Smuggled Sperm, Broken Family

Against all odds, a miracle has happened in an Israeli prison this week. No, they didn't decide to release  more Palestinian prisoners, but the son of a Palestinian prisoner has been born. The wife of an inmate in an Israeli prison has managed to conceive a baby by smuggling out his semen, passed through prison bars and guards and into her anxious womb. The act is not the first of its kind, as Palestinians view such births as the act of defiance against Israel's jail policies.

Speaking from a hospital bed in Gaza City, the new mother, Hana al-Za'anin, expressed her new found happiness and frustration after being banned from seeing her husband since 2006. As to how she was able to smuggle out his semen, Za'anin was tight lipped, only saying that journey started with her husband then proceeded into the hands of specialists who were waiting in a Gaza lab.

The lab has managed to facilitate six pregnancies in the occupied West Bank in 2013 alone, as clinics have become more advanced, community awareness has increased and religious clerics are blessing the practice. "750,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israel since 1967 - many serve long sentences," said Doctor Salem Abu Khaizaran of the Razan Medical Center in Nablus, a West Bank facility that aided the pregnancies.

Often there aren't positive stories out of Palestine, however this story provides just a little bit of hope to a shattered family, during troubling times. Here's hoping that sometime in this child's life that his family will be brought together in a new and free Palestine.