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Interview with a Palestinian woman who joined the Strike (Can
you tell us something about how women in Palestine are managing, with the
troops and settlements occupying their land?)
When the troops demolish your house, it is such a pain to see the place bombed, everything you had all your life all in little pieces. Then you have to go live with other people, who take you in. It is hard enough surviving on your own, let alone having a new family to eat, sleep, do everything together, sharing rooms. But people don't think about saying no, there is no other option. People eat vegetarian food. They're clever, making something out of nothing, getting something from the land. In towns it is a bigger problem than in the villages. In a siege situation when no one can move, when it is such a big risk to travel, you can forget about delivering something to your family in town, even walking. But what food they get, women share it up and down the street. I heard that in the first Intifada, if one house in a whole street has a bottle of olive oil -- which we need, for our cooking -- the bottle will go all the way up and down the street with everyone taking a little bit until it goes back to the first house. If one woman has flour at her house, she makes bread and gives it to everyone else. We try to keep back a little something for emergencies. But this is a long emergency here. Everybody looks out for each other. Women keep everything going by being very economical, very ecological, very clever in providing food and clothing and support, by demonstrating, by trying to protect their kids from being arrested. If one Palestinian is working you can be sure he is supporting a few families. Most people are unemployed. A lot of women used to work as cleaners in Israeli homes. They didn't do childcare, just cleaning. Now they cannot get there. My Jewish friend's mother says she passes on second-hand clothing to her cleaner, to try to help. My friend tells her mother, "But where you're living, that used to be your cleaner's home!" Here, I buy second-hand clothes so I can send a contribution to Palestine through the charities. In the refugee camps within occupied Palestine and in neighbouring countries there are hundreds of thousands of orphans. Yet there are no street children. Even a mother who has many children of her own will take in the children if a neighbour or friend is killed, and look after them as her own. Others in the community will help to feed and support them. Schools are more often closed than open. If a mother is able, she will teach her own children. If not, a neighbour or friend will do it. Or children will be taught together. When it is very cold in a classroom or when they are hungry or exhausted, children can't concentrate. In the refugee camps it is freezing, the ground is frozen, but people are barefoot, looking in other people's rubbish they might find one shoe. Yet Palestinian people value education highly. It is still one of the best educated countries in the world. No one, man or woman, is illiterate. My mother, my grandmother, can all read and write. (How
old are your cousin's children?
Girls or boys?)
(Are
girls involved in reacting to this as well as boys?)
Because of the rapes, girls became more scared. She knows what is going to happen to her. Especially if she is covered [wearing a head scarf] or dressed religiously, they will do the worst, because they know this is a weak point for her. But it didn't stop women from fighting and going to prison. Women do their own role. They are helping anyway by keeping resistance going, and by their support. The young boy who explodes himself, he has a mother, sisters, maybe a lover. They know. They can't say "No, don't do it". They are even proud of him. And he knows they are not only sad, they are proud of him. Girls are also tortured in other ways, beaten with electric flexes, much more. If a lady is pregnant when she is arrested, they try to make her miscarry by jumping on her stomach. And boys -- when they are arrested, sometimes their mother really cannot recognise them, because of the torture. He is so changed, that she thinks "this is not my son". Sometimes a mother will see her arrested daughter or son in a few days, sometimes it is months, sometimes never. And many of the young people are mentally ill after that. Women try to prevent the arrests. They physically stand between their children and the soldiers, and if it is not the woman's own child she will still say, "Leave my kid alone." Sometime it works, an older woman pleading, shouting, screaming, even attacking the soldiers, pushing them away, trying to protect these little kids. Sometimes it doesn't. One of the girls was a doctor. I heard from her colleague that when she was on trial and she told the Israeli judge how she had been tortured and raped, the judge said it was unbelievable, it was too much, it must be her imagination. She said that was what they wanted people to think -- because it is so much, nobody will believe it. But her lawyer, an Israeli woman who supports Palestine, believed her and backed her up. There is plenty of support from Israeli women for Palestinian women -- they know, they have hearts, they still have their humanity. There is an organisation of mothers whose children have been killed, and for what? Occupying land which is not theirs! And there was a teacher who refused to serve in the occupied territories -- he said his job was to care for children, how could he go and kill them? He was jailed. Many in Israel think the same but they are frightened to speak out. Palestinian society has always been very tolerant towards different religions, we think a person's religion is something personal. The ones who make it an issue are the ones who can get something out of it. Neighbours who were Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Durzi and other religions used to celebrate together all the different religious festivals. There are Jewish Palestinians. Most left with us, but some chose to stay and live in Israel, where they are treated like 4th class citizens and have to twist their tongues to speak Hebrew and not Arabic. In Palestinian society, Muslim and Jewish people often married each other. People would just think, they fell in love -- it was a very open society. Now people are taking sides, but still, especially if Jewish people are working together on an issue, are on the same side, they do marry. A Palestinian Muslim woman who marries a non-Zionist Jewish man would not be seen as disloyal, he would be more welcome, as a human being who stands for something right. We didn't used to have religious people like now. This religious movement is very new in our society, since the last Intifada, around 1987. It is known to be supported by Israel and Iran; Israel uses it to provoke a reaction from the Jewish religious side. Palestinians have started to think of it as a religious war -- if the other side uses religion to fight, we can too. You have to use whatever power you have. And Iran is one of our supporters, when you need support you have to accept their conditions, and be religious, or at least, cover. Within the religious organisations, women have had to go back to the second line, just like in the Jewish religious organisations -- war is a man's issue in all religions. (How
did you come to leave Palestine? Was
it because of the troubles or was it your personal situation?)
(What
did you find difficult about coming to England?)
(Are
there strikes in Palestine?)
(What
do you think about the Global Women's Strike?)
An
Iraqi woman in Britain says: A Pakistani woman living in
Britain says: A
Jewish woman speaks out against the Israeli state |