever came to ask me how I was doing. Ukraine abandoned me and local people took care of me,” she said angrily.
Polishchuk, 32, moved to Israel in the late 1990s, leaving a daughter from her first marriage, Yasmin, at home with her parents. Israeli media claim she was in the country illegally working as a prostitute in Tel Aviv, which Polishchuk denied, without elaborating.
She met her Palestinian husband, Ibrahim Sarahne, in Tel Aviv. Former shop worker Sarahne confessed to organizing three terrorist attacks in 2002, killing three bombers and five civilians. The last attack Iryna allegedly helped him arrange, something she denies doing.
“I did not know anything back then. I spoke very poor Arabic and I did not understand what was happening during the trial,” Polishchuk said, her voice laced with emotion. Speaking very carefully as if considering every word, she added that she never confessed to assisting in terrorist attacks.
An Israeli court found her guilty of helping Sarahne drive a 16-year-old suicide bomber to a park in Rishon Le Zion near Tel Aviv. Two people were killed, more than 40 injured. Polishchuk and her husband were arrested the following day. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison while Ibrahim received several life sentences.
Israeli newspapers have called Polishchuk “the symbol for the Second Intifada,” a period of increased violence between Palestine and Israel in the early 2000s. Polishchuk, who converted to Islam before marrying Sarahne and wears a hijab, said she became something of a local star after she refused to be deported to Ukraine in 2005.
The Palestinian embassy in Kyiv brought her mother Valentyna and daughter Yasmin airplane tickets to Israel to celebrate Polishchuk’s release. They gathered along with thousands of Palestinians waving flags and chanting to greet prisoners in Ramallah where they arrived by buses. Her younger daughter, 10-year-old Ghazala, saw her mother outside prison for the first time.
Polishchuk said she was “astonished” to see both her daughters and her mother. When Iryna was arrested in 2002 Ghazala was just 18 months old.
Polishchuk described conditions in prison as “very bad.”
“I saw my husband only once a year, through glass and talking on the phone. My younger daughter and my mother-in-law came to see me twice a month, through the glass as well. As for my older daughter, I have seen her only once in nine years. She was denied a visa to Israel, then I appealed the decision and she was let in on March this year,” she said.
She said she spent most of her time in prison learning Arabic, teaching her cellmates basic Russian and reading, mostly books on Islam.
Speaking about her homecoming reception in Palestine, she said hundreds of people come every day to her in-laws’ house south of Bethlehem where she is staying: “Every day there is a big, wedding-like celebration.”
In a 2002 interview with the New York Times, Polishchuk’s husband Sarahne said he had killed because then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sent Israeli forces into the West Bank. He said that in response, he was crossing the same line to kill.
Unlike her husband, Polishchuk doesn’t talk much politics, preferring to speak about her daughters and plans: “I want my older daughter to stay in Palestine and I will try to get my husband out of prison. I think it is very realistic.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]
