The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

Certainly I see myself living on the borderline, it is not easy, but I come to
live in peace with this, being able to be flexible. I have to pay a price for
it, but it’s ok today for me. My parents have a strong Jewish identity, but
they still have an Indian identity too, they follow Indian literature and news.
I grew up in the city of Ashdod. It is a mixture of cultures, there are big
communities from Morocco and Latin America; in the ‘70s, a big wave
of Russians came in, so we were all immigrants and we were new. My
first boyfriend was from Montevideo; my sister’s boyfriend was from
Leningrad.
In the ‘70s, the pressure of the melting pot was very strong. When we
arrived in Israel, there was a pressure on my parents to change their
children’s names; in the ‘90s, with the Russian immigration, this pressure
was not so strong. In this city of so many immigrants, the peripheral
people were able to keep their original identities. This is a kind of advantage
of being in the periphery.
After finishing my first degree, I served in the army and something
interest ing happened. With a degree, you become an officer, and I was
supposed to serve in the intelligence services, and they looked in my
file and they saw that I had been arrested twice for political reasons.
However, at the beginning in the first three months, I was positioned in
the civil administration in Samaria, and I was in the Ramallah headquarters.
It was a military camp. Those dealing with civil issues, be it water
or education, are military people. This is an “enlightened occupation”, as
Moshe Dayan called it. It was freedom of movement, no Intifada, hitch -
hiking in the streets in military uniform was possible. After three months
they found out I shouldn’t be there, but I experienced how the occupation
functioned from the inside; how every single act in the lives of the Palestinian
farmers is controlled. Also their biographies, everything, was written
down in the files. After three months I was called back to the headquarters,
and was transferred to office work in Jerusalem.
Going to military service in those times was normal; in a way, serving in
the army was another path for a young woman into Israeli society. Later
on, when I became a mother, I realized how helpless you can be as a
parent.
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