INT’L WOMEN’S DAY-MIDEAST: Violence Takes a Heavy Toll

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ferry Biedermann

JERUSALEM, Mar 8 2004 (IPS) - Menbere Kifle had planned to return to her two teen-age children in Ethiopia. She had worked as an illegal labourer in Israel for ten years, she had saved some money, and acquired a new passport.

Menbere Kifle had planned to return to her two teen-age children in Ethiopia. She had worked as an illegal labourer in Israel for ten years, she had saved some money, and acquired a new passport.

Instead she died in a Palestinian suicide bombing of a bus in the centre of Jerusalem at the end of January this year. Her body was so badly mangled that at first her family were told that no Ethiopians had died in the blast.

Only days later was she identified as the 11th victim of the bombing after her brother Berhanu gave police a blood sample for a DNA test.

The bombings have hit women particularly hard. Israeli statistics make clear that it is the poor and the socially weak who get targeted in attacks on buses.

Menbere had no choice but to use the bus during rush hour to get to her house-cleaning job. Many other victims have been women.

Ruth Montellio, a single mother of two, was unable to raise them on their cell-phones. “Liz is not answering the phone,” she wailed while trying to get through the police barrier. Later she heard that her son Lior had been lightly wounded but that Liz was in serious condition in hospital and was being operated on.

Israeli women also participate in the violence. Many serve in the army and are therefore involved in some of the abuses. And, they are targeted by Palestinians in turn. Last year two women soldiers were killed in an attack on a settlement in Gaza.

Israeli women have suffered from the economic downturn that the violence has brought, but Israel has a strong social benefits system.

Nevertheless, last year saw a high profile protest by single Israeli mothers against sharp cuts in their benefits. They camped out for weeks in front of the finance ministry in Jerusalem and established themselves as something of a political force to be reckoned with.

On the Palestinian side relatively fewer women have been directly victims of violence. Few women joined the demonstrations that marked the beginning of the Intifadah. They do not take part in gun fights with Israeli soldiers, and they are still only a small minority of the suicide bombers.

But more Palestinian militant groups have lately started using women as bombers. Hamas used a woman on a suicide mission for the first time this January. Reem Rayishi, a 22-year old mother of two blew herself up at the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel, killing four border guards.

Hamas which had for long called the use of women as bombers ‘un-Islamic’ was heavily criticised within Palestinian society for using a young mother to carry out an attack. The group may have used Rayishi because women are thought to attract less scrutiny form soldiers on the lookout for attackers. Islamic Jihad, another fundamentalist militant group, had started using women suicide bombers a year ago. Until then only the secular Al Aqsa Martyrs brigades associated with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement had recruited women for such missions.

The economic breakdown in the Palestinian areas as a result of Israeli measures has put a heavy burden on Palestinian women. They bear the responsibility for putting food on the table at a time when many of their husbands are unemployed or, in some cases, in jail.

While the humanitarian situation is dire and malnutrition is on the increase, no cases of starvation have been reported thus far. This is partly because of food aid and partly because of strong solidarity among families.

Many Palestinian children have been killed in the violence, either during demonstrations, or because they were caught in crossfire, or while simply playing in the street.

Abir Al-Masri from Nablus lost two of her sons within the space of a week this January. On a chilly Saturday morning, 15-year old Amjad was killed by an Israeli bullet while playing on a roof near his home. Abir saw him being shot. The Israeli army says there were clashes in the area but eyewitnesses deny that.

A week later her 17-year old son Iyad blew himself up in a botched suicide bombing. Abir blames the Israelis, but also Islamic Jihad for sending Iyad to his death even though he was “in a state of shock” after his brother’s death. And every time children suffer, women suffer more.