An increasing number of Palestinian couples separated by Israeli prisons have resorted to smuggling sperm out of jail to have babies and raise families.

But it’s not easy to have babies using a transplantation procedure especially for Palestinian women who have to go through the process without having their husbands by their side.

More than 7,000 Palestinian men are languishing in Israeli prisons on various charges, which carry years-long sentences with a slim chance of coming out or getting fair retrials.

This number is going to increase as Israeli military indisrciminately detains Palestinian men in the ongoing war on Gaza.

For years, Tel Aviv has treated Palestinians from the Occupied Territories as second-class citizens in what human rights groups call is a modern-day apartheid.

For instance, Palestinians are barred from travelling on roads that are dedicated for Israeli Jews. Different set of property laws are applied to residents of occupied West Bank from those applicable to illegal Israeli settlers who live a stone-throw away. A Palestinian woman from Gaza married to a man from the occupied West Bank is forced to raise children on her own as they are not allowed to live as a couple in the West Bank.

Israel doesn’t allow Palestinian prisoners to have conjugal visits, which are a common practice in many democracies around the world.

A love story cut short

In 2010, Renan Al Salhi, a 34-year-old Palestinian woman, married Islam Hamed. Both of them are from the town of Silwad, east of Ramallah, part of which is occupied by an illegal Israeli settlement. She was looking forward to raising a family.

But a few months later, the Palestinian security service arrested Hamed on charges of shooting at a car of Israeli settlers. He spent five years in Palestinian prisons. In that time Al Salhi gave birth to their first child, a boy, they named Khattab.

Things got worse for the couple who had hardly spent any time together as Hamed was arrested by the Israeli military immediately upon his release from the Palestinian prison in 2015. He’s now facing a 21-year sentence.

Having another child was always on Al Salhi’s mind. Like most mothers, she wanted a sibling for her first born. But the possibility of that happening was almost impossible. She’ll be too old to conceive by the time her husband walks out of the Israeli prison.

The only option was to somehow smuggle his sperm out of the prison and conceive a baby through in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

Sending love from behind the Israeli bars

The first Palestinian child to be born to an Israeli prisoner in this way was Muhammad, son of Ammar Al Zaben, a Palestinian man from Nablus, who has been in detention since 1998 and facing life imprisonment.

That IVF procedure using ‘smuggled sperm’ was perfomed at the Nablus-based Rezan Medcial Center for Fertility.

Dr. Jamila Abu Khaizran, who works at the center, say a strict protocol is followed before the in vitro fertilization is performed.

“The centre is not responsible for how the sperm is delivered. But we require that witnesses from the families of the husband and wife are present when it arrives at the centre.”

In little over a decade since the sperm smuggling began, some 120 babies have been conceived through the IVF procedure.

“A final decision to use the sperm sample is made only after examining it. If it’s not fit for the procedure then all the effort is wasted and we need another sample,” says Khaizran.

A twin surprise

Hamed was insistent. Word has spread about how Palestinian prisoners were smuggling out their sperm to raise families. Whenever Renan visited him in the Israeli prison, Hamed would bring up the subject. Let’s do it, he’d insist.

“It isn’t easy. Everything is difficult about it. Even thinking about it is tiring. Then I had to consider the birth and what happens afterwards,” says Al Salhi.

“Raising Khattab, my first child, on my own was the most difficult thing I ever did. Now I had to think about having another child.”

Nevertheless, the couple from Silwad decided to go ahead as Hamed wasn’t getting out any time soon. One of Hamed’s prison mate who was released brought the sperm in a container.

Al Salhi says she was lucky to become pregnant without any complications. In 2021, she gave birth to twins - a boy named Muhammad and a girl named Khadija.

“The idea of having children like this is sort of breaking Israeli shackles. A child born this way is a testimony that Israeli prisons can’t stop Palestinian way life from going on.”

Al Salhi says she was lucky to receive family and community support. In religious conservative circles, some people might be apprehensive about it.

By the time she went for in vitro fertilisation, several other Palestinian women had conceived in a similar way and the practice had come to be accepted.

But not all Palestinian women are so lucky.

Not an easy journey

Despite the seeming ease of the transplantation process, there are dozens of women who have not succeeded in getting pregnant.

Iman Saeed, 34, from Bethlehem, has three children. Her husband was arrested in 2016 and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Three years after his arrest, he told her of his desire to have another baby. She shared his enthusiasm. He was able to smuggle his sperm out of the prison.

“I went to several medical centers, but some of them refused because priority is usually given to prisoners who don’t have children and to women who are close to 40 years. In the end, I was able to get the implant and I was very excited,” she says.

Saeed waited for several weeks, but the pregnancy didn’t occur. She tried the implant again, but it failed again.

“I experienced a great psychological damage. My children were also excited when I told them they’d have a sibling. They were also upset. We were waiting for the baby so impatiently, as if it was symbol of my husband’s freedom,” she says.

IVF procedure can be expensive. For Saeed, the procedure cost around 25 thousand shekels (more than $7,000), excluding the money that needs to be spent on actual birth, which usually requires a c-section surgery.

Some medical facilities offer implant for free to the prisoners’ wives, but Saeed says, aspiring parents need to meet several conditions, including that the prisoner be without children.

“Some women had a successful pregnancy, but the fetus died after a few months and they felt very sad. It is all up to luck and God’s will.”

Her husband smuggled new sperm to her a few days before war broke out on October 7, but she didn’t undergo the transplant because she is hoping that he would be freed in a prisoner exchange deal.

“Having my husband with me during pregnancy and childbirth is a very wonderful thing. That’s something a woman who gives birth through smuggled sperm doesn’t experience.”