THE Dean of St George’s College, Jerusalem, the Very Revd Canon Richard Sewell, has described the joy of welcoming the Palestinian Layan Nasir, back home in the occupied West Bank, after her third period of incarceration in an Israeli prison.
Ms Nasir, 25, an Anglican, returned home to Birzeit on Friday after a further eight months in the Israeli prison system. She was first imprisoned in 2021, when she was charged with involvement with a banned student organisation, a charge that her family dispute (News, 6 December 2024).
Then, in the early hours of 6 April 2024, several Israeli army jeeps with at least 15 heavily armed soldiers forced their way into the family’s house, held Ms Nasir’s parents at gunpoint, searched the house, blindfolded and handcuffed Ms Nasir, and took her away. She was finally released again on Friday.
“I was at her home when she returned in a car with family members,” Dean Sewell told the Church Times this week. “Layan was released by Israeli security forces at a checkpoint near Jenin in the northern West Bank. The first joyful reunion took place there.
“They drove 40 miles from there to Layan’s home, where more family and many friends had gathered to give her a rapturous welcome home. There were blaring car horns along with singing and chanting, creating a joyful atmosphere. She looked so thin, having suffered greatly in prison, but Layan’s smile was infectious, and everyone experienced an explosion of joy and relief.”
The Dean continued: “Typical of Layan’s personality, her primary concern was not for herself but for the prisoners remaining, with whom she had shared a cramped cell, and others held in Damon prison near Haifa.”
Ms Nasir told him on Friday: “The prison is like a cemetery for the living. I left 79 other Palestinian prisoners, some of whom I know well, living in really difficult conditions. Conditions — already bad — are getting worse. Prison authorities are employing practices of starvation and medical neglect. Many prisoners need medical care but they are given no access to essential services. There is so little food and what is given is very bad quality.
“All of the prisoners are desperate that the world knows about all of this and that something will be done to improve conditions. The world must pay attention and must move quickly to act. It is truly unbearable.”
Ms Nasir’s mother, Lulu, told Dean Sewell: “The release of my daughter, Layan, creates a flood of emotions arriving all at once. . . Relief that she is finally coming back into my arms, back into the rhythm of family, home, and familiar voices.
“There is also pride: a deep, quiet pride in her strength, in the way she endured difficult days, and in the love that stayed unbroken. At the same time, moments like this can carry exhaustion and disbelief. After so much worry, the mind struggles to accept that the waiting is over. Happiness can feel overwhelming, almost fragile, because the heart has been tense for so long.
“Most of all, there is a great feeling of love: a powerful parental love. It is the feeling of seeing someone precious return safely and realising how much of your heart lives inside another. Today my heart feels lighter, grateful, and full again as my daughter Layan returns home.”
The day before Ms Nasir’s release, Israeli nationalists marched on “Jerusalem Day”, which commemorates the capture of the city by the Israelis after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in what some Israelis refer to as the “reunification of Jerusalem”.
Dean Sewell said: “Some who celebrate at the Western Wall behave reasonably, but those who enter in the large procession starting at the Damascus Gate typically taunt and assault any Palestinians that they see, and they will attack their shops and homes. They rampage their way through the Old City, chanting things such as ‘Death to Arabs!’ and ‘May your village burn.’”
He continued: “It is a festival of racist hatred. . . There can be no doubt that this is certainly a ‘hate march’, and the fact that Israel allows and enables it every year should be a source of absolute shame for everyone who enthusiastically supports Israel as a beacon of tolerance and progress, or who simply averts their eyes from the reality.
“I know many Israelis who oppose this appalling annual event, but still it goes on, tolerated and encouraged by many and, of course, by the state authorities, including some members of the Knesset, who will be present to give it their seal of approval.”
At the same time, in Gaza, vulnerable people in refugee camps and elsewhere are facing infestations of rats. The Roman Catholic aid agency CAFOD said in a statement: “Families who have already lost their homes, their loved ones, their safety, and their dignity are now fighting a new enemy in the darkness of overcrowded tent camps — rats and parasites.
“Children are waking up screaming in the middle of the night as rodents bite their fingers and toes while they sleep beside piles of garbage and sewage. Mothers clutch what little they have left only to discover rats have chewed through blankets, clothing, and the few treasured possessions they managed to carry through months of displacement.”
The charity said that its medical consultant in Gaza had reported “the total collapse of solid waste management” since 7 October 2023, which had “pushed the Strip into a catastrophic public health disaster. Mountains of uncollected waste and rubble now blanket entire neighbourhoods, creating ideal breeding grounds for insects, rats, and disease.”
It continued: “Flies swarm through tents carrying hepatitis A and severe diarrhoeal diseases. Rats and mice spread deadly infections through bites, urine, saliva, fleas, and droppings. Doctors fear outbreaks of hantavirus, leptospirosis, salmonellosis, ratbite fever, and even plague — illnesses capable of causing respiratory failure, kidney damage, severe gastrointestinal disease, and death.”
A doctor in Gaza told CAFOD: “Our medical teams are treating rodent-related incidents every single day. And summer has not even arrived yet.”