Southern California Chronicle

Researcher Studying Role of Women in Gaza Stymied by Israeli Red Tape

By Pat and Samir Twair

Elham Bayour is one of the latest victims of Israel’s abysmal treatment of the Palestinians. The graduate student wasn’t shot or injured by Israeli soldiers or settlers, but she was prevented from entering Gaza in November and December to gather information for a research project on women of the Palestinian refugee camps there.

Bayour is completing a master’s thesis at California State University at Long Beach on Palestinian women political prisoners. She has traveled six times to Gaza since 1998 to research the lives of this little-known segment of the Palestinian population. An estimated 1,500 to 2,000 Palestinian women have been detained as political prisoners since 1969, yet no one has studied or written about this unique “sisterhood.”

Owing to the lack of documentation, Bayour’s initial trips to Gaza were devoted to gathering basic statistics and interviewing 28 of these women.

She arrived in Jerusalem on Nov. 28 at the invitation of Shadia El-Sarraj, director of the Women’s Empowerment Project, to prepare a proposal for researching the health, education, employment, domestic abuse and political participation of women refugees in Gaza.

At the Erez checkpoint, Bayour faced a brick wall in the form of Youssi Levy, a security officer who told her she must produce permission papers from the U.S. Embassy to enter Gaza.

Bayour is an American citizen, but her Palestinian roots are in the Galilee village of al-Bassa, from which Israelis expelled her grandparents in 1948. Three generations of her family have lived in a refugee camp in Lebanon.

“I don’t know which is harsher,” she commented, “to be a refugee in one’s own country, as Palestinians are in Gaza and the West Bank, or in a foreign land.”

When she appealed to the U.S. Consulate for help, she was told she could not receive permission to enter Gaza because it would be in contradiction to the State Department advisory against Americans traveling there.

On her second confrontation with Levy at Erez, she was told she must obtain a working visa to enter Gaza.

When this proved impossible, Levy suggested she ask an international organization to sponsor her entry. The frustrated researcher made frantic pleas to Save the Children and the International Red Cross, but neither agency was willing to bear responsibility for her to enter a war zone.

Time was running out. Bayour was to return to California on Dec. 20. When not trying to devise some avenue of entry into Gaza, she sought to demonstrate her solidarity with the Palestinians by joining martyrs’ funerals and visiting the wounded in hospitals. She even had a run-in with an Israeli soldier.

On her second Friday in Jerusalem, Bayour decided to observe Israeli tactics in barring all Palestinian men and boys under the age of 45 from attending Friday prayers at al-Aqsa mosque.

“Thousands of armed Israeli police and soldiers blocked the gates to the Haram al-Sharif,” she said. So when it was time to pray, the Muslim men began to pray on Saladdin Street in front of the Damascus Gate. A little boy standing next to me cried out at a soldier, “Why can’t I pray in the mosque? Al-Aqsa is ours and Jerusalem is ours.”

“The soldier pushed and then slapped the child,” Bayour recalled. “I lost it and shouted at the soldier in Arabic that the boy was right and that he had no business preventing any of us from praying in our mosque.”

By this time, the soldier was directing his full attention to the woman screaming at him. He demanded in Hebrew and then used sign language to indicate he wanted to see her identity card.

“I was shouting in English and Arabic that I didn’t have an ID card,” she said. “Reporters heard me and gathered around us. The soldier seemed to evaporate.”

Bayour also visited injured youth who were languishing in Jerusalem’s AlMakassed Hospital.

“Many of these were students from Gaza who were wounded in the West Bank and, because of the total closure of Gaza, could not be transported back to their families,” she explained. “These youngsters were not only in physical pain, but were homesick. No one was visiting them. The Palestinian Authority is not doing an adequate job of taking care of them.”

In yet another attempt to enter Gaza, Bayour produced a letter faxed to her from the Women’s Empowerment Project in Gaza explaining the nature of her work there. This time, Levy told her the letter was not valid because it was from a local agency, not an international one.

The final straw came when Levy announced Bayour’s entrance was precluded by a military order. When she asked why he hadn’t stated this in the beginning, he told her the military decision had been made only two days before and she would have to be patient until it was lifted.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment of her latest trip was the diminished role of women in this new intifada.

“In the first uprising, women were fighters,” Bayour said. “They were imprisoned and tortured more than the men. Their participation in the intifada was very clear. Women broke curfews and led food convoys into their camps. Women opened their own cooperatives and produced jams, pickles and zaatar. They boycotted Israeli goods and educated their children at home or in underground schools.

“This time, women are taking a back seat,” she reported. “It is very distressing. I attribute this to the fact that since 1993, women’s organizations have failed to do their job of mobilizing women. In my opinion, they have been corrupted by the small amount of non-governmental organization money that has filtered in. But that is another area of research. Believe me, I intend to look into this and write about it.”

When asked if she thinks the people have gained new determination and hope for an independent state through this latest uprising, Bayour replied:“The people watched their situation in 1993 grow from bad to worse to the worst. When they had nothing to lose but misery, the people rebelled.

“Their mental health is deteriorating as we speak,” she continued. “People cannot live in such traumatic, stressful conditions indefinitely. Parents do not know if they will be shot or imprisoned when they leave the home, children are not sure if they will make it safely to or from school—if their schools are open. The injured often don’t make it to hospitals—the Israelis stop the ambulances and let the wounded bleed to death or throw them into prisons without medical attention. Jobs are non-existent, and unemployment exceeds 85 percent of the work force. The instability is overwhelming and scary. I doubt if any people anywhere could survive this existence.”

