Each time the phone rings, Akram, aged five and two-year-old Julia dash to answer, longing to speak to their father, Amjad al-Najjar, who was recently deported to Egypt by Israel following his release from a lengthy prison sentence.
Although the children have never met their father, they remain deeply attached to him and dream that one day they will be able to leave Ramallah to finally meet Amjad.
Both were conceived from sperm smuggled out of an Israeli prison during Amjad’s 10-year detention. His release in January 2025, as part of a prisoner exchange with Hamas, saw him deported to Egypt along with 228 other Palestinians.
The 48-year-old hoped his release would herald the start of a new life with his family, but due to Israeli travel restrictions he is unable to see his children. He remains stuck in exile in Egypt with his family trapped in the West Bank.
“A significant part of this freedom remained incomplete because the first meeting with my family didn’t happen as I had imagined,” he told Al Jazeera. “That’s when I felt that the joy wasn’t complete and that the road to regaining a normal life was still long,” he added.
Amjad, from the town of Silwad, east of Ramallah, was already a father of two when he was detained in 2015. Due to Israeli limitations on visitation rights, Amjad never met Akram and Julia during his imprisonment. Even now as a free man, Israeli travel restrictions mean there is little hope the family will be reunited.
“One of the hardest things I went through was becoming a father during my imprisonment. It’s an experience that carries immense joy mixed with profound pain, because I wasn’t present at the moment my children were born. I followed the news of their arrival into the world from behind the walls, without seeing them, holding them, or experiencing their first moments,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We understand that the issue is not simple and that it transcends the legal framework to a complex political and security reality. But we believe that the real solution must guarantee family reunification as a fundamental right, not an exception,” Amjad concluded.
A Pending Reunion
Ten-year-old Bushra has also not met her father, but keeps in touch with Ahmed Hamed last year following 22 years in an Israeli jail.
His wife Inas has tried several times to travel to Cairo to see her husband since he was released, but permission has been repeatedly denied by Israeli authorities, allegedly due to security reasons.
In March, Bushra, who was also conceived through sperm smuggled out of prison, was finally able to travel to Egypt with her aunt to meet her father, aged 51. Upon their return to the West Bank, they were both detained and interrogated by Israeli intelligence.
“My son, Baraa, was just a few months old when his father was arrested,” Inas said. “Now he is 22 and we are preparing for his wedding, but his father is not with us and we cannot travel to see him.”
Baraa has tried to see his father several times, but each time was turned back from the Karameh border crossing, between the West Bank and Jordan, by Israeli authorities.
“This situation is truly appalling. We were happy about his release, but the joy is incomplete; it’s only half a release,” she said.
“We will try to file a petition with the Israeli Supreme Court to obtain permission to travel, but we don’t know if they will approve it or not.”
Even the grave is forbidden!
Even in death, Israel separates Palestinian families from their loved ones. In April, Israel prevented the family of Riyad al-Amour, 57, also exiled to Egypt last year after 23 years in Israeli detention, from receiving his body and burying him in his native West Bank.
Riyad, who had a pacemaker fitted, was released last October as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas and deported to Egypt.
His wife had travelled from Bethlehem to Jordan months before his release to avoid Israeli authorities from preventing her from seeing him. After a long wait in Jordan, she was able to see him before he died in April – but his five children were denied permission to leave the West Bank.
Brother Majed said his health deteriorated a few days after release and he fell into a coma. He died in a hospital bed five months later, hundreds of kilometres from his family. He was never to see or hug any of his 12 grandchildren.
“His son and I tried to travel to see him, but we were prevented,” Majed told Al Jazeera. “The last time I saw him was during my visit to him in prison in 2022. We were close friends, not just brothers, but the Israeli occupation prevented us from seeing each other.”
“This is our sad, short story as Palestinians – even after his death, we are denied the right to stand at his grave. There is no justification for preventing a family from seeing their son after years of separation, but it is the occupation that wants to keep us living in constant humiliation.”
During the prisoner exchange deals between Israel and Hamas in 2025, 383 Palestinian prisoners were deported from the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club.
There are no reliable statistics on the number of families prevented from travelling to see their exiled loved ones, but based on testimonies from Palestinians, at least a hundred families in the occupied West Bank have been affected by Israeli restrictions.
The Center for the Defense of Liberties and Civil Rights (Hurriyat) has documented over 8,700 travel bans for Palestinians in the West Bank between 2014 and 2025. They include 691 women, most of them former prisoners and their families, as part of the ongoing punitive policy by Israel targeting Palestinian citizens and prisoners’ families.
Shawan Jabarin, director of Al-Haq human rights organisation, told Al Jazeera that Israel’s policy of forced separation legally constitutes collective punishment and is a violation of the released prisoners’ right to see their families.
“The residents of the occupied territory have the right to leave and return to the occupied territory without any impediments, whether under human rights law or international humanitarian law, because these families are not being punished,” he told Al Jazeera. “Israel is effectively imposing an entirely unjustified punishment on them.”
