A number of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem have traveled to the Gaza-Israel border each day since Ramadan began last Wednesday, to break their daily Ramadan fast with legislators who have been threatened with deportation by the Israeli government.The Ramadan fast, which begins at sunrise and ends at sundown each day during the Muslim holy month and includes abstention from both food and water during that time, is especially difficult when it falls in the summer months, as it does this year. The heat of the desert sun in the Negev desert is exacerbated by the fact that the exiled legislators are fasting in an exposed border area with no shelter.
The legislators are currently living in a tent supplied by the Red Cross, where they have been for the past 43 days, after Israel began enforcement of a new regulation designed to deport to Gaza Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and Israel – even if they have been residents of Israel for their entire lives.
Anyone who was born in Gaza is now subject to deportation by Israeli authorities, including Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank.
