2. Samira’s involvement in Palestinian women’ organization
On the outskirts of Bethlehem, Samira grew up along with her eight brothers and two sisters, and it was here that she got married and raised her two children. At
the age of thirty-one, Samira has been a political activist for most of her life and spent three years in jail for throwing a Molotov cocktail at Israeli soldiers. When
she speaks, there is an openness about her. When she was at seventh grade, she started to get interested in involving on
politics. She finally found things that has become her passion. “From seventh grade on, I began to have some friends who came from
outside the camp. We were going to the UNRWA junior high school here together. And it was through them that I began to get interested in politics.
I started to write about my feelings
—about poverty and suffering. My friends gave me political books to read, things about the Palestinian
struggle, books on Marxism and class struggle.” “By the time I got to high school, tenth through twelfth grades, I already had
developed strong political opinions. More than that, I had begun to see that I wanted to fight for my views. I was reading all kinds of things
– books by Victor Hugo, Maxim Gorky, and more political books. I remember one book
that really excited me. It was called Al - Fedaiyin the Guerrillas. It’s a
book that talked about the fedaiyin camps in Jordan, the training the fighters went through, and some of the actions they went on. I began to feel I wanted
to be like them”. Gorkin, 1996:38
Those quotations of Samira shows that at that time, Samira started to develop herself as a modern educated Palestinian women who were free to get what
she wants. She also realized that she had to do something to fight her views, started from reading about political issues of the books. She also stated that her plight as
refugees, that means Palestinians’ refugees, Palestinians’ poverty, was the result of a great injustice that had been done to them. The Israelis had come as colonists,
they forced the Palestinians out of their villages, and they took Palestinians’ land. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
According to Ms. Arksonkool in the International Seminar on Women’s Education and Empowerment, an individual empowerment of women is attained in
relationship to the larger society 1975:9. Samira’s awareness and her critical views are similar to what Citing Depthnews states that, it is a process in which
women gain control over their own lives by knowing and claiming their rights at all levels of society at the international, local, and household levels 1975:9.
“I finished up high school in East Jerusalem. You see, I was actually a very good student, I had outstanding grades even with my political involvement.
It was a good high school to attend if you wanted to go on to college. And I did. Out of the girls in my graduation class, I had the second highest score.
This was high enough for me to go to college and good enough for me to get a scholar
ship, too.” Gorkin, 1996:40-41 According to her statement, her intended to go forward to university means
that she wanted to be educated women, who can improve her point of views toward what her life would be. She had views that education was really important and need
to be finished in order to get better life. Her strong willingness to continue her education up to college level is a prove to empower herself in fighting her wants
and views. As she went to college, her involvement in politics becomes deeper. She even attacked Israeli soldiers by throwing a Molotov cocktail at Israeli bus full of
soldiers and settlers, which led to her imprisonment for three years. “We got together one day and decided to attack some Israeli soldiers. It was
a kind of spontaneous thing, not planned out at all. We went up to the army checkpoint just outside the camp, Molotov cocktails in our hands, and we
hurled them at a bus of soldiers and settlers. Once we had thrown the Molotov cocktails, the soldiers starts running after us. I was running as fast
as I could, but they easily caught up with me, and when they did, they started beating the hell out of me with their rifles until they got me back to their
post. They sentenced me to three years in jail. ” Gorkin, 1996:42 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Her action is similar with what Caroline Mooser stated that women have to increase their power not in terms of domination over others, but in terms of gains
over their self-esteem and internal force. This means women have their right to decide about their own life and to influence social change, through their ability to
gain control over crucial natural and cultural resources.’ 1992:49 In jail, there were a community of women who has similar personality with
her. They were educated, brave, and open-minded like her. While in jail, Samira learn a lot about life, and also about politics.
“From then on, until I got out, my life was pretty much the same—work and study, like that. The fact is, I actually got a lot out of my time there. I mean,
I learned a lot. The courses in prison were more interesting, for sure. But more than that, I would say that I learned about life there, about the
important things. How to relate to people, how to stay loyal to your ideas, how to plan for the future.” Gorkin, 1996:43
From these excerpts above we can see that Samira had took a different path towards education than most Palestinian women had in the past, especially her
mother, that even when she was in jail, she still determined to study, even with a very limited tools there. Furthermore, since she was in high school, tenth through
twelfth grades, Samira has developed her views in political matters. She stated that she had strong opinions towards what Israel had been done to Palestinians.
“By the time I knew that our plight as refugees, our poverty, was the result of a great injustice that had been done to Palestinians. The Israelis had come
as colonists, they forced us out of our villages, and they took our land. This same Israeli army that I saw every day in front of our camp had committed
the injustices of 1948.” Gorkin, 1996:38 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
She also stated that she wanted to get rid out of the Israeli occupation. She struggled for it in her life by getting involved in political organization, in order to
fight against Israel occupation. “Our struggle right now, the way I see it, is to get rid of the Israeli army that’s
occupying us here in the West Bank. I‘ve lived all my life under this occupation, and my struggle now, and from the time I got involved in politics,
was against this occupation. These were the injustices that were always before my eyes, and more than anything, this is why I got involved in the National
struggle back when I was still a teenager.” Gorkin, 1996:40
Samira’s actions in involving the national struggle is similar to what Allan Touraine in Dobash et all 1992:16 stated in Women, Violence, and Social Change
that the social movements, especially women’s movements, are composed of collective action of those seeking control of ‘the great cultural orientations by which
a society’s…relationships are normatively organized’, what he calls ‘historicity’. The social movement is the organized collective behaviour of a class actor in this
case women struggling against her adversary for the social control of historicity in a concrete community.’
Her political goals, and her life in general, had a clearer focus to make changes in Palestinian society. When the Intifada began in 1987, it really affected
her life. She continued going to Bethlehem University to get her degree. Beside studied, she also took most of the time to do political work and involved in the
Women’s Comittee for Social Work, that is affiliated with Fatah, and is one of four women’s organizations operating in the territories under the Palestine Liberation
Organization PLO and representing different fractions within the PLO. She was PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
working as an organizer of women in the villages and refugee camps in the Bethlehem area.
“With the Intifada, the Palestinian struggle had become a true mass movement, and there was a need to involve women in a constructive way. I’m
talking abut women from the villages and re fugee camps, women who’d
never been involved in political or social activism in their lives - women like my mother.”Gorkin, 1996: 53-54
This can be related to Sime 1991:50. He adds that in political perspective searches for a democratic society through the full participation of all people in
social life regardless of their race, social status and gender. It also looks forward for people to achieve peace, tolerance, and solidarity. It promotes the empowerment of
minority groups, popular and marginal sectors of society, and women to be able to influence social and political decisions.
Samira’s existence as educated woman, helped and made changes for the other Palestinian women to speak out what they wanted to speak and to act they
wanted to act. She drew an example from the women in the villages and camps, just like her mother, that have begun to free themselves from the domination of their
husbands. She stated that, “Palestinian women now begin to understand that her views are worth something, that they have something to say and contribute together
to the society, not just to their family.” Gorkin, 1996:54
Samira is one example of Palestinian women that can contribute to the society in a significant way that her contributions can influence women to do the same.
This is similar to what Stromquist said in The practical and the theoretical bases for empowerment. She states that cognitive, psychological and political are part of
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