"Deprive me of saying goodbye with a kiss. I bid you farewell with a rose. Your separation is painful, painful, but I am as strong as the mountains of my beloved homeland." With this, the 58-year-old Palestinian captive Khaleda Jarrar bid farewell to her daughter Suha in a message that came out of her prison, where she is languishing with more than 40 Palestinian prisoners.

Two days ago, the death of Suha Ghassan Jarrar, 31, the daughter of Palestinian captive Khaleda Jarrar, a leader in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a prisoner in the occupation’s prisons, was announced. Everyone, from the masses and human rights and civil institutions, called for the release of the mother to bid her farewell to her daughter and participate in her funeral.

Khaleda was "really strong and cohesive," says Mahmoud Hassan, the prisoner's lawyer, Jarrar, when he went to Damoun prison, where she lies, to convey to her the news of her death. She was surprised that she had heard about him on one of the radio stations minutes before he arrived, so she accepted condolences strongly and said that this "will not affect her determination." .

refusal to release

From the first moments of the news of Suha’s death, the matter came with her captive mother, and calls were immediately issued from the Popular Front for her immediate release, and then the “Release Khaleda Jarrar” campaign was launched, which was adopted by local and international human rights institutions, especially those concerned with the affairs of prisoners, to put pressure on them. On the occupation in order to release her.

The campaign call stated that the prisoner Jarrar has been in the occupation’s prisons for more than two years and that she is supposed to end her sentence within two months, calling for pressure on the occupation locally and internationally “to release her so that she can bid farewell to her daughter and exercise her most basic human rights.” The occupation authorities responded by refusing to release.

In response to the occupation’s refusal, activities were organized on Monday in front of Ofer Prison near Ramallah, which were confronted with the repression of the occupation, and another at Damon Prison inside Israel and a third in front of the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip, while other events were organized yesterday in different cities of the West Bank to continue pressure and release Palestinian prisoners. captive tractor.

In the city of Ramallah, large crowds, including national and political figures, mourned, on Tuesday afternoon, the body of the late Suha Jarrar, who was wrapped in the Palestinian flag, to the "Beitunia" cemetery near the city amid a state of sadness and demand for the release of her mother.

Ongoing campaign

The campaign to demand the release of the captive Khaleda Jarrar by burying her daughter has not ended or stopped, and Sahar Francis, a lawyer and director of the Addameer Foundation for Prisoner Care, says that the campaign is not linked to allowing attendance at the funeral only, but it goes according to two levels, one of which is participation in the funeral, and this was rejected by the Israeli Prisons Authority and claimed that the captive Khaleda poses a danger inside prison and beyond.

Therefore, she does not meet the conditions that allow her to go out on special vacations according to the amended prison authority orders of 1971. Rather, as a "humanitarian gesture", they were satisfied with giving her a phone call to her husband on Monday evening.

Another level, according to the director of the Addameer Foundation, is related to the request of the Israeli military commander to intervene and in accordance with the permissible military orders to determine the sentence of the prisoner Jarrar, who is sentenced to 24 months in prison, in order to relieve her of what remains for her of the sentence estimated at less than 3 months, “and this has not yet been responded to by the occupation.” Pressure continues to be released.

Sahar Francis said that Khaleda is not the only case in which the occupation refuses to release her to participate in the funeral, and usually invokes its inability to control the situation during the funeral due to confrontations, and the fact is that this is "conquering and collective punishment of the Palestinians."

She described the "loss" of a captive or captive as very difficult, especially when it comes to Khaleda Jarrar, who previously experienced loss with the death of her father during her last arrest in 2019.

Kaddoura Fares: The occupation's refusal to release the captive Khaleda Jarrar to bid farewell to her daughter expresses human decadence (Al-Jazeera)

The head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, Qaddoura Fares, had said that the occupation's refusal to release the captive Khaleda Jarrar reflects the level of "human degeneration" it practices against the Palestinians in a systematic manner.

He added in a statement that arrived Al Jazeera Net that the occupation's depriving the prisoners of their human right to bid farewell to their families is a consistent approach, and that the majority of those who were arrested lost one or more of their families and were unable to participate in the mourning ceremonies.

despite the injured

Like Jarrar, the liberated Palestinian prisoner, Nidal Daghlas, lived twice with the death of his mother in 2004 and his father in 2015, and he lived - as he says - "many times by losing the sons of my group who were martyred one by one."

Douglas, who was released months ago after 19 years of detention, adds to Al Jazeera Net that he lost his mother and had only seen her once in the courtroom and for only two minutes, then he soon said goodbye to his father, "In both cases, I was the one who informed my fellow prisoners of the news and called them with equanimity. for my sympathy."

And the captive, according to Douglas, differs from the one outside who experiences grief only once. As for the captive, he lives it constantly and constantly thinks about it. Despite this, he must not be broken or weakened, especially in front of his family, who endured his absence and his family suffered with him.

Inside the prison, the prisoner demands more composure in front of his enemy and not to turn loss into a tragedy and to be patient with the necessity of victory over this enemy, saying that what is required of the captive Khaleda Jarrar and because she is also a leader is to “keep her feelings to herself despite the bitterness of reality, and to relieve her surroundings in prison.” .