My friend was banned from travelling to visit his dying mother. This is the personal, intimate price of occupation

After three excruciating months, my colleague’s mother died on Christmas Eve in a hospital in East Jerusalem – without her son

On Christmas Eve I received the distressing news that the mother of my friend and colleague, Laith Abu Zeyad, passed away after a short but bitter battle with cancer. She had suffered for three excruciating months between the diagnosis and her laying to rest. She died in the Augusta Victoria hospital in occupied East Jerusalem. Her eldest son, my colleague, was not able to spend the last days with her because of a travel ban Israel has imposed on him after his involvement in human rights work.

On Christmas Day, I set off to Bethany (al-Aziriya), east of Jerusalem, where Laith and his family live, to pay my respects. I left my house in Ramallah at 9:30am to drop my family with my parents-in-law to make it in time for 10am when the Biet El checkpoint opens for traffic going out of Ramallah. On the way we passed the Israeli military headquarters of the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) and the adjacent settlement, and drove aside the concrete wall full of graffiti and dotted with surveillance cameras.

I arrived at the checkpoint just before it opened. A group of soldiers standing stared at the queue of cars building up; one looked at his watch, so I looked at mine - still two minutes to go. Just a few seconds after 10am he opens the gate. The soldiers climb back into their Jeep and leave, and cars start pouring out of Ramallah.

On the way I called my friend, the writer Ahmed Masoud, to give my season greetings and pass the time. He is in Gaza for the holidays visiting from the UK with his two kids for the first time in six years. We joked about me visiting him for a dish of Gazan seafood the next day - an impossible trip that should only be an hour’s car drive. The mood became sombre as we started talking about their trip back. Despite completing all the necessary bureaucratic procedures to leave the blockaded Gaza Strip, he is worried - with good reason - that he will not be able to cross on time for his kids to be back in school, if at all.

The drive to Bethany passes by more settlements, walls, and barbed fences that, among other things, segregate and enforce control. The eeriest part is the section connecting Anata to Bethany: a segregated highway where at one part Palestinian cars pass under Israeli traffic. Some have called it an "apartheid road".

The whole way I felt less like a driver in control of a vehicle and more like I was being led by the Israeli military from one destination to another through this carefully constructed area. At the entrance to Bethany, three big signs in red warn Israelis that they are entering Palestinian areas, and that it is dangerous to do so.

I arrived at Laith’s home, where family and friends had gathered to express condolences and give support. We moved to a hall downtown where the wake took place. I finally spoke to Laith for the first time in three weeks. We had exchanged messages, and I knew how difficult the recent period had been for his mother and the family, but the last few days had been devastating.

Holding back a volcano of emotions, Laith told me how his mum had to be moved from her home to hospital several times. Each time she was forced to wait for the hospital to coordinate her entry with the Israeli military through checkpoints. An ambulance would pick her up from her home and take her to the checkpoint where she would be transferred to another ambulance to complete the journey at the other side.

She had to do this every time she needed to go to hospital. All the while, she and Laith were prevented from being together. Whenever she crossed the checkpoint to Jerusalem, Laith had to go back home and wait for the sad news as it piled up. As he spoke, I thought of Miral, a 10-year-old girl from Gaza suffering from leukaemia who is one of several children Israel has forced to travel without their parents for treatment in the West Bank. But I did not bring up the story with Laith.

At the hall, people came and went. Many friends and colleagues from Palestinian civil society paid their respects, and our conversations turned to recent news and developments. I spoke with one lawyer about the re-arrest of writer Ahmad Qatamesh the night before; he had spent more than 10 years in administrative detention and was called a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

A researcher overheard us speaking and asked about the evidence of torture by Israeli forces against Palestinian detainees, which the human rights organisation Addameer recently published, and shared some of the stories he had heard. When my former colleagues from the Al Quds University’s Human Rights Clinic arrived, the conversation moved to the recent announcement by the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. There is worry that the court will decide it does not have jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territories. One professor of law explained that, even if an investigation is launched, it will take a very long time. Yet there is a dire need for hope, he concluded - even a small hope, for a short while.

I took another route home, this time through the Qalandia checkpoint. The way is shorter, but it was a stupid move; traffic that plagues the highway. I was stuck for some time, and spent those hours listening to the news. When I arrived home my partner told me about the family drama during the Christmas Day lunch I missed. Instead of relief, I felt a heavy burden. For families like ours, even in the most personal and intimate stuff of life, Israel stands concretely in the middle. It goes very deep, and it is very personal. It simply dominates all life.

Saleh Hijazi is deputy regional director for Amnesty Middle East and North Africa