Hadeel Rizq-Qazzaz
Posted on | March 3, 2009 | No Comments
Program Coordinator for Heinrich Böll Foundation
The people in Gaza are human beings with families. They love, they hate, they want to get married, they want to go to hospitals, and they want food. You can’t ignore them, they are humans.
The international community thinks it’s boycotting Hamas—they’re boycotting 1.5 million human beings, more than 60 percent of them children below 18 years of age. It’s collective punishment in all senses, by all definitions.
Through the Women Affairs Center in Gaza, we looked at the conditions for women from the time of Israel’s unilateral disengagement to the Hamas takeover in June 2007. In three years, we could see all hopes of the people shattered, and women take this burden on their shoulders—poverty, violence in their community and homes, lack of access to public spaces.
You have family in Gaza now?
Yes. After my husband completed his studies in England, he became a professor at Bir Zeit University. For my mother, it was the worst news, because we also had a job offer in Canada. She cried for days, saying “I wish you’d go to Canada.” Ramallah is 80 kilometers from Gaza but for my mother, it’s easier to visit me in Canada. I haven’t seen her for more than one and a half years. I’m lucky I work for a foreign developmental agency, sometimes I get permits.
My brother works for the security forces and was asked to accompany trucks entering Gaza as a guard. He was attacked by Hamas and shot. I came home from work, turned on the TV and saw my brother, injured, being carried to an ambulance. I kept calling family, everyone, but the mobile network was busy. I couldn’t go see him, it was impossible—and easier to get news from Al-Jazeera TV than by phone.
What can the average international citizen do for Gaza?
First of all, call for lifting the boycott because you can’t boycott terrorism by boycotting innocent people. You create more terrorists by boycotting innocent people. Calling off the boycott needs to be the first step towards ending the occupation.
It’s always possible to have two states living together but the way the situation is going right now, this possibility is becoming increasingly fragile. A solution might not be possible in five or ten years. There’s an urgent need for a just resolution now.
Do you have compassion for the Israelis who also think this is their homeland?
I understand. Of course there are generations my age who also were born in this country even if their parents or grandparents came from abroad. I understand the logic of it. Still, it’s not possible to live in this asymmetric situation where they know that their neighbor is in such a deprived situation.
What do you fear the most?
Palestinians fighting other Palestinians is really frightening. For the first time in our history, a brother kills his brother or his uncle or his relative. He’s asked to do this to obey his leader and the political authority without thinking, without using his mind.
Some Israelis say they built a modern nation and the Palestinians should just pick themselves up. What do you say?
I say Palestinians built this state. Cheap labor from the Gaza Strip helped build Israel. It’s not a linear situation. Their prosperity was built on the despair of people who lived in camps, who left schools and went as early as 16 years to live as unskilled labor in Israel. The annexation of the Palestinian economy is a major problem. There was systematic de-development for our communities. This is very hard to restructure and reconstruct.
With so much damage to the economy and the society it’s not possible to just pick up the pieces and go. A healing process needs to take place, and we are not given this chance with the closure of borders, control of exports and imports, control of every movement between Palestinian cities. We’re not free.
Yet, the Palestinian people always surprise the world, and show their worth. In the first intifada there was almost no hope and a popular movement started. This will come. I have no doubt whatsoever.
What would you like to say to the women of the world?
We have similar problems of different intensities, and we need their support. In return, we are all in solidarity so whenever we know that women in any other place in the world are disadvantaged, we are always there to support them as well.
Rizq-Qazzaz, a researcher and specialist in education, gender, and development, now lives in Ramallah. She was born in Al Shati refugee camp and her extended family still lives in Gaza. Rizq-Qazzaz received her PhD from the University of Leeds. She is program coordinator with the Heinrich Böll Foundation–Arab Middle East Office, which is associated with Germany’s Green Party and has projects in Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt.