Christmas Eve Demonstration

One of the most popular Christmas observances in Southern California is the Glory of Christmas, a re-enactment of the Nativity replete with live camels and sheep at the famous Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. Each December, the production is offered several times daily.

As the death toll of Palestinians rose, Southern Californians concerned with the violence in the Holy Land decided an appropriate place to notify fellow Americans of the injustice being done to the Palestinians would be to demonstrate in front of the Crystal Cathedral on Christmas Eve.

More than 50 demonstrators held candles and banners as night fell and hundreds of worshippers arrived at the landmark cathedral. “Israel: Stop Bombing Bethlehem,” “Jesus’ Birth Place Is Under Siege by Israel” and “Pray for Children in Palestine” were messages on posters that caught the eyes of passersby.

Some cars honked their approval of a large banner stating: “Freedom for the Palestinian People. End the Israeli Occupation.”

One well-dressed blonde remarked, “What has this got to do with the birth of Christ?” She was informed that Israelis were shooting Christians and Muslims in Bethelem that very night.

It was an unusually cold and foggy evening and someone wondered aloud if it was worth our discomfort to demonstrate for the Palestinians. “Oh yes,” commented a protester. “Thousands of people are seeing our signs tonight, and if just two or three begin to question Israel’s behavior in the Middle East, it will be worth it.”

As we departed the candlelight vigil, a middle-aged man approached us and asked how we enjoyed the pageant. When we replied that we had not attended the show but were with the demonstrators, he stopped, took a good look at the banner and gave us a thumbs up sign of approval.

Suddenly, it was all worth it.

Muslim Member Clarifies Opinion on USCIRF Letter

Dr. Laila al-Marayati is the sole Muslim on the nine-member U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). She set a precedent Dec. 24 when she sent a letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stating her dissenting opinion to the USCIRF’s Dec. 19 letter excusing Israel’s restricting Palestinian Muslims and Christians access to religious sites on the basis of “security concerns.”

The USCIRF letter read:

Dear Madame Secretary:

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has been observing with great apprehension the increasingly religious nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the potential impact of this trend on religious freedom. This is evinced by the growing instances of violence against religious sites (mosques, synagogues, and churches), the use of religious rhetoric to promote violence, the expanding controversy over religious claims to Jerusalem, and the extension of religiously-based confrontations to other areas of the world (primarily in the form of anti-Jewish actions in the Middle East, Europe, and even North America). The ongoing violence in turn has led Israeli authorities to limit access to religious sites because of security concerns. Moreover, religious conflict in the Middle East would escalate inter-religious tensions, and thus pose a threat to religious freedom, everywhere.

We therefore urge the U.S. government to denounce forcefully the targeting of holy places of any religion and to condemn those who call for violence in the name of religion. We hope that these goals will be emphasized by U.S. diplomats dealing with the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In our view, the U.S. should call for restoration of access to religious sites when legitimate security interests are met, restoration of sites that have been damaged and prosecution of those who perpetrate desecration of religious sites. We believe that the U.S. should take the lead in calling upon government and religious leaders everywhere to repudiate all attempts to turn the already grave situation in the Middle East into a conflict among religions.

Elliott Abrams, Chairman

Concerned that the USCIRF statement could be interpreted as an endorsement of Israel’s denial of Jerusalem holy sites to Palestinian Muslims and Christians, the Glendale, CA-based gynecologist clarified her position in a letter to Albright.

Noting that Gazans have been denied access to Jerusalem since 1993, Dr. Marayati emphasized that since November, all Palestinian males aged 16 to 45 have been forcibly prohibited from mosques on the Haram al-Sharif.

“Expanding limitations of access to holy sites is a form of collective punishment against innocent worshippers, the majority of whom are not involved in violent acts,” she wrote.

Stressing that access to houses of worship is recognized in the Declaration of Human Rights, Dr. Marayati said Israel’s “security concerns” do not justify restriction of religious worship for Palestinians—Particularly, she pointed out, when Jewish citizens continue to enjoy unfettered and protected access to Jewish holy sites throughout Israel and the occupied territories.

Israel’s arbitrary blockade against Muslim and Christian worshippers, Marayati stated, seriously calls into question its ability to act as a fair and just custodian of Jerusalem holy sites. Israel’s use of live ammunition to disperse crowds, and Israeli settlers’ attacks on worshipping Muslims, have created a climate of fear among Palestinian Christians and Muslims, she concluded.

Dr. Marayati has not received a response to her Dec. 24 letter. Leaders of Arab-American and Muslim organizations met Jan. 5 with the USCIRF, which stood firm on its Dec. 19 statement.

Marayati said she still feels justified in voicing her concerns over the denial of access to places of worship, collective punishment and excessive use of force against civilians.

When the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, inquired of the commission if it plans to address the issues brought up by Dr. Marayati, USCIRF director of communications Lawrence J. Goodrich, responded:

“The Commission is well aware that Israel has restricted access to religious sites off and on for many years. Its statement does not imply an endorsement of current or previous restrictions. Far from seeking to legitimize those restrictions, the Commission called for ”˜restoration of access to religious sites when legitimate security concerns are met.’ Given that the Commission’s expertise is in religious freedom rather than security matters, we took no position as to those security concerns.

“We believe it important for the Commission to focus on religious-freedom issues and avoid carefully the error of inserting itself into the Middle East peace process. The Commission is contemplating visits to the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel and the Occupied Territories (including Palestinian Authority-controlled areas).”

Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.