Mother of Palestinian Prisoners Lacks Faith in PA Leadership
Linah Alsaafin speaks to the mother of four Palestinian detainees, a woman who refuses to give up hope even with "nonexistent" support from the Palestinian Authority officials to families of prisoners.
As the hunger strikes of Ayman Sharawneh, Samer Issawi, Tareq Qa’dan and Ja’far Ezzedine continue, protests in support of the prisoners have increased, bringing more attention to their plight. The stories of other Palestinian prisoners and their families, so often reduced to numbers and statistics, are rife with pain and hope.
In a small dark house on the outskirts of the al-Am’ari refugee camp in Ramallah resides Latifa Abu Hmeid, known as the Khansaa of Palestine — a name given to a woman as a testament to the pain and suffering she endures with dignity.
Known also as Umm Nasser, the 68-year-old mother of 12 has had seven of her sons all imprisoned in Israeli jails at once, her house demolished twice by the Israeli army and one of her sons, Abdel-Min’im, killed by soldiers at the Qalandiya checkpoint.
“Abdel-Min’im was killed in 1994,” Umm Nasser began. “He prayed the Friday prayers at the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and made his way back to al-Am’ari, but a unit had been following his moves since he finished praying and followed him to Qalandiya, where they shot and wounded him.”
