From jail to jail: a mother from Balata
24 March 2009
Omm
Ahmad Khadeash is a mother and grandmother who has spent most of her
life living in Balata Refugee Camp, near Nablus in the West Bank. She is
around 70 years old and has seen everything from the Nakba in 1948 to
the brutality of the second Intifada.
- Omm Ahmad Khadeash
- Pictures: Palestine Monitor
Omm
Ahmad was born in a village called Ejzem, near Haifa. Her village was
expelled and destroyed by the Israeli military in 1948. Her family fled
to Huwarra, near Nablus, and then moved to the Balata Refugee Camp when
it was created in the 1950’s.
Balata Refugee Camp
is known for being very political, the heart of the resistance. Many
Fatah resistance leaders in the Intifada came from the camp. For this
reason, the Israeli military has been especially hard on the people of
Balata. Imposing curfews, conducting nightly raids of the camp in which
they break down doors to the houses and destroy things inside, beat
people—men and women, arrest, and sometimes kill people for being active
in the resistance.
Omm Ahmad married at 15 and has
seven sons and five daughters. Every one of her sons has been
imprisoned. She has never experienced a time where all of her sons were
at home together.
At the moment, she has six sons
out of prison. One was released two months ago and another, Khaled, is
still in prison—with a sentence of over 1000 years for being one of the
Fatah leaders in Balata. He has four children, the youngest, Aboud, was
born on the day his father was imprisoned.
Now Omm
Ahmad takes care of Khaled’s wife and family—just as she has taken care
of all of her sons’ families while they were imprisoned.
Omm
Ahmad is well-known in Balata for intervening when the Israeli soldiers
raid the camp and try to arrest anyone. She will run out and get in the
middle of the fight; screaming, and saying “this is my son! This is my
son!”—no matter who it is that they are trying to arrest.
She
will “give the signal” to the other mothers around the camp and they
will all run down and scream at the soldiers, and others will join in;
screaming or throwing stones.
One time, Omm Ahmad saw Israeli soldiers running after a young girl. They caught her and started beating her.
“I
began screaming and brought all of my daughters with me to where the
soldiers were. Some other women heard us and joined us, screaming. We
created a big chaos and the soldiers left the girl.”
Another
time, Omm Ahmad saw soldiers running after a teenage boy who was
carrying a flag. When he ran past her house she grabbed him and took him
inside. When the soldiers came to the door she blocked them from
getting in, and started screaming. Soon, other women started screaming
and people began throwing stones.
She had a real
fight with the soldiers and even took a gun from one of them. But
because there was so much chaos around them from the screaming women and
kids throwing stones, the soldiers decided it wasn’t worth it and left.
During
the second Intifada, when the Israeli soldiers would impose a curfew on
the camp for being active in the resistance, Omm Ahmad would ignore the
curfew and take food and other supplies around to all her sons and
daughters and their families.
“It was dangerous, but I did not care”, said Omm Ahmad.
Omm Ahmad has spent most of her life traveling from one prison to another visiting her sons.
“I have never had all of my sons at home at the same time.”
Her
only son in prison now, Khaled, has a sentence of over 1000 years. His
only chance to be released from prison is if the prisoner exchange
between Hamas and Israel is successful. Hamas, who is holding the
Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, is trying to reach an agreement with
Israel. In exchange for releasing Shalit, Hamas is asking Israel to
release 450 Palestinian political prisoners—the prisoners who have
consecutive life sentences—and Khaled is on that list.
Omm
Ahmad was only recently given permission to visit Khaled; once a
month—before that she was not allowed to visit because she is known as a
“trouble-maker” by the soldiers. Khaled’s wife is only allowed to see
her husband once or twice a year.
Visiting her sons
in prison is like a “trip to hell”. Khaled’s prison is in southern
Israel, on the border with Egypt. So when Omm Ahmad makes the trip to
visit her son, she must get up before 3am and go to the special bus
station in Nablus that has buses specifically for taking family members
to different prisons.
The visitors must go through
many checkpoints, getting rigorously searched at each one. Another
humiliating process they must go through before they can visit their
family members is being stripped naked.
The trip is
exhausting, humiliating and takes an entire day. After all of this, Omm
Ahmad is allowed to see her son for less than an hour.
Recently,
Omm Ahmad and all of the families of the prisoners on the exchange list
received more bad news. The talks between Hamas and the Israeli
government failed, once again.
Hamas requires that
all of the prisoners are released to the West Bank or to Gaza. But
Israel has rejected some of the prisoners on the list and has also said
that the only way they will release the remaining prisoners is by
deporting them to other Arab countries. Omm Ahmad is worried that Khaled
may not be released while she is alive.
“They took
our sons. They took our land. They stole it from us…they have this
belief that this is their land and we should not be here.”
- Omm Ahmad and some of her grandchildren. Some have grown without ever seeing their father
- Picture: Palestine Monitor
These
days, Omm Ahmad does not intervene when the soldiers come to the camp.
She says that the soldiers do not care whether they beat a child or an
old woman anymore. There is nothing she can do to help, and she said she
is losing faith that things will change.
“We have
tried everything. We tried the non violence in the 1st Intifada—just
throwing stones. In the 2nd Intifada we tried violence, with the guns.
It was very brutal. Now we have tried the negotiations—the peace
process. Israel does not respond to anything. Why must the Palestinians
respect the agreements, but not Israel? We have tried everything and
each time we make a little progress but in the end we are always back at
zero.”
And every time the Palestinians actively
form a resistance, peaceful or violent, they always end up losing
something in the end. More Palestinians are expelled, more settlements,
and the wall are built.
“It’s too much”, says Omm
Ahmad. “The Palestinians are arguing with each other over power! For
what? For a chair? For a state that actually does not exist? We are in a
very difficult situation.”
“Release the prisoners,
let our sons come home! Take Palestine, we don’t want it anymore. We
just want to live our lives—this is not life”, says Omm Ahmad. “At the
end it’s really not worth it. I’m tired; I’ve spent most of my life
going from jail to jail. There was never a time when all of my sons were
at home together. It’s too much!”
As Omm Ahmad
tells her story, she also makes sure to explain that this is not just
her story. This is the story of many other mothers in Palestine. Boys
are imprisoned for consecutive life sentences. Their parents die,
waiting for their children to be released from jail.
In
the end, it sounds like Omm Ahmad has lost hope for a solution to her
problem, or for Palestine. But she says, “The hope remains, it is always
there, like our faith in God. But I am a human being, a woman, a
mother. I have a right to feel this way. I have to take care of my
grandchildren and the wives of my sons while they are in prison. It’s
too much.”
http://palestinianprisoners.blogspot.com/2009/04/from-jail-to-jail-mother-from-balata.html
http://palestinianprisoners.blogspot.com/2009/04/from-jail-to-jail-mother-from-balata.html
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