Iqbal Tamimi - Joseph, the fifteen-month-old Palestinian Prisoner

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By Iqbal Tamimi • May 10th, 2009 at 7:25 • Category: Biography, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Interviews, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Religion, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Zionism

The Palestinian prisoner Fatima Alziq is a mother of nine children one of them is baby Joseph. Her children are deprived of their right of meeting their mother and their baby brother Joseph who was born fifteen months ago inside the prison. Her children suffer a collective punishment like most Palestinian children. All children need their mothers; Fatima’s children are no exception.

Fatima a 40 year old mother from the Gaza Strip was deprived of her right to see any of her children since the day she was arrested two years ago by the Israeli authorities. She and her niece Rawda Habeeb were arrested at the Eretz crossing in Bait Hanoun when they were on their way to a hospital in Israel for a medical operation needed for Rawda. Her husband Mohammed is suffering and struggling day in day out since then with 8 children who keep requesting to see their mother and their baby brother who was born a prisoner too.

‘My wife Fatima was detained in the Telmond � Hasharon prison two years ago, she used to work as a social worrker helping women’ Mohammad said. ‘She was accused of the intent to carry out a suicide attack against the Israeli occupation forces, this accusation shocked us all and she is still detained with our 15 months old baby Joseph’ he explained. Mohammad never saw his baby son because the Israeli authorities denied him this right too.

Fatima who used to work in the Women's office in the Gaza Strip have been imprisoned on charges of trying to implement a martyrdom operation, besides being charged of belonging to the Islamic Jihad movement through her work in the department.

Fatima’s nine children suffered her abscence badly. Mahmoud, Sumayyah, Sara, Bilal, Ali, Zakaria, Othman , and Suleiman demand to see their mother and their baby brother Joseph. Mahoud her eldest was a student in the university when his mother was detained, he spoke of his pain when his brother Suliman kept asking ‘where is Mama’?’ Isn’t she in prison’ Suliman used to ask. ‘I see her every night in my dream, I see that I visit her in a prison and that I reach out to touch her hand but I can’t touch her’ says Suliman.

Sara is in class 9. ‘I remember the last day I saw my mother; she made my sandwiches for school and put them in my school bag’ says Sara.’ My mother was my best friend; I used to tell her everything’ Sarah sighs.’ I keep praying to God to release her and bring her home’ Sara says in pain. Sara had to bear all the responsibility of running the house chores since she is the only sister in a home full of boys, her eldest sister is married and she pops in every now and then to the house that no more feels like home without her mother.

Zakaria says he used to earn full marks at school because his mother used to supervise his study, ‘I no longer take full marks, and I got 18 of 20 ‘says Zakaria. Suliman interrupts to say ‘ the prison is not a nice place, it is dark and it has locked doors and keys’.

Her husband said that neither he nor any of his children were allowed any visits to see Fatima or baby Joseph. ‘Unfortunately we could not see Joseph since his birth, we know him only through photos taken by lawyers visiting the prisoners’ the tormented father said. When he was asked if he was allowed to phone her he said he was only allowed to call her three times since she was detained, and that means one phone call every seven months. In general all prisoners from Gaza are denied family visits by the Israeli authorities including young children. ‘ I was worried about her safety when she was so desperate that she decided a hunger strike while she was still pregnant, she used to turn food down but request to keep the salt only because she had low blood pressure’ he said. She was desperate to get support from any human rights organization, but it seems no one cared enough about Palestinian women prisoners.

Most affected by Fatima’s detention is her six year old son Suleiman who needs his mother’s care and tenderness. He was only four when his mother was imprisoned. ‘We are now trying to manage on our own after they arrested my wife but I can’t keep pretending that I am managing on my own, it has been an extremely difficult situation’ Mohammad said, ‘Fatima left a vacuum in our lives, she was working inside the home and outside before she was arrested’ he explained.’ I have been playing both roles the mother and the father since her detention, taking care of the eight children and working at the same time to provide for them’ he said.

Fatima pleaded to meet her eight children to a lawyer during his visit to the prison, she suffers like all prisoners from the Gaza Strip, and she is disappointed of the lack of interested human rights organizations in Palestinian prisoners’ suffering. She said that the prisoners lack many basic needs, and that the Israeli prison administration refuse to provide them with the essentials, besides preventing them from gaining access to such needs sent to them by their families, besides being denied visits, she herself has not seen any member of her family for more than 20 months. Fatima was distressed because the prison administration confiscates the prisoner’s letters as well which are considered the only means of communication with their families considering the fact that the family visits are banned.

Fatima managed to send only one letter to her family when she was first detained: “the first cell they put me in is more like a grave under the ground, the sewage are overflowing, attracting lots of insects and the smell stinks. I developed skin infections and pimples all over my head, the place are a health hazard’ wrote Fatima.

Regarding the treatment she was receiving by the Israeli female prison wardens she wrote ‘the female soldiers used to ask me …since when I became a practicing Muslim, I told them since a long time when I was a little girl because I was raised in a practicing family…they used to shout in my face and call me a terrorist’ she wrote. ‘They tried to force me to miscarriage by offering me different medicines I refused to take, I told them babies are a blessing from God’ she explained in her letter.

Fatima and other Palestinian women prisoners have sent dozens of letters through the Red Cross to their families but none was delivered to their families they said, and they did not receive any letters sent to them by their families either, such procedures left the Palestinian women isolated totally suffering emotional distress. Such isolation was described by the prisoners as a tragedy. But Fatima’s tragedy is greater than any of the other women because her baby “Joseph” suffers the lack of many essentials that she could not provide him with in such state of total isolation, besides the fact that he was deprived of a normal life or enjoy seeing his father or any of his brothers being brought up in the most unusual way a child can be brought up in.

Ra'fat Hamduna Director of the Centre for Studies of prisoners called upon the authorities of the prisons and the legal system to facilitate a meeting between Fatima and her children, and is pressuring the occupation authorities to free her and her baby "Joseph", and ensure the essential needs of the prisoners must be met, especially providing them with the clothing needed, but until the writing of this article no accomplishments were made in this respect, and baby Joseph is still in prison with no contact of other children. I am worried, what kind of vocabulary he will pick up in prison. He never heard a bird, or giggles of other children, he is only used to hearing the doors of the cells slammed close.

Tagged as: gaza, Israel, Palestine, Palestinian prisoners, Zionism

Iqbal Tamimi is a Palestinian journalist and poet from Hebron. She is the creator of a vibrant and important activists' network Palestinian Mothers, open to all who share the vision of peace and justice, men and women alike. She is working now in UK.
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