In the shadowed streets of Nablus’s northern villages, tension mounted as Israeli occupation forces and Palestinian security services carried out targeted raids yesterday, focusing on the homes of two female prisoners slated for release under the recent Hamas-Israel exchange agreement.
News came when Israeli forces raided the family house of Abeer Muhammad Hamdan Ba’ara in the quiet village of Burqa. The message from the predawn visit was clear: there would be no celebrations. A member of the family, who talked to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions, said soldiers warned explicitly against public celebrations.
“They made it crystal clear – no loudspeakers, no fireworks, no celebrations of any kind,” the relative said, trying not to show the frustration for being made to suppress the obvious innermost joy at the arrival of a loved one home. They were threatened with consequences for breaking these restrictions.
The case has been highly publicized within the community. On September 29, wife and mother Ba’ara was taken from her home in Nablus, leaving her family anxiously waiting for her return. Detained for almost four months, at the time when the print was made, she is still being held in administrative detention without the declared sentence, further tangled in the web of the administrative detention system used in the occupied territories.
These raids are part of a bigger picture of policing Palestinian solidarity and joyful manifestations. For their part, local community leaders have expressed fears that such restrictions represent an attempt to extend policies suppressive of Palestinian cultural and social life in the Occupied West Bank.
“These warnings create an atmosphere of fear around what should be moments of family reunion,” commented a local social worker who frequently works with families of detainees. It is not mere rain on merriments-they somehow control how people express their feelings and develop community ties.
Prisoner Exchange
The coincidence of these raids with the purported prisoner exchange has brought many other issues regarding civil liberties in the occupied territories to fore. Human rights groups following the situation have reported that such limits on family holidays can serve as a type of common victimization.
In the meantime, in the narrow streets of the Nablus old city, neighbours discreetly get ready for mobilization of their community members, while composing ways their support for the coming back of their members can be conveyed in ways to avoid sensing any compliance with the state’s request.
The limitations have led families to rethink their strategy for welcoming home their friends and family. Traditional festivities involving extended family celebrations and community involvement now need to be massively scaled down and will change enduring celebrations of shared joy and solidarity.
When the release date is getting nearer, it puts families such as Ba’ara’s in the awkward situation of having to reconcile their natural wish for celebration with the binding constraint on them. The predicament underscores the hidden daily reality of Palestinian households under occupation, in which seemingly even the shortest occasion of being reunited can turn into a source of external regulation and restriction.
Local community groups have stepped in to assist these impacted families in coping with the restrictions while upholding their dignity and family bonds. The soul of it is in the heart, even when it cannot be expressed on the street,” one social worker remarked.
