Amal Elsana Alh’jooj
Posted on | November 7, 2008 | No Comments
Bedouin spokeswoman and Founder-Director of AJEEC
Now they are teaching adults how to listen. As a shepherd, I listened to everything and developed my senses from the air, earth, moon, and stars. Even though I was often without shoes and it was cold, I still want to send my kids to the field with three sheep and one cow and say, “This is the best school in your life.”
As an organizer, I have the ability to communicate in the local speech of the women. When working with women in a group, whatever their background or experiences, I have the ability to talk to them in a way that they will understand. I think that it is comes from my background as a shepherd.
When did you become a shepherd?
I was five. It was tough to wake at 5:30, go out to the field with 50 sheep, three cows and a donkey, come back at 7:45, dress myself, and run three kilometers to school. My village in the Bedouin community had no electricity, no infrastructure, nothing. Coming back from the school, I know that there would be no time to do my homework at our house, so I used to sit underneath the tree on the way to home and finish it.
Sometimes troubles are opportunities. In nature, the sky is the limit. My imagination painted my future as a great leader. The first book I read, as a ten-year-old, I found on a rainy day when I went to the valley to find shelter. The water was streaming past with a book floating on top about Nelson Mandela. It was my window to the world. I imagined myself like Mandela, fighting for my people. I played with the sheep that I am a leader. I would see ants in a line and try to change their direction. This was my game, to change the direction of sheep and other things.
Even though I was his fifth girl, my father’s eyes said, “Go forward. You are strong and you are my daughter.” I want to be a citizen who changes the whole atmosphere in Israel.
How did you gain higher education?
I got admitted to Ben Gurion University but was refused for campus housing. I talked to the University and the administrators said, “No way, your parents’ house is close enough for you to commute.” The distance was 17 kilometers. I went to a dean and told him, “I have a solution. On the campus, there are lots of lights, enough to allow me to study. I am going to bring a tent and live on the campus grounds.” He looked at me and asked, “Would you really do that?” I said, “Yes, and also I will bring with me the media, because a tent on the campus is something very newsworthy.” The next day, the head of the Department of Social Work called me and offered me a room.
What work do you do with AJEEC? How did you come to establish this organization?
There is very little equality between the Arab minority and the Jewish majority. The gaps are huge when you are looking at budget locations, infrastructure, policymaking and decision-making in general. To bring this kind of equality and to get into the equality basis, we have to empower the disadvantaged communities. AJEEC’s mission is to accomplish this by getting the Arab and Jewish people to cooperate on an equal platform.
I established AJEEC in 2000, after the second intifada erupted. My philosophy is that as a minority, you have the responsibility to act and not to be passive. It’s easy to say, “I am a victim.” It’s easy to say, “I am miserable.” It is easy to say, “I’m a minority, and I can’t do anything.” It is very easy because then nobody will expect you to do something
How many Bedouin are there in Israel now?
Today, there are around 170,000 Bedouin in the Negev. Half of them live in the recognized villages and half in the unrecognized villages.
In 1962, Israel attempted to deal with the Arab population in the Negev by offering us the 80/20 deal: give up 80 percent of your land, and keep 20 percent for your houses. Apart from that, they wanted to break up the historic villages and limit us to the 7 townships that they had built in the Negev.
People who moved into the 7 townships built by the government are legally recognized as inhabitants. The people who rejected the plan and decided to stay in their natural villages, the government refuses to give them water, electricity, roads, or infrastructure. They are the ones living in the unrecognized villages.
You want to change the atmosphere towards Bedouins?
Many Jews pass through our villages and don’t even see them, we are invisible. The gaps in equality are huge in budget allocations, infrastructure, policy-making, and decision-making.
We are Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian, and we will be in Israel forever. You want the Bedouin to be strong, or do you want a community where only negatives exist? Cooperation is not a matter of choice, we must have equality between the two people and mutual understanding where each can fulfill his potential. The people are more willing than the government, which has stupid policies. I think the ministries are not aware because most are men, and women see things in different ways.
You have a strong belief in women’s power.
I am proud and glad that that I was born a woman. Sometimes, I look at my brothers and feel sad because they don’t have the holistic approach to see the bigger processes. Not only am I a strong person, my sisters very strong as well because my father recognized that women were strong because his mother was strong.
But, I also believe that social change only happens when you work with the whole community. If you work with the women and leave the men behind, then you will create a conflict between the two. You also create a conflict if you only choose to work with the younger generation and leave the older generation behind. You have to work together with all the groups. You don’t ask whether each group active in this process is equal, because we are not equal, even among women. Because there are differences in how we react to these processes, we end up stronger.
Do you believe in destiny?
I think it is not by accident I was the fifth girl before my five brothers were born, and that Amal means “hope” in Arabic and “work” in Hebrew. Hope and work. We have a purpose in life, you are not here just to be here.
The Bedouin society is a very patriarchal, but there is a change in the field. I tell young women, you can choose to be a victim of this process or a designer of this process. If you want to be a designer, you have to be active. I also tell women to keep asking questions, always ask questions, and take nothing for granted.
Do you think that the inequality between the Arab and Jewish communities will ever end?
There is no other choice. History shows us that if an oppressed minority continues to be oppressed, the future will turn to violence. If we don’t act now, there will be no future, not for the Arab minority or for the Jewish majority. That’s why we need change.
Alh’jooj, raised as a shepherd girl in the Negev desert, was teaching Bedouin women literacy by her teens, gained a masters degree in community development in Canada, and now directs AJEEC-The Arab Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment, and Cooperation. The Arab-Bedouin minority of 170,000 people is concentrated in the Negev. Alh’jooj was 2007 recipient of the Circles of Change Award from Seeking Common Ground.
