JERUSALEM—Every morning before the sun rises, an Israeli women's group of mainly retired grandmothers travels to the epicenter of the daily conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Their stated purpose is to monitor checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank, but their role is far from that of a silent observer.
The women have made fans and foes — some refer to them as the "princesses of the wall" for the work they do to help Palestinians, while others see them as anti-Israeli and an obstruction. One Israeli woman, Sylvia Piterman, 67, could be quietly enjoying her retirement, but instead she volunteers full-time advocating for Palestinians who have had their permits to enter and work in Israel revoked.
Piterman joined the women-only organization Machsom Watch 10 years ago after she left her senior role with the Bank of Israel. Her early morning shift at the Bethlehem checkpoint bordering the Palestinian Territories of the West Bank doesn't resemble her former life behind a desk as an economist and foreign exchange manager.
On her shift with two other Machsom Watch women, Piterman monitors the flow of people through the Bethlehem checkpoint. On her Sunday shift recently, 6,500 Palestinians had passed through the checkpoint by 7am. She found the humanitarian gate open allowing women, children and the elderly to flow through, escaping the huge crowds of men who queue to cross into Jerusalem to get to work on time.
“When the checkpoint is very slow, we call here and there and complain — there are all kinds of telephone centers that were opened for us because our ladies used to call the generals in the early hours of the morning and they didn’t like it so much, so they opened a humanitarian hotline,” she said.
“It’s good because sometimes we can make the life of these people a little easier.”
The women of Machsom Watch state they oppose the occupation and the separation wall. “There is no real claim against the fact that it’s occupied territory — it’s occupied territory and we are against it. The way we have to demonstrate against it is to come to the checkpoint and stand here,” said Piterman.
She would not say what pushed her into the rare position as an Israeli Jewish woman supporting Palestinian people, but said she was initially reluctant to get involved with the all-women group. “I saw an all-women group as a kind of discrimination,” she said.
“At some point I started going to the checkpoints and I found out that in some ways we exploit the fact that we are women. Men become very violent in these situations and also the soldiers themselves see that we are grandmothers, so they behave differently towards us, to the people themselves.”
Piterman’s work is focused exclusively on monitoring the checkpoints once a week. The rest of her week is pushing paperwork to enable Palestinians who have been blacklisted from entering Israel to have their permits reinstated by the Israeli Defense Force.
If their permits are denied through initial bureaucratic means, Piterman pursues the matter through the courts. Last year, 1,000 Palestinians took their blacklisted status through the courts at a regional and high court level.
Propelled to Act
Retired Orthodox Jew Daniela Yoel remembers exactly what propelled her into activism with Machsom Watch. “A Palestinian woman was pregnant with twins, and the day for her birth came and she had to pass through the checkpoint in order to arrive to the hospital. She came, with pains, to the checkpoint and the soldiers didn’t let her pass to the hospital," said Yoel.
“She had to give birth in the checkpoint and the baby died immediately. The family implored the soldier to please let her arrive quickly to the hospital because she had another one and they didn’t let her. She gave birth to another boy and he also died, and I became mad, I couldn’t live with myself,” she said.
Just months before the death of the Palestinian twins, Yoel’s twin grandsons were born safely and happily, and she says the death of the Palestinian twins radicalized her.
Being an Orthodox Jew posed a conundrum for her when she started to support Palestinians, she said. “During the holocaust people were anonymous, nobody gave us solidarity — I have the same emotions when I go to the checkpoint, but in my work as a volunteer, someone is looking," she said.
“My religion and heritage combined with my work at the checkpoints make me feel schizophrenic,” she added, pointing out that she works with Italian and French people to educate them about the checkpoints across Israel. “I would like to speak to young Israelis, not French and Italian people, but they are the only ones who are willing to hear.”
A Different Approach
Tamar Fleishman works differently from both Daniela Yoel and Sylvia Piterman. Her work at the Qalandiya checkpoint, the main entry before the city of Ramallah, is purely to oppose the occupation and not to provide direct help to the Palestinian people.
Fleishman takes photographs of local children from the Qalandiya refugee camp, something she has been doing for nearly 12 years. “In the beginning they said, 'No photo,' but now they are keen to have their photos taken. Even dying people say, 'Take my photo and show the world what they are doing to us,'” she said.
She debates whether she is helping their plight — but it's clear when she greets some of the Palestinian people, who are now her friends, that she has made a difference.
“It took me awhile to decide if I was ready to dedicate a day every week at the checkpoints. I live in a peaceful place, there are no checkpoints, no guns and no army," she added. “I was not in the left, I came from a Zionist, very mainstream background and my friends were quite militant.”
She described becoming an activist as an “inner process” and not the result of any external event. Though living overseas, in Singapore and Bangkok, helped, she said. “Only when I left Israel did I meet a lot of other people and slowly, slowly I started changing.
The three women of Machsom Watch are divided over whether the occupation will end, and the separation wall will come down. Yoel said she thought the situation was getting worse and that something had to change.
Piterman held out more hope. “My grandfather used to say, ‘Don’t despair,'" she said, "'because you never know what will happen tomorrow.'”
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