I had one-hour break at university so I grabbed the chance to visit the Palestinian detainees’ solidarity tent by the Red Cross. Every day I go, I see the same people, whom I’ve started to feel are a part of me. When one of them is not there, I miss them, as I recently have spent more time with them than my family.As I arrived at the tent, I felt that there was something strange going on. I asked a friend what had happened earlier. She answered while pointing, “That woman, Najiyya, just fainted when she learned that her husband is not included in the swap deal.” I kept sympathetically following her with my eyes wherever she went. She lifted my spirits up as she walked toward me and sat in an empty chair next to me. She smiled at me, despite her sorrow. I wish she knew how much people like her give me indescribable spiritual power with their incredible strength and steadfastness. Seeing her smile again, while knowing that she was broken inside, brought life to me. I couldn’t help but smile back with a look of admiration and appreciation.
“I waited long enough for him to come back to me; 19 years of forced separation between us. I’ve always fantasized about our unborn child, as the imprisonment of my husband after less than one year of our marriage prevented me from ever having one.” She said after I asked her whether she feels better. “They broke into our house in October of 1993 and kidnapped him very late at night from inside our home in an excessively violent way.” She continued while tears are struggling to fall from her eyes. She looked in a different direction and fell in silence trying to hide that feminine character inside her.
I learned that her husband was sentenced for 99 years inside the Israeli prisons. I was amazed at her ability to stay strong and optimistic for a day that would come when she would be united with her husband in a warm house full of love and harmony and bring up their first child. My sympathy got even deeper for her as I knew that she was very close to deliver a child. She was 2-months pregnant when the Israeli army attacked her house and turned everything upside down and kidnapped her husband. Her experience was too much to tolerate. The Israeli army didn’t only take her husband away but also killed the fetus who was growing inside her. If she didn’t go through all these horrific circumstances, maybe this fetus would have turned to be 18 year-old man by now and take care of her while she is bravely fighting her harsh destiny.
My affection for her has been increasing as I knew more of her stories. She is on a hunger strike for the sixth day trying to share with her husband and other Palestinian Detainees their battle of empty stomachs. She has refused to break her fast despite of all the attempts which people did to persuade her to, especially after she fainted. However, she insisted on going on demonstrating: “Salama, my husband, suffers from more than merely hunger. Let me at least feel like I’m living some of his pains even though I know that I’m not even close!”
I suddenly realized that I ran out of time and it was the time to go back to my lecture at university. I had to go there only for the attendance check and be in the class only in body but I knew that my mind would stay with the prisoners and their families. I couldn’t wait till the lecture ended to return to the Red Cross.
I thought that I would go back and see the usual sight of people sitting in the tent chatting while songs for freedom for our detainees are playing. But that wasn’t the case. There was like an emergency; people were running inside the Red Cross; the alarm ambulance was very loud and its red light was flashing all around the place. My heart skipped a beat as I realized I had missed something during the hour I was at university. My fear of the unknown overcame me.
I was trying to pass through the crowd to discover that the same woman Najiyya lost consciousness again. She couldn’t bear the psychological conflict she had inside her: whether her husband is going to be released or not. At first, she heard that her spouse is included and then discovered that he was not. She was swinging between facts and illusions to realize later the fact that her husband will stay jailed inside the dark cells. I learned that she was walking around while talking to herself unconsciously and she suddenly stopped and looked at a big banner that includes the picture of her husband, and then fell down.
I know no matter how strong and how much of a fighter she is, she is a human at the end of the day. Besides, the fact that her husband is not going to be free is very hard for her to accept especially that she was lingering with hope which the swap deal brought her.
This is only an example of the Palestinian women who have no equivalent in any other part of the world. The Palestinian woman will be always an example of strength, faithfulness, challenge and steadfastness.
Shahd Abusalama lives in Gaza and blogs at Palestine From My Eyes.
It is wonderful to get these Gaza views but what a sad story.
“If you had any heart you’d be crying for the Palestinians.”
As Camus almost said, Zionist government, by definition , has no conscience.
Then as farce
“Senior Palestinian security source says it’s just a matter of time before another Israeli soldier is abducted in an effort to negotiate the release of the remaining prisoners.”
It’s a fascinating game. Cows are worth one thousand sheep in the community over the wall. What shepherd wouldn’t kidnap a cow?
What shepherd wouldn’t kidnap a cow?
it is a demographic race. i have read so many times about palestinian husbands being kidnapped in their first year of marriage. an israeli form of birth control for the occupier mentality.
I don’t think it could be so systematic, Annie. It’s more like random Israeli sadism. They can’t afford to incarcerate more than 20,000 Palestinians. The costs are very high.
And the birth rates don’t seem to have been affected. What are so sad are the individual losses. Zionism is so cruel.
And the birth rates don’t seem to have been affected.
what does that mean? do you mean if Salama’s wife had had 5 children it would not have mattered. of course thousands of imprisoned men effects the birth rates. and another younge wife with no children and another and another? i’m just saying i doubt they have not thought of this. you know they think about the age of the families wrt the residency permits. in east jerusalem.
