“Olmert, I Want My Daddy”

Young Maria Ismail Abu Jaser holds a picture of her imprisoned father at a Dec. 3 demonstration in front of the International Red Cross office in Gaza City. (Photo M. Omer).

STRETCHING HER short arms above her head while balancing on a chair, 7-year-old Jumana Abu Jazar struggles to loop the picture wire around a rusty nail protruding from the wall. Shifting her weight, she spoke, her delicate voice amplified as it bounced off the wall.

“My mother died and I have no brothers and sisters,” she stated matter-of-factly, biting her lower lip and cocking her head to match the picture’s tilt. “My father is in jail, in an Israeli jail where he is forced to live in a dark cell.”

She paused for a moment to inspect her handiwork, caressing an embroidered pendant hanging around her neck, a gift her father made her.

“I saw my daddy once,” she chimed, satisfied she had hung the picture of her father straight. Kissing it lightly, she continued, “But now I can’t see my daddy for security reasons.”

Guilty of Being Palestinian

Together with her grandmother, Umm Ala’a, who is in her late 60s, Jumana lives in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. According to Umm Ala’a, Jumana’s father “was arrested by Israeli occupation forces in 2001 on his way back through the Rafah border. He was accompanying his father, who had received medical treatment abroad. An Israeli judge sentenced him to 18 years. More