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Khaled Al-Azza (right) is the oldest son of Shifa Al-Azza.  His first imprisonment, at age 16, lasted 27 days, during which he was not charged.  After a second arrest at age 17, he spent 15 months in prison for protesting against the building of the separation wall around Aida Camp.  Today, he is studying social work at Bethlehem University.  Now 22, he helps his parents in their store and works occasionally as a waiter at a nearby hotel restaurant.

Khaled Al-Azraq, 43, has spent more than half of his life in prison.  He wrote in a recent edition of the journal Al-Majdal, “It was at a very early age that I began to understand the occupation.  Some of my first interactions with the occupation involved hearing conversations in my family, for example about how my older brother was not allowed to enter Jordan because of his ‘security file’ with the occupation.  I learned the meaning of occupation in the all-too-frequent days of curfew imposed on our refugee camp…Little by little I learned the meaning of Palestine through the stories narrated by my father and grandmother about the Nakba and the difficult early years of exile and refuge.  I fell in love with Palestine through the stories of ‘el-blad,’ memories of the times before the Nakba, or ‘real life’ as my grandmother used to call it.”  Khaled was first imprisoned in 1982 at age 16.  His current imprisonment began in 1991, after he was accused of being a leader of a political division that had clashed with the Israeli army.  During the second Intifada, he endured more than two years without any family visits because Israel was not issuing permits for such visits, but now his parents and sisters are able to see him with some regularity.

Khawla Al-Azraq leads a women’s organization in Bethlehem and teaches social work at Bethlehem University.  The sister of Khaled and Nidal Al-Azraq, she grew up in Aida Refugee Camp in tight quarters.  In 1982, she was sentenced to three years in prison and faced the demolition of her family’s home because she threw a Molotov cocktail at a settler bus passing through Bethlehem.  After her release, she completed college and married the man with whom she had been protesting.  Today, they have four children.  Khawla, who is in her forties, is an important feminist leader in Bethlehem.

Mohammad Al-Azraq grew up in Aida Refugee Camp, the son of a construction worker and the fifth of seven children.  He left high school after his older brother was arrested during an Intifada protest at the age of 17.  His brother was sentenced to 6 years.  The next time they met, it was in prison.  Muhammad, then 20, had himself been sentenced to 17 months in prison for protesting against the separation barrier around Aida Camp.  He finished his high school exams in Ofer prison. After his release, Mohammad began college classes, but he has not been able to continue because of financial constraints. Now 23, he serves as the activities director at Lajee Center.  He has been learning English and saving money to return to college.

Nidal Al-Azraq is the youngest sibling of Khaled and Khawla Al-Azraq.  He had already been working summers in construction for years when he left his academic school for a technical one at age 16 so he could work more and help his family through a difficult period.  During the second Intifada, Israel’s closure policies and an injury from Israeli gunfire prohibited him from working as an electrician.  He focused his energies on Lajee Center, where he was the director of activities for several years.  Now in his early 30s, he lives in the United States, where he is working on his college degree.  He continues to work with Lajee whenever he comes to Palestine.

Nidal Al-Azza, who is in his early 40s, is a lawyer with a refugee rights organization in Bethlehem.  His first imprisonment was at age 14.  As a result of having been in prison, he was prohibited from attending a government high school, so his family mustered funds to send him to a private school.  In 2000, he helped to establish Lajee Center, a youth organization that provides extracurricular activities for the children of Aida Refugee Camp.  He has written poetry and songs, and he wrote the youth play performed in Degrees of Incarceration.  He finished college in the West Bank in 2004, and went on to earn a Masters in Law at Columbia University in 2006.  He has four children.

Shifa Al-Azza, or Um Khaled, is mother to five boys and two girls, and a grandmother of four.  She works with her husband in a small shop near her home and sells Palestinian embroidery. Not only has she acted in Lajee Center’s plays like the one featured in Degrees of Incarceration, but she is also the beloved chef for Lajee Center’s annual International Summer Work Camp.