14000 prisoners . Say 5 children each. 90,000. That’s not even one year’s population growth. There are 1 million men who are not prisoners. So 1.4% are imprisoned. It doesn’t move the needle. It is very cruel but it won’t impact the demographics.
where do you get the 14,000 figure from? is that the amount of lifers over the years? here are some statistics
also, a person imprisoned in 67 would have possibly been a grandfather or even a great-grandfather by now so have you thought about the multiplication of those figures compared to be released after his wife’s childbearing years are over?
also, i assume you know many of the prisoners are being released under the condition they live in exile and as someone pointed out the other day (i think it was walid) their families will likely leave palestine to live in exile with their loved ones. this amounts to a net gain for israel’s ethnic cleansing policy.
700000 is over 44 years Annie. Detained for more than one week. Not all prisoners.
Long term prisoners are 14000, I read recently in Ha’aretz.
It was less in 2008
link to en.wikipedia.org
On 17 April 2008, the annual day of commemoration for Palestinian Prisoners, Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, published a summary report of statistics noting that there were 11,000 Palestinian prisoners being held in prison and detention in Israel, including 98 women, 345 children, 50 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and 3 ministers of the Palestinian National Authority.[9] Of these 11,000 Palestinian prisoners, 8,456 were from the West Bank, 762 from the Gaza Strip, and 694 from within Israel itself (including 552 from Jerusalem).[9] In October 2008, Haaretz reported that there are 600 Palestinians being held in administrative detention in Israel, including “about 15 minors who do not know even know why they are being detained.”[10]
Israel can’t control the population growth through the prison service.
Israel’s main policy weapon is pauperisation .
Treat them like dogs and those who want to will leave. Moshe Dayan was such a bastard.
That is policy under Labor and Likud and Kadima and it doesn’t work.
I think annie is right……and it’s exactly the way Israelis would think.
Just like the Rabbi who preached that it’s all right to kill babies of gentiles and Arab becuase they might grow up to threaten Jews.
Very sick, but it’s how a lot of the zionist think.
American
Israelis are cruel but they are not totally incoherent. Not yet anyway.
If your husband is a murderer, it is likely he will stay in jail for a long time. If he got 99 years, that usually means he got several life sentences. You don’t get that for selling cookies.
Palestinians get jail sentences in kangaroo (military) courts for being Palestinian, male and under 40. They don’t need to sell cookies (which would be a good enough reason to prosecute them, since Israel opposes and undermines any sign of Palestinian economic independence). Any pretext will do, but the slightest sign of articulate resistance is a guarantee. Also coerced statements from kids are a good ruse. There is no habeus corpus for Palestinians. Remember, they don’t have a state, so how can they have rights. Unlike your featherbedded existence, with your precious liberal rights. IDF and settler fascists are murderers, but Israel doesn’t require them to pay any price.
Did any of Israelis murdered, knifed, butchered, blown apart, driven of the road had the habeus corpus? Did any of the teenagers and infants?
Israel is too dangerous for Jews, Dimadok.
How many Jews are murdered in Queens by comparison? How many die in stupid wars in Brookyln ?
You clearly don’t understand what the word means. Did any of the thousands of Palestinians in prison, the thousands murdered, butchered, bombed and shot by Israel? Do any of the children kidnapped in the middle of the night by the IDF? You are playing a stupid game, exploiting the deaths of people to make non-equivalent points. We are talking about the human rights and the rule of law, none of which Israel allows to Palestinians. They should apply to Israelis and Palestinians alike. Israeli murderers should be subject to the law too. Read the wise words of Lillian Rosengarten and learn something.
Dimadok
don’t forget all the Israeli pre teen girls killed by Palestinian white phosphorous at that gefilte fish restaurant. And all the Jewish children torn apart by Palestinian F16 fire. And all the Jewish Justin bieber fans who have died in Palestinian bunker buster attacks while eating their bagels and watching Barney the Dinosaur.
Did I leave out anything?
Listen to the sounds of the world’s smallest violin
If your husband is a murderer, it is likely he will stay in jail for a long time.
Unless of course he’s a Jewish Israeli who killed 7 Arab civilians at random. Then he gets conjugal visits, repeated furloughs and the chance to kill his children and wife, gained during your “imprisonment”, by driving recklessly during his 124th furlough.
link to ynetnews.com
“Sarah Popper (42) and Shimshon Popper (6), the wife and son of life prisoner Ami Popper, who murdered Arab workers in May of 1990, were killed Wednesday night when their private vehicle veered off course and crashed into oncoming traffic near Kibbutz Grufit some 50 km north of Eilat.”
Good old HaShem. He never misses a trick.
Settler terrorists and deranged zionists in Israel proper get off lightly quite often.
Israel has low standards for Jews and high standards and cruel punishment for Arabs,
‘Habeas corpus’.