Israel prevents Palestinian prisoners in exile from reuniting with their families | Human Rights Issues

Every time the phone rings, Akram’s seven-year-old daughter, Julia, rushes to answer it, desperate to talk to their father, Amjad al-Najjar, who was recently deported from Egypt by Israel after being released from a long prison sentence.

Although the children have never met their father, they remain very close to him and dream that one day they will be able to leave Ramallah to meet Amjad.

They were all taken from the sperm released from the Israeli prison in Amjad prison for 10 years. His release in January 2025, as part of a prisoner exchange with Hamas, deported him to Egypt along with 228 other Palestinians.

The 48-year-old hopes that his release will herald the start of a new life with his family, but due to travel restrictions in Israel he is unable to see his children. He remained stuck in Egypt with his family trapped in the West Bank.

“A lot of the freedom remains incomplete because the first meeting with my family didn’t happen as I thought,” he told Al Jazeera. “That’s when I saw that happiness is not over and the way to find a good life is still long,” he added.

Amjad, from the town of Silwad, east of Ramallah, was already a father of two when he was arrested in 2015. Due to Israel’s restrictions on freedom of movement, Amjad has not met Akram and Julia during his imprisonment. Even now as a free man, travel restrictions in Israel mean there is no hope of family reunification.

“One of the hardest things I went through was becoming a father while I was in prison.” It is an event that has great joy mixed with great pain, because I was not there when my children were born. I followed the news of their coming to the country from behind the fence, without seeing them, holding them, or meeting them for the first time,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We understand that this issue is not easy and it goes through the legal process to political problems and real security. But we believe that the real solution should be to confirm family reunification as an important right, not the opposite,” said Amjad.

Expected Reunion

Ten-year-old Bushra has never met her father, but she is in contact with Ahmed Hamed by phone regularly after he was deported from Egypt by Israel last year after 22 years in an Israeli prison.

His wife Inas has tried several times to go to Cairo to see her husband since he was released, but permission has been repeatedly denied by the Israeli authorities, due to security reasons.

In March, Bushra, who was also conceived through sperm smuggled into prison, was able to travel to Egypt with her younger aunt to meet her father, 51. When they returned to the West Bank, they were both arrested and interrogated by Israeli intelligence.

“My son, Baraa, was only a few months old when his father was arrested,” Inas said. “He is now 22 years old and we are preparing for his wedding, but his father is not there and we cannot go to see him.”

Baraa tried to see his father several times, but each time he was turned away from the Karameh border, between the West Bank and Jordan, by the Israeli authorities.

“That is very sad.” We were happy because of his release, but the joy is not over, it is only half released,” he said.

“We will try to appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court to get permission to travel, but we don’t know if they will accept it or not.”

Even the grave is forbidden!

Even in death, Israel separates Palestinian families from their loved ones. In April, Israel barred the family of Riyad al-Amour, 57, who was also deported from Egypt last year after spending 23 years in prison in Israel, from receiving his body and burying him in their West Bank home.

Riyad, who had a pacemaker, was released last October as part of a prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and Hamas and deported to Egypt.

His wife left Bethlehem for Jordan months before his release to avoid the Israeli authorities from preventing her from seeing him. After a long wait in Jordan, they were able to see him before he died in April – but his five children were denied permission to leave the West Bank.

Brother Majed said that his health began to deteriorate a few days after he was released from prison and he fainted. He died in hospital five months later, hundreds of miles from his family. He never got to see or hug any of his 12 grandchildren.

“Her son and I tried to go to see her, but we were prevented,” Majed told Al Jazeera. “The last time I saw him was when I visited him in prison in 2022. We were close friends, not just brothers, but because of the actions of the Israelis, we were prevented from seeing each other.”

“This is our sad, short story as Palestinians – even after he dies, we are denied the right to stand at his grave. There is no reason to prevent a family from seeing their son after years of separation, but it is a project that seeks to make us always humiliated.”

As part of the 2025 prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, 383 Palestinian prisoners were deported from the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Association.

There are no reliable figures on the number of families who have been prevented from traveling to see their loved ones in exile, but based on testimonies from Palestinians, at least a hundred families in the West Bank have been affected by the Israeli restrictions.

The Center for the Defense of Liberties and Civil Rights (Hurriyat) has documented 8,700 restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank between 2014 and 2025. They include 691 women, many of whom were former prisoners and their families, as part of the punitive process that Israel continues to target Palestinian citizens and families of prisoners.

Shawan Jabarin, director of Al-Haq Human Rights Organizationtold Al Jazeera that Israel’s law on forced separation is a form of collective punishment and violates the rights of released prisoners to see their families.

“Those living in the occupied territory have the right to leave and return to the occupied territory without any obstacles, be it human rights law or international humanitarian law, because these families are not being punished,” he told Al Jazeera. “Israel is inflicting undeserved punishment on them.”