Group birthday celebration of children born using smuggled sperm

Palestinian prisoners are denied conjugal visits by the Israeli Prison Service, and so Palestinian women found a new way of becoming pregnant.

Back in 2012, Dalal al-Zebn gave birth to Mohamed al-TaherMohamed al-Taher, after what is believed to be the successful artificial insemination of its kind. Her husband, Ammar al-Zebn, has been behind Israeli bars since 1998, but his sperm was carefully smuggled out of prison.

Since then, some 24 wives of jailed Palestinians have used smuggled sperm to conceive children, four of whom live in the Gaza Strip and the rest of whom are from the West Bank.

Images below of a mass birthday party held in Gaza for these children on Thursday.

Also read: Jessica Purkiss: With their husbands behind bars, Palestinian women find new ways of becoming pregnant

Images by MEMO Photographer Mohammed Asad.