Women of Palestine

Women of Palestine: a celebration for International Women’s Day 2012.

Palestinian women from Gaza, the West Bank and Nazareth came together in the North of England for a week-long speaking tour, from March 2nd to March 10th, coinciding with International Women’s Day. The women were welcome guests in Bradford, York, Halifax, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Rochdale and Manchester; one speaker also managed to visit Durham and Newcastle, maximising the impact of the tour.

 The PSC branches which organised the event wanted to celebrate the centrality of women in the Palestinian struggle for justice, a role which dates back to the Nakba when Palestinians began to lose their lands and women had to hold the family together. Women still do that today and also step forward as activists for political and social justice. The women speakers, shown above, exemplified that strand in Palestinian life: they are young but their experience gave them a poised analysis of the issues, coupled with a wealth of personal evidence and striking anecdotes which made their testimony unforgettable.

 The speakers were Kholoud al Ajarma, of Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem a worker in a human rights organisation and volunteer in the Lajee Cultural Centre in Aida; Zayneb al Ashalalfeh from Hebron who works for Life Source, a  campaigning organisation based in Ramallah focusing on the right to water; Sameeha Elwan from Gaza whose blog during Operation Cast Lead was closely followed by many and who is currently taking a postgraduate course in Culture and Difference at Durham University; Kholood Ersheid, a Palestinian citizen of Israel from Nazareth, who works with abused women and is involved in a  local group trying to prevent  house demolitions and support the victims of those demolitions; Maha Rezq,  from Gaza, worked for NGOs in Gaza and currently lives in London studying Gender and Conflict Studies at SOAS. On the final day of the tour, in Manchester, Reem Kelani joined the delegates to lead a singing workshop: the day was, as one person said “a potent mix of politics and music” – because any expression of Palestinian music inevitably is also an assertion of Palestinian identity. 

What can we say about their impact which does them justice? On a personal level, although they had not met each other before the tour, after a very short time they were like sisters. They enjoyed each other’s company so much, laughed a lot and spread their sense of pleasure in life and joy in friendship and solidarity to everyone who met them. They were a treat to be with, as simple as that. 

On a political level, the women’s life experiences are varied but their analysis of the problem consistent. They provided a set of insights into colonisation and repression, each different, yet, taken together all complementary. The refugee experience emerged as a theme because although only Kholoud al Ajarma lives in a refugee camp, the families of all the women had been refugees.  

Memorable moments? We all know the big picture, but it’s the little details which, maybe, linger in the mind. Being invited to listen, with eyes closed, to the witness statements of women whose homes had been demolished: “a house is a memory, not just about walls” and hearing of one traumatised child’s residual fear of the colour yellow, the colour of the bulldozers which wrecked her home. Learning about a speaker’s mother who, when ill, was obliged to crawl through a tunnel to get medical treatment because the Israeli soldiers would not let her pass. Winning books in a writing competition and having to wait two years to come to Britain to get them because the Israelis didn’t allow them into Gaza. Gazan students here in England speaking of the heaven of libraries and bookshops and receiving post through the letterbox - something  never experienced before coming to England. The weekly emergency practice in a refugee camp school to prepare the children for what to do if/when the school came under attack from the Israeli forces stationed nearby. The panic when the attack came and, subsequently, the school blocking up the main entrance and exposed windows in case it happened again.  Mothers using the same water over and over, to wash children and clothes and then finally to flush toilets. Showers strictly timed to the minute and the contrast with the water-indulgence in illegal settlement flower beds. Blogging because the internet has no borders, no soldiers, no apartheid wall. The filtering of aid to Gaza via Israel and the politicisation of aid with all the resultant tensions and problems. The bombing of schools in Gaza and the denial of the basic right to an education. 

This list represents the recollections of a minute or two’s thought and other people who attended would probably say, “And don’t forget ....” 

I suppose that’s a good point on which to end: we will not forget. We will not forget these individual women and the Palestinian people whom they represent. Nor will we forget the dear husband of one of the organising group who graced our events with his presence and who died on March 20th: Abu Bakr Rauf, much loved husband of Kauser Nawaz Rauf, father of Arabiya, comrade and friend to many in the North and tireless campaigner for justice for Palestinians.