In ash-Sheikh neighborhood near the Old City of al-Khalil doyen of al-Khalil prisoners Mohamed Nabil al-Arqan who was jailed for resisting the occupation was born about 58 years ago in a humble house. His neighborhood has been known since 1936 as being a cradle of famed Palestinian revolutionaries and heroes.
The first seed of the Palestinian revolution against colonization in this neighborhood was sowed by Abdul-Halim al-Julani one of the prominent leaders of the Palestinian revolution against the Zio-British occupation forces in al-Khalil in the 1930s and later his fellow revolutionary Abu Mansour As’eid followed in his footsteps and engaged in several heroic fights against the Zionist forces before he was killed in 1970.
Arqan was kidnapped from his home on February 24 1995 after dozens of Israeli soldiers aboard military vehicles stormed the neighborhood and ransacked his house in search for weapons.
After long days of courageous steadfastness in the face of humiliation torture and interrogation an Israeli military court sentenced him to life in prison.
After the Israeli occupation authority realized that Arqan was showing no regret for the operations he had carried out against Israeli soldiers and settlers and that the life imprisonment would not deter him it decided to punish him by depriving him of seeing his wife and children.
His wife Umm Faisal complained to the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) about preventing her and her children from visiting her husband in jail.
“The occupation wants us to bow through depriving us of visiting my husband” Umm Faisal said.
“The occupation has willfully tortured my family by denying it prison visits. I was banned from visiting him for years before I was given a permit through the Red Cross (a security permit allowing relatives to visit prisoners every six months).
However her joy did not last long after Israeli jailers revoked her visit permit several months later.
Umm Faisal also accused the Israeli prison service of medically neglecting her husband despite his suffering from serious health problems including a liver disease which he contracted in captivity.
“The tumor found in his liver which is called hemangioma causes him severe pain and persistent agony in addition to his suffering from a chronic headache and blood in urine” she said.
