With smuggled sperm, Palestinians sire children from behind Israeli prison bars
NABLUS (Los Angeles Times/ TNS) – Fathiya Safadi was married less than three weeks when her husband, Ashraf, a Palestinian wanted by Israel, was arrested, jailed and sentenced to 21 years behind bars in Israel.
Her friends suggested a divorce so she could start over and have a family. Instead, Safadi resigned herself to life without a husband at her side and childless. “I thought, this is my fate. This is my life.”
But her life changed a decade later when, during a prison visit, Safadi’s husband slipped her a candy wrapper and told her to take it straight to a fertility clinic in the West Bank city of Nablus. The wrapper contained his semen and – with the aid of clinic doctors – she became pregnant and gave birth to the couple’s first child, Amir.
The Safadis are among dozens of Palestinian couples who have defied jail terms and conservative social norms to become parents by undergoing in-vitro fertilization treatments with semen smuggled out of Israeli prisons.
Although IVF is rare in the traditionalist society of the Palestinian territories, some have started to embrace the procedure as a way to support the cause of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails. For Fathiya Safadi, it is far more personal.
“Even though people feel that having a baby from a prisoner is a patriotic act, I disagree. I consider Amir coming into my life as having saved me from a personal crisis,” she said.
In June, she was back at the Razan fertility clinic in Nablus with two-year-old Amir climbing on the waiting-room chairs as she nervously awaited another procedure in the hope of expanding her family.
“My life had no meaning before Amir,” she said. “It was difficult. Nothing was beautiful in my eyes. I was insecure.”
In the nearly four years since the first IVF birth to a prisoner’s wife, about 50 Palestinian children have been born using the treatment, said Dr. Salem Abu Khaizaran, director of the Razan Medical Center, which pioneered treatments in the West Bank.
Abu Khaizaran said that wives of prisoners began inquiring about the fertility treatments as far back as 2003, but that he was initially skeptical that it would gain traction in Palestinian society.
“We were reluctant to do it because we were worried that the community will not accept such treatment”, he said. “We are a small society, and if people suddenly saw a woman pregnant whose husband is in jail, they might start accusing her of cheating.”
To offset social backlash, the Razan center instructed treatment candidates to bring two representatives from each side
of the family to vouch for the woman. The prisoners’ wives won religious support for the procedure from a fatwa issued by the Palestinian Authority’s religious council, which deemed the treatment acceptable if it was for a husband and wife.
Though IVF treatments – which cost about $3,000 – are not covered by the Palestinian public medical plans, unlike in Israel, the Razan center offers such procedures free of charge for the wives of prisoners.
About 6,000 Palestinians are in Israeli jails, many of them terrorists sentenced for involvement in violence against Israelis that includes stone throwing and bus bombings.
Family members said Ashraf Safadi was wanted by Israeli forces for involvement in a Palestinian uprising against Israel, and in 2004 he was sentenced to 21 years in jail for shooting at Israelis. Among Palestinians, inmates like him are considered a cause celebre.
“It’s considered a national mission and a national achievement,” said Zaid Nasser, a doctor at the clinic. “This is helping the prisoners. They get hope from the fact that they’ll have a family waiting for them” when they get out of jail, he said.
Though Israeli prisoners are allowed conjugal visits – most notably for Yigal Amir, who assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 – they are not permitted for Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza Strip. So Palestinian prisoners have become creative.
Holding up a plastic pen and a pitted date, Nasser demonstrated some of the improvised containers used to smuggle seminal fluid out of prisons. The sperm can survive for up to 48 hours before it needs to be frozen, said Nasser, whose clinic now is treating about five women pregnant with the children of prisoners.
The Prisons Service did not respond to a request for comment. •