Painful Silence On Palestinian Women’s Plight As Israel Wages War On Gaza

As of November 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that around 15,000 people had been killed in the war with Israel and the death toll continues to rise. According to Care International, a global humanitarian agency, a staggering 70 per cent of the people killed in Gaza are women and children. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East is facing a severe lack of funds and facilities as around 250,000 internally-displaced persons are seeking shelter. According to estimates by UN Women, 50,000 women in Gaza are pregnant, and about 5,000 women are scheduled to give birth in December. Needless to say, the current war between Israel and Palestine has disregarded basic humanitarian needs and the rights of innocent civilians.

Despite decades of efforts by world leaders and organisa­tions to broker peace between the two countries, the Israel-Palestine conflict has only grown more violent and destructive. With no end in sight to the war, innocent nationals on both sides are bearing the brunt of it. However, the current loss and destruction faced by Palestinians is incomparable, and the devastation that the war has caused to the psyche and lives of the most vulnerable of its citizens—women, children and the elderly—is irreversible. The impact of the war has been particularly brutal on Palestinian women, who continue their resistance against the settlers, while losing their sons and daughters, among other loved ones.

All wars are gendered since the experiences of violence in a conflict manifest differently for different genders. Historically in wars, domination over women has been equated with asserting dominance over their nation and culture. This subjugation is both physical and mental and involves, in the least, sexual and gender-based violence along with domestic abuse within their communities. Women have targeted needs and require specific assistance and gender rights, which are often seized or unavailable in a war zone, making them more vulnerable to violence and abuse. Moreover, the physical and psychological trauma endured by women during war is silenced or forgotten, and their sacrifices are relegated to mere footnotes. Indeed, it can be argued that the questions and meanings related to women’s rights and peace cannot be separated from each other while analysing situations of conflict.

Being in a war zone robs the civilians of their agency, culture, identity and basic human rights. Palestinians have been subjected to war and armed conflict since their violent displacement and dispossession by the Israeli army in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The majority of Palestinians had to leave their homeland in 1948—an event known as Nakba, or ‘the catastrophe’ in Arabic. Women in Palestine have described the loss of one’s homeland and homes as akin to losing a loved one. Today, life in Palestine involves living in a state constantly at war and having to face unprecedented violence at any given time. The unmatched violence in the current war has displaced millions internally and forced them to seek security within refugee camps.

While it may be assumed that Palestinian women have found a safe place in refugee shelters, it is far from the actual truth. Women are subjected to living in harsh and cramped conditions, and are especially discounted when it comes to reproductive health and hygiene. The continuous bombardment, crumbling supplies of water and electricity, together with decreasing access to food and medicine, have seriously placed the healthcare system in jeopardy.

In multiple accounts, collected by The Washington Post through phone conversations, women have spoken about the miserable health and hygiene facilities in overcrowded refugee camps. The 50,000 pregnant women currently fear that they will no longer have a hospital to give birth, let alone epidurals or pain medication to help them through their labour pain. Some people fear that if they need a caesarean section procedure, their unborn child might not be able to see the light of day. Others are constantly fearful of catching infections before giving birth. Menstrual health, which is seldom discussed while in a war zone, is also ignored for the displaced women and girls in Palestine. The women and girls, who are surviving the war, face the acute challenge of undergoing their menstrual cycles while they brave the imminent threat of displacement and death.

Though UNRWA is distributing sanitary pads, it has been falling short for the growing number of women asylum seekers. Al Jazeera and The Washington Post have reported that women have resorted to taking birth control pills that are available at the camps to stop their menstrual cycles. Women have been worried about the side-effects, but are grateful to have access to the pills, instead of undergoing painful menstruation cycles in ill-equipped and unhygienic conditions.

The refugee camps often have com­mon lavatories, making it difficult to maintain social codes and provide privacy for women. To prevent unwarranted incidents of harassment, UNRWA personnel have separated the grown men from women. However, the overburdened camp spaces with an increasing intake of displaced persons make it challen­ging to maintain social codes. Prolonged stay in refugee camps after forced displacement also makes the women vulnerable to domestic violence and sexual harassment.

The Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC) and Women Studies Centre (WSC) have expounded that like all members of the community, Palestinian women have had to suffer under the despotic Israeli administration, while living within a deeply conservative and patriarchal society, which compounds their suffering. Palestinian society has endured extreme forms of violence, from both internal radical forces as well as from outsiders. The women in Palestine are, therefore, doubly victimised and marginalised. They witness their kin being brutalised and humiliated; their children terrorised; and, their homes destroyed, and yet, their individual experiences as women are equally terrifying since they often have to make a choice between dignity and death.

Despite actively supporting and protesting against the actions of the Israeli forces, Palestinian women have always been subjected to the evils of a repressive patriarchal society. Even if there is an immediate end to the conflict, it would take several years to recover from the destruction that has been unleashed on the civilians in Palestine, and perhaps several generations, to forge recovery from the trauma of war, genocide and forced displacement.

Palestinian poet Maya Abu Al-Hayyat succinctly captures the trauma of a generation of Palestinian women in her poem Elegy for the Desire of Mothers:

As I balance winter’s budget,
sniff a quilt for ammonia,
flip through the six children’s channels
looking for Tom & Jerry per request,
and as I search in my supermarket of a purse
for a stray pad, I’ll remember.

(Views expressed are personal)

Pratiti Roy is a doctoral fellow, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal