While families all over the world are celebrating Mother’s Day with gifts, flowers, and gatherings, Palestinian women not only experience a bittersweet day, as they remember their missing motherhood restricted by the Israeli occupation but also grieve the loss, detention, and separation of their children.
On March 20th, 2021, as families all over the world were preparing to celebrate Mother’s Day, 12 Palestinian mothers imprisoned in Israeli jails were denied the right to celebrate this special day with their children. These mothers have had to undergo the sufferings and hardships of the Israeli prisons as well as be denied to be with their children all year round.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been arrested and jailed in Israeli prisons, many of which are held in prisons without any charges or trials. Palestinian mothers on this day, and every day, wait for their children to be finally released, without knowing how much they’re going to be waiting for, or whether their children will be released at all.
Other Palestinian mothers hold back their tears as their children lay disabled because of Israeli bombs or bullets. According to the Palestinian Statistics Centre around 50,000 Palestinians are disabled because of Israeli aggression. Moreover, at the moment, over 250 children are being held in Israeli prisons with neither trial nor charge.
The story of Iyad Al-Jarjawir, a 27-year-old sentenced to nine years of imprisonment in Israel’s Gilboa Prison, illustrates the everyday suffering of Palestinian mothers. Iyad’s mother kept waiting for her son to be released so she could finally embrace him, only to find out that he has a cancerous tumor in his head.
“I was not allowed to visit him last month for unknown reasons,” she said, adding that she was not allowed to talk to him about his condition unless it was through a lawyer.
Other Palestinians suffer from the blockade that separates numerous families. Reuniting with family members has been an almost impossible task because of the terrifying walls, heavily guarded siege, and blocked borders that keep family members unreachable. Some mothers are too afraid to leave their homes in Palestine to visit their children abroad, for fear that may not be allowed to return.