The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

INTERVIEW WITH
GHADA AL-JADBA, GAZA
I believe I’m a strong person because my mother and father were strong
people. My mother was strong – but not as I wanted her to be. She was
a teacher for ten years and a substitute teacher for 40 years, she was a
good teacher in her school and in the community; my mother was different
from her peers. She married at eighteen; my father was her cousin.
We lived in Rafah Camp – they came originally from Yibna, formerly
in northern Gaza District, now in southern Israel. It is not easy to live in
a camp. My mother was an educated woman and her family was wealthy.
She wanted to create some change in the society of the Camp – and
she did, in fact. She was a model for me.
My father was not educated like my mother, and he worked with his fa -
ther to support his large family, but he was very intelligent, and since
he had no opportunity to pursue his education, he was very interested
in educating his sons and daughters; not all men at that time supported
their daughters’ education. We were five daughters and three boys.
When I was five years old, my father called me “doctor”. That made
me happy, because I felt my father had faith in me. And doctors were
important personalities in Gaza. It made me proud and it was a challenge
for me, and it made me feel my father thought I could be like boys, and
even better than them.
From the beginning of my life, I felt with the misery of the people around
me – especially when I was in school, and I saw the restrictions placed
upon my girlfriends. When I was thirteen, I had a shock when my close
friend had to leave school to get married – we were just children! From
that time on, I thought about women in Gaza, and that they don’t have
the right to choose what they want. This shock made me stronger, and
better capable of living in this tough society. I decided to help the girls,
and spent most of my time discussing and trying to encourage them.
Sometimes I succeeded; one of my friends from a very traditional family
was so strong that she succeeded in pursuing her education, and now
she is a doctor. It was not easy for her. Sometimes we called her brother,
to convince her father to let her go study together with me in Libya.
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