SWEDISH CHILDREN FOR SALE IN "PALESTINE"

Swedish Children for Sale in "Palestine" (LittleGreenFootballs)
Five Swedish children were kidnapped from their Swedish mother by their Palestinian father and taken to Gaza, because, according to the father, he wanted them brought up according to a strict Islamic code. Then he said he would release the children if the mother paid ransom. It’s not clear how he reconciles the ransom demand with the “strict Islamic code” bit. The Swedish Foreign Office claims they can’t do anything to help these children, because they have “dual nationality” in two countries—their native Sweden, and an imaginary country called “Palestine:”

Swedish Children for Sale in “Palestine”.
The welfare - perhaps even the lives - of five Swedish children is being sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Swedish mother Elizabeth Krantz’s five children were kidnapped from Sweden back in June 2004 by her estranged Palestinian husband Ismail Nowajah. The children - Adam, Amina, Zakarias, Miriam and Sara - range in age from six to sixteen. They were taken to the Gaza Strip against their will and in contravention of Swedish law, and have since been incarcerated in separate locations. Their mother, from a small town outside Gothenburg on Sweden’s west coast, has official custody of the children, with visitation rights granted to her estranged husband.

Ismail Nowajah says he disapproves of the upbringing the children were getting in Sweden, where they were born, and that he wishes to bring them up according to a stricter Islamic code, which he says cannot be done in Sweden but is possible in Gaza. However, he has signaled that he is willing to release the children back into the custody of their mother against a payment of five million Swedish kronor (about 720,000 US dollars).

The children are Swedes. They are unfamiliar with Arab culture and have no knowledge of the Arabic language. They are thus unable to communicate with the surroundings into which they have been forcibly thrust. They are being denied schooling, and 15-year-old Miriam suffers from an unusual form of diabetes - type 1 - that requires special medication, treatment that has thus far been denied her by her father.

Commenting on the case, the Swedish Foreign Office noted that the situation is highly sensitive since the children have dual nationality - Swedish and Palestinian - and that according to Palestinian law, the children are the wards of their father.

This is a remarkable point of view on several accounts. Firstly, because Swedish law applies to Swedish citizens, the more so since they were kidnapped from Sweden. No other legislation is relevant until the children have been returned home. The father is in breach of Swedish law, for a crime committed in Sweden.

The second consideration is the illogic of the Foreign Office’s standpoint: the children do not - and in point of law can not - have dual nationality. There is no country called Palestine. While the emergence of such a country may well be a highly desirable goal for reasons of geopolitical interest, Palestine does not today exist. The children therefore do not have dual nationality, and Sweden accordingly need take no such consideration into account.