Can We Blame Them…?

Heba, IslamOnline, 26.11.07. Now that Annapolis conference is approaching, people in Gaza react to it in the strangest manner. Everybody I talk to believes it will bring no positive changes to us. You get in a car and the driver says "If I were the president, I would not go. We are sick of conferences." I talk to my colleague and she says, "we have been there before thinking of Palestine, and now we will be there talking about Gaza Siege." Can we really blame people for bleak anticipations and a very low ceiling of expectations? And I have to end up with a desperate women's sentence that echoed in my office for a while after her departure, "We shall sign anything but let our cancer patients travel for treatment" — and that as a response to the young man who died of cancer waiting for a permit!

November 25th marks the beginning of the 16 day campaign of combating Violence against Women worldwide. For our work, this is a very important occasion as we do have multiple media campaigns and awareness raising activities to reduce levels of violence against women. Doing arrangements, coordinating with organizations, attending events, and all, I was actually moving mechanically with this hollow gap between body and mind. Observing all the negative deteriorations on the ground, I had to wonder about the reasonable justification of doing such activities.

As I said before; and to make myself clearer, construction and deconstruction go hand in hand in the Gaza strip now. Donors fund all these programs to address violence and try to reduce its levels. However, this money does not support eliminating its causes. How can it when the causes are at the policy level and when they are, apparently, political situation bound. So I can sit among women — watching a play about VAW nodding their heads in consent or laughing in disbelief — without being able to see through their minds if it ever happened to them and if it did, why? With unemployment, poverty, seclusion, and inexistent opportunities of self-expression at hand, what do we expect of people? We, as NGOs, should start in my opinion understanding the difference between treating the pain and numbing it. Nevertheless, if we do, we have nothing else but to work as the balance of the equation depends on people still acting normal towards abnormalities.