Dubai: “Let me see how many experiences and emotions Israeli women tend to share with Palestinian women other than loneliness and illness,” Abu Dhabi-based Palestinian author Huzama Habayeb wrote to the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at the Austin-based University of Texas.
“How does it feel to tuck your child in their bed, promising to finish your bedtime story tomorrow night, yet tomorrow never comes, as an Israeli rocket takes down part of your family house and your child’s bed and body?
“I don’t believe that an Israeli woman, let alone an Israeli writer, can relate much to this daily reality. How does it feel to be summoned to go to a hospital morgue to collect the body of your 11 year old daughter? Here she is, your little girl, lying on a cold table, with her pigtail flowing over her face, her blouse smeared with blood, her beads-like eyes wide open still, emanating soulful light, as if she were speaking to you: ‘why are you late. Mom? I have been waiting for you!’ But you do know that the dead does not speak.
“Only a Palestinian mum in Gaza can relate to this story. Does an Israeli woman know how it feels to answer a persistent telephone call from Israeli military personnel, asking them to leave their house in 15 minutes before it is bombarded and [razed to the] ground by [an] Israeli jet fighter?
“Does an Israeli woman know how it feels to wake up in the middle of the night on heartless Israeli soldiers, breaking into the family’s house, dragging her sleeping 15 year old kid, taking him — in his pyjamas — to a concentration centre?
“Does an Israeli woman know how it feels to kick a Palestinian family from their house in the old city of [occupied] Jerusalem to plant an Israeli family instead? I doubt that she can even write a horror story about it.
“Does an Israeli mother know how it feels to have your young daughter, saying goodbye to her family, on her wedding day, leaving her village in the West Bank, passing through Israeli checkpoints in her bridal dress, to meet her bridegroom on the other side of the checkpoint, knowing that she might never see her family again?
“I am pretty sure that these stories seem sort of science fiction to many Israeli writers and women.”
