Badia Khalaf
Posted on | December 1, 2008 | No Comments
Chair of Annahda Women’s Association
The best thing in life is love. Without love we cannot live. As Christians, we want only peace. This is our Christianity. We can love each other, we can live with each other. It’s not hard for us to live with Jewish people, Israeli people.
You want to live the Golden Rule?
I hope to live with each other, and that we have our independent state beside the Israelis with peace for our sons and grandchildren.
What happens without love? Do you shrivel up and die?
No, but I don’t want to live without love. Love each other, our sons, our country, the people, Palestine. I love Ramallah. I’ve been to many places but Palestine is my country, and everyone loves their country. We hope peace comes and an independent state with Jerusalem as our capital. That’s our aim in life, nothing more.
I lived in bandit times in Jordan and, now with the occupation, I have lived hard times all my life. For my sons, for the Israelis’ sons, and for the people of Palestine, it’s hard.
You’ve never lost hope?
Never. I always have hope in everything.
Tell me about your family.
We’re from the original people of Ramallah. We moved from Jordan over 500 years ago to this area. My aunt established this association for children with special needs and hearing difficulties in 1925. My cousin, Kareem Khalaf, was the mayor of Ramallah. They bombed his car and his feet were cut off.
Who bombed his car?
It is the occupation. The Israelis, because he was political, the mayor. At that time, we were very angry because of the situation.
Can you forgive?
God tells us to forgive, Christianity tells us to forgive. It is war, it is an occupation so from time to time these terrible things happens.
What is the power of women?
Women can do more than men. I’ve been with the association since 1962 when we rented two rooms only. Now we own this center and the land around it, and a center for mentally retarded children, and we built another building that we rent so we can gain money from renting this house. We women did all this in the hard times of Palestine.
We have two Centers now, one providing medical aid and speech therapy to the hearing and speech impaired and the other providing rehabilitation for mentally retarded children. We have a shop where the children work with wood, and also a library with numerous educational toys.
It’s great to empower a child with treatment for their hearing and speech disabilities. For instance, a 10-year-old girl needed an operation. She was deaf and couldn’t speak. Now she can speak and goes to regular school and is first in her class.
If you love everyone, do you also love the soldiers at the checkpoints?
They are human beings, and we hope that they will feel for us someday and realize that we are living in a bad situation. The checkpoints are making our lives miserable.
Recently, our restaurant was hosting an engagement party in the afternoon. The fiancé was kept waiting at the checkpoint. He arrived to the restaurant three hours late for his engagement party. There must be an end to these hard times for us.
If you could speak with an Israeli woman right now, what would you say to her?
I’d tell her that we want to live, as she’d want to live. We need our rights in living, our rights for land, our rights for mobility, our rights to live in peace with each other.
Khalaf has worked on a volunteer basis for 45 years for Annahda Women’s Association, a Christian-based institution founded in 1925 for Arab women’s needs—now serving adults and children with mental disabilities and children with hearing and speech impairments. Khalaf, raised in Jordan and widowed at age 24, returned with her children to her ancestral home of Ramallah, which before 1948 had been predominantly Christian.
