Hana' Abu Haikal: "MIFTAH has armed me with enough knowledge to continue on this path"
Hana' Jameel Rateb Abu Haikal from Hebron's Tul Rumeida quarter lives among the infamous Hebron settlers, who in 1984, set up a hostile settler enclave adjacent to her home. Since then, Abu Haikal and her family have suffered at the hands of these provocative settlers, their attacks and their suffocating siege.
Hana' works as a beautician. She owns a small beauty salon in the Wadi Tuffah neighborhood in Hebron. She is also a founding member of the beauticians union, both in Hebron and at the regional Arab level. She was a judge in competitions in the Arab world and in 2005, she represented Palestine in more than one country.
It looks as if you are a very strong and ambitious woman who has fought for her right to stay in her home and on her land to raise her children. You must be well known for your struggles and for your role in public life in this community.
Abu Haikal: I am not exaggerating when I tell you the situation here is unbearable. Only yesterday, the settlers burned my fourth car. I have not seen any kind of support or solidarity from our officials except for empty words. This is really frustrating and depressing. Not to mention that my daughter's wedding is next week. I now have to look for a house outside our area so that she can leave from it as a bride because it is virtually impossible for any vehicle to drive up to my house. We don't want to take that risk on that day because you never know what to expect from such extremist settlers. I swear, yesterday as I was writing up the invitations, I began to cry.
As for Abu Haikal's relationship with MIFTAH through its "Combating Violence against Palestinian Women through the Empowerment of Community-Based Organizations" funded by the Austrian Development Agency, she says: "My introduction to MIFTAH began in 1999 when they contacted me through my work and invited me to a media workshop given by journalist Shireen Abu Aqla. I always believed that the media is a weapon and is our only outlet in confronting this Israeli cancer. I would try to expose the settlers' practices through the media. Lately, I got reacquainted with MIFTAH through its coordinator in Hebron Maysoon Qawasmi. She helped me to connect with media institutions and outlets. I was then invited to participate in an entire workshop on combating violence against women, which had a great impact on me and on my ability to communicate with the community, which was very important. We are really in need of such courses.
In spite of the harsh circumstances under which she has lived and the many hardships that have come her way, Hana Abu Haikal says she insists on continuing her work and her struggle, partly through participating in MIFTAH's "Combating Violence against Palestinian Women through the Empowerment of Community-Based Organizations", which she says has left a noticeable impact on her life and personal growth. "Participating in this project has positively impacted on my life in terms of boosting my confidence in particular. Security Council resolution 1325 is an extremely important resolution and more should be done to make it better understood," she says. Abu Haikal added that most women know nothing about this resolution and that the training gave the participant women a crash course in 1325 and its significance. "Especially since women in our society are oppressed and the laws are very unfair towards us. I am speaking from personal experience. But still, I try not to let this get in the way of taking care of my family as much as possible. Many mothers raise their children alone after getting custody of the children and the father, who in many cases has abandoned the family, does not care one bit. But then, when there are any major decisions about the lives of the children, especially the girls, the father becomes the only person authorized to make decisions for her. The mother, the one who spent years raising these children, studying with them, nursing them to health, she has no say at all. Why doesn't the mother, with the custody, have the final say in decisions about her family's lives? The children are negatively affected by this as well. That is why I always suggest a change in such status laws, which are unfair and humiliating for women. I hope MIFTAH takes my suggestion to heart because the secret to MIFTAH's success is the way it always seeks out the important issues in society, sheds light on them and disseminates them at the national level."
Abu Haikal also credits MIFTAH's activities with impacting her family life. "MIFTAH's activities and training courses have had a tremendous impact on my home life and on my personal situation in particular. We are moving in the right direction but I think we still have a ways to go in terms of raising awareness about this subject so that everyone could benefit from it. The underlying goal of such training courses is to boost self-confidence and reinforce sound principles. I felt a huge difference between my situation before and after taking these courses."
Abu Haikal continues that her communication with MIFTAH has only strengthened her determination to stay in her home and has opened new doors of communication for her with other civil society institutions. "I suggested that we work on raising the awareness of women at the neighborhood level so they would have enough knowledge and awareness about the issues at hand, just like we have done at the institutional level."
"I am appreciative of all those who helped us at the financial, moral and consultative levels so that our families can stay steadfast in their homes," she says, adding that this team spirit and support is missing at the government level. "Our leadership should be the strongest pillar of support for us. It is the one that should bear the responsibility towards supporting our steadfastness and our struggle to remain in our homes. We cannot burden those few supporters with their modest efforts with the responsibility of confronting the settlers."
As for any future participation with MIFTAH, Abu Haikal says they can count her in. "I trust MIFTAH and those who run it. We are an oppressed people so when an organization gives me this kind of confidence and arms me with awareness and knowledge about things going on around me, I jump at the opportunity to participate in its activities. I think the awareness raising that MIFTAH does should not be underestimated. Such awareness plays a huge role in supporting women in general, not just in my case personally.
Abu Haikal suggests the formation of a lobby that would move to cancel laws that weaken women's stances and suppress their rights while proposing new alternative laws for legislation. "I suggest that MIFTAH works on two planes: one towards disseminating this project among a larger group of people to create a popular base for it and a second to pressure legislators to make the changes needed. This could be done in various ways such as petitions. I would also like to suggest that a "soldier's salary" be allocated to every Palestinian family living adjacent to a settlement in order to support these families and strengthen their resolve to stay. This would be like social security for them, especially if the breadwinner of the family is unemployed. In facing extremist settlers, these citizens need to feel that they are not alone."
