Yifat and members of Midwives for Peace. Photo: Jessica Alderman.After crossing multiple
checkpoints and Israel’s more than 25-foot high separation wall, we
gathered up on Aisha’s rooftop, where she’d planned a barbecue for our
families to share. Our boys made fast friends, quickly overcoming the
language barrier between them as they bonded over playing with Legos. We
loaded up plates, enjoyed the open air, and talked about our lives and
our work. All around us, we heard the noises of Palestinian families in
the West Bank going about their days.
This
is a scene that occupation tells us should be impossible: Yifat, an
Israeli woman, and Aisha, a Palestinian woman, cooking and laughing
together while we watch our children play. Through 50 years of
occupation, wars have been fought, walls built and separation policies
enacted that make our friendship an unlikely one.
Aisha
was a toddler in 1967, just learning her first words when the Israeli
military occupied Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and East
Jerusalem. When war broke out, her family took shelter in a cave,
huddling for some 10 days with little to eat or drink. Less than a
hundred miles away, Yifat was only a few weeks old, her parents’ first
baby, when her father left to join the war.
When
the fighting subsided, and Aisha’s family emerged from their shelter,
they found half their village empty, because so many families were
forced to flee. In Yifat’s home, her parents imagined that by the time
of her first smile, the land that Israel had conquered would be
returned. In those early days, Israelis were told by their government
that the occupation was temporary.
But 50
years on, the occupation continues, and it’s hard for
most people to imagine how things could change. Gaza, once economically
self-sufficient, is now an open-air prison, with 2 million people
struggling to survive, denied their rights to water, medical care and
other basics. In the West Bank, where Aisha lives, a network of Israeli
settlements and checkpoints encircle people’s lives, separating
communities. They block people from getting to work and school,
and even keep women in labour from reaching clinics or hospitals.
As the occupation has dragged on, our resistance to it has shaped the course of our lives.
Meanwhile,
we’ve grown up from girls into women, defined ourselves, built
friendships and raised families. As the occupation has dragged on, our
resistance to it has shaped the course of our lives.
Aisha
became a midwife to shepherd the next generation of babies into this
world in health and safety. She helps pregnant women and new mothers
trapped by roadblocks and “settler-only” roads to access healthcare for
themselves and their babies. She coordinates the Midwives
for Peace group that brings together Palestinian and Israeli midwives to
exchange birthing skills, share resources and model what peaceful
co-existence can look like.
Yifat
devoted her life to human rights and, as a young woman, worked as part
of an Israeli-Palestinian peace and solidarity organisation in
Jerusalem. She documented human rights violations in occupied Palestine and
ran campaigns to demand an end to the occupation. As the director of MADRE, she’s spent years supporting women’s organising worldwide,
including the vital work of Midwives for Peace.
Our
work for peace defies the occupation, and our friendship prefigures
another possibility. When politicians and media tell us that we can’t
trust each other, that our friendship can’t scale the wall of separation
that Israel built, we resist. We resist by refusing to be enemies.
We resist by refusing to be enemies.
We
know that our true enemy is the occupation that has shadowed our lives. We’ve seen too many Palestinian children return a
blank stare when asked what they want to be when they grow up. They
can’t fathom a self-determined future with the walls of occupation
closing around them. We’ve heard too many Israeli children told that
they are despised by their Arab neighbours, never being allowed to
question that. This is how adults plant the seeds of fear and sadness
and grow the next generation of occupiers.
What will it take to plant different seeds, to end the occupation and create another future for our children?
We
begin by providing concrete aid to people who need it. That’s what
MADRE and Midwives for Peace do when we support women who provide
prenatal care and attend to the births of women otherwise denied basic health
care.
Fundamentally, we build a different future by demanding an end to the
occupation. We align ourselves with grassroots activists who are
organising peacefully. When Israeli youth refuse military service, or
when Palestinian families and neighbours set up peace encampments in the
West Bank, welcoming Israelis to join them as activists, not occupiers,
they bring to life today a vision of what peace could look like
tomorrow.
We
are Palestinian and Israeli, and we share a common belief that
something better is waiting for us. We see the possibilities hovering
beyond our realities. Sometimes, a glimpse of peace is two
women chatting, cooking and watching their children play.
