CPTnet
September 3, 2004

HEBRON REFLECTION: Fences, walls and the Palestinian prisoners' hunger
strike

By Jim Roynon

The make-shift tent fenced into the courtyard of the Red Cross headquarters
is crowded with rows of chairs. Men are talking among themselves; women hold
photos of their loved ones: husbands, sons and daughters imprisoned in
Israel. Children are running about with signs and bringing water to their
parents. These close quarters are hot and everyone wants to share stories.
The Palestinian political prisoners in Israel are staging a hunger strike.
Their families are fencing themselves in here from 10:00 in the morning
until 3:00-4:00 in the afternoon as a show of solidarity.

Mothers are the ones most who are willing to talk about their imprisoned
sons and daughters. One woman talks about two daughters, one just turning
sixteen. This mother, like all others, is unable to visit them. She is
unable to get the papers needed to travel into Israel.

Another mother sends her seven and eight year old children. Children do not
need papers, but they must get up before dawn in order to catch the Red
Cross bus. It takes all day. Little children, traveling on their own,
provide the only connection between their families and older siblings. They
stand in a courtyard with all the other children, separated from the
prisoners by two wire fences about fifty cm apart, with a sheet of plastic
between. All the children yell to their loved ones on the other side,
straining to see and hear and connect all at the same time--doing what they
can for the sake of family.

The ugly, cement wall snaking through the West Bank to divide Israel and
Palestine isn't the only monstrosity of this place with the misnomer. "The
Holy Land." Children in prison, younger children their only contact with
home, relational and psychological walls are more horrendous than even the
cement ones.

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