'Cake and Vanilla': One story of success
Date posted: May 05, 2022
By MIFTAH
Ramallah – In the village of “Jadeera” northwest of Jerusalem, Sally Suleiman and a group of friends chose an old abandoned building as a launching point for their project “Cake and Vanilla”. Since then, they have consistently increased the sale of their date and nut cookies, first in their village and then later, in areas around and beyond Ramallah and even inside the Green Line. The women now create a quality, well-marketed product after honing their online marketing skills, creating and running their own website and being part of other similar websites to display their baked goods.
MIFTAH: Financial and technical support
Sally and her project partners admit that their success would never have been possible if it were not for MIFTAH’s support, providing them with the necessary equipment and appliances and working to develop their financial administration and marketing skills.
“MIFTAH was a huge support,” Sally says. “It gave us material and technical support, which motivated us to push forward and reach as many people as possible. Today, ‘Cake and Vanilla’ is a household name, not just in Jadeera but in areas in and around Ramallah and all over Palestine.”
Challenges and Obstacles
Sally mostly cites marketing challenges due to competition and gaps in the market in places they have difficulty accessing. She also points to the interminable problem of funding the website. MIFTAH, she says, helped them with ways to tackle this issue through providing them with training in online marketing, website management and funding with the goal of reaching a broader public.
Socio-economic impacts
Sally maintains that the project has tangibly improved their social and economic statuses and has allowed them to become more acquainted with society. She also says it boosted their confidence and their ability to depend on themselves and that their newfound economic empowerment had a positive impact for them within their own households and communities.
Community development project
MIFTAH project coordinator for community development and income-generating projects, Hanan Said, said these interventions with young female university graduates are part of MIFTAH’s efforts to empower women and integrate them in the labor market. The projects also give them the opportunity for financial independence and for developing their personal and professional skills. This, Said maintains, will allow them to carry out an effective role by reflecting the positive impact of women’s economic participation, in addition to elevating women’s statuses in their communities.
The tale of three female university students and their construction materials project
Date posted: February 09, 2022
By MIFTAH
Ramallah – Sarah, Rimah and Aya are three young women from the villages of Beit Iksa and Beit Dukko, northwest of Jerusalem, who ventured into an innovated project like no Palestinian women before them.
The first step on their road to success was MIFTAH, which has and continues to work towards supporting Palestinian women in the West Bank and in the Jerusalem district in particular, by providing small income-generating projects.
Sarah and Rimah are still university students while their colleague, Aya, is already graduated and works full-time with the project. The women tapped into their local communities’ needs, seeing how construction projects were mushrooming in their area. This, they realized, meant they could easily obtain construction materials if they had the means, including jacks and winches.
For Sarah Liqyaniyeh from Beit Ikas, who graduated with a degree in design and décor, their project to rent out construction materials and equipment was a way of fulfilling the needs of their communities. “No other woman or girl has ever thought up this idea before,” she says. “The project entails renting out construction supplies and equipment – jacks and iron elbows and other materials. This is a project that girls and women are probably not used to hearing about, whether in our villages or in other areas. Projects for women almost always revolve around food or embroidery. My colleagues and I wanted to do something different, something only for us, which would allow us to depend on ourselves. So we chose a project that no one has ever done before.”
She continues, “I studied and worked in design and décor and I have also worked in the field at construction sites. During discussions and conversations with my family and others in my village, I heard them talking about buying construction equipment and renting it from outside the village. This is when I had the idea for our project. I said to myself:
Why shouldn’t I be doing this? It’s a sure thing.” So, I pitched the idea to my two colleagues and they were both enthusiastic about it and thought it was a great idea. Our families were also supportive and even our local communities, which helped us find an easy and quick way to obtain the necessary construction equipment and materials. We have reaped profitable financial returns too, and hope one day we will be able to expand. Hopefully, MIFTAH will continue to support us; after all, it was the one that put us on this path.”
Supporting vital projects such as this one for Palestinian women in several West Bank districts has been a MIFTAH intervention for years. It is part of its “Women’s Empowerment” project, which supports small-income generating projects in cooperation with the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development.
MIFTAH project manager, Hanan Said maintains: “The success story this project was able to achieve, whether in terms of impacting or changing the realities of over 400 Palestinian women and their families in rural areas, cities, or marginalized areas, is that these projects empowered and improved the social and economic lives of women. MIFTAH’s interventions have succeeded in reaching women, particularly the marginalized, in over 70 locations in Jericho and the Jordan Valley, the Ramallah/Al Bireh and the Jerusalem districts,” she says. Said continues that MIFTAH works on an almost annual basis, in cooperation with the Arab Fund, to reach new groups of women in various areas and offer them the necessary support to contribute to their economic participation in Palestinian society, with a focus on Jerusalem and its suburbs.
Through its support for women, MIFTAH seeks to increase opportunities for young women especially, to enable them to participate in the labor market and assume an active and influential role in creating positive patterns of economic participation for women, ultimately elevating their status in their respective communities. MIFTAH takes into consideration the needs of marginalized women by economically empowering underprivileged women through small grants.
