JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — All actor Jamal Abu Joas could think about, as Israeli soldiers beat and dragged him out of his house last month, was a recent play performed at the theater where he works — a dark comedy about Israeli jails.
It was an Arabic adaptation of a 1973 play set in apartheid-era South Africa called "The Island." In the original, the characters are imprisoned on Cape Town's notorious Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela served 18 of his 27 years behind bars. In the version performed last year at the West Bank's Freedom Theatre, the characters were Palestinians jailed in Israel.
