JARRAR AND MENG: UNRELENTING WOMEN WALK OUT OF JAIL

One of them, Khalida Jarrar, a 58-year-old Palestinian lawmaker, released after two years in Israeli prison, has been in jail at least four times, and knows that if she does not betray the hopes of her people, she will soon be back in prison.

Jarrar’s alleged crime is her insistence that just as the Israelis have a homeland and definable borders, so must her people, the Palestinians. Since the Israeli state cannot make the allegation of Jarrar being violent or planning violence stick, they simply accuse her of belonging to a terrorist organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Indeed, all organisations, including the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), who seek self-determination for Palestinians are classified by Israel as “terrorist”.

What might have made Jarrar’s latest stint in jail more painful is that two months ago, she lost her 31-year- old daughter, Suha Ghassan Jarrar, a human rights activist with a Master of Science degree in Climate Change Science and Policy.

Israel rejected all pleas to allow Jarrar out for a furlough to enable her bury her daughter and return to detention. So, she had to watch the funeral on television.

This Sunday, on leaving prison, Jarrar visited her daughter’s graveside at the Ramallah Cemetery. She knelt down, broke down in tears and lamented: “They forbade me from participating in the funeral of my beloved daughter and from planting a kiss on my daughter’s forehead.

They denied me her farewell…The last time I hugged Suha was the night of my arrest in 2019.” Jarrar has been banned from leaving the country since 1998, after attending that year’s Human Rights Defenders’ Summit in Paris.

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