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Desperate times call for desperate measures. As they die by the dozens everyday in the aggression let loose by the Israeli military, Palestinians have devised a new way of increasing their numbers. It is artificial insemination most families are resorting to as their male members languish away in Israeli prisons. This new phenomenon has caught the Israeli authorities unawares even as it has enraged it no end. Despite strict vigil, successful attempts have been made to smuggle out sperm of Palestinian detainees out of the prison.
The other day a Palestinian detainee at the Ramon prison in southern Israel was caught by guards as he was trying to whisk away a bottle containing another prisoner’s sperm. Following this incident the prisoner who provided the sperm was identified and placed in solitary confinement. The Israeli authorities have also stepped up security and vigil at all its prisons.
Israel worried
This is not the first time that sperm smuggling of Palestinian prisoners has come to light. Such incidents have been taking place for quite some time and they have gained traction of late. It may appear farfetched but prisoners serving life imprisonment or long terms have chosen to deliver their sperm to their wives in the distant West Bank and Gaza strip for artificial insemination. As the sperm is smuggled out of prison, wives and families of the Palestinian prisoners are all ready to go for in vitro fertilisation (IVF). Extreme care is taken to do a rush job since sperm has a short life and can survive for just a few hours outside the body. So far more than a hundred babies have been born through this method, it is said.
The Israeli-Palestine conflict is perhaps the world’s most intractable of conflicts. Clashes between the two continue to rage despite attempts to broker peace. In the last few years hundreds of Palestinians have been thrown into jails and sentenced to long years of imprisonment. Unprovoked attacks by the Israeli military have left a trail of death and destruction in the West Bank and Gaza strip.
As a result, the life of Palestinians has gone topsy-turvy. The unabated violence has left in lurch scores of young women whose husbands are incarcerated in prisons for terms ranging from 25 to 30 years. With prison authorities denying conjugal visits, women who intend to raise a family find themselves in a piquant situation. Most of them have had no physical contact with their husbands for years. And many of them will be over 50 years old when their husbands finally walk out from prison. At this age they consider their chances of getting pregnant pretty dim. Some who are blessed with only a daughter want to have a son to carry on their husband’s name. Under these circumstances getting impregnated through the ‘sperm smuggling procedure’ appears the best bet – although the whole thing is risky and fraught with danger.
IVF method has religious sanction
Artificial insemination also involves religious sanction and social acceptance, according to Mohammed Qabalan, director, Razan Fertility Centre. This problem was overcome with a senior Mufti giving a fatwa on the condition that the married couple had had sexual intercourse before the husband was arrested. The idea also received support from the late Yasser Arafat and the Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Al Rantisi. They felt the prisoners had a right to have their own children. The West Bank and Gaza strip are home to more than a dozen IVF clinics. The procedure is a bit costly but clinics like the Razan Fertility Centre does it free of cost as it feels it is a social obligation.
The innovative idea had its origin in the year 2000 when a Palestinian engineer and his wife were undergoing treatment at a fertility clinic as they were unable to conceive. The man’s sperm sample was frozen before he was arrested. Later his wife successfully got impregnated with the frozen sperm. The man then spread the idea among other prisoners. Ammar al-Zaban is believed to be the first Palestinian prisoner to have fathered a child with his wife using smuggled sperm, it is said.
This novel concept is seen as a bio-political resistance and a defiant response to the Israeli occupation. It surely has upset Tel Aviv as it is worried about the slow but steady baby boom taking place in Palestinian homes. Will the Jewish state meet its Waterloo at the hands of ‘jihadi babes’ taking birth even as their fathers languish in its prisons?
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