What comes to my mind specifically is the joint initiative we did with Karama in 2017-2018, with three other Palestinian members of the Karama network. In developing research on different aspects of the gender impact of the occupation. WCLAC took the issue of medical transfer of cases of women from Gaza for medical care, especially women with chronic diseases, while the other groups addressed the issue of refugees, Palestinian political prisoners, as well as the permit and family unification issues, which reflected the discriminatory policies of the Israeli occupation.

With MIFTAH, the Palestinian Working Women Society for Development, TAM and WCLAC, we were able to produce a very important work. It was something that we used immediately in the Commission on Status of Women in 2018. It highlighted many aspects of the suffering of Palestinian women under occupation, with evidence-based data that we collected from the field.

It was a very important impact, and the driving force behind it, as I mentioned, was Karama. That work really encapsulated what we wanted to do. For example, MIFTAH were engaged in a survey, and they looked at Palestinian women in refugee camps inside the occupied territory. Many people think that refugees in the diaspora after the 1948 Nabka are only in the surrounding Arab countries, and not inside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. So, the Nakba of 1948 reflects a problem of refugees within Palestine that need to be addressed.

Palestinian political prisoners were witnessing a lot of gender-based violence, including sexual violence that we witness now, so that report also from TAM highlighted that point. With regard to PWWSD’s research, this is one of the continuing problems of the Israeli policies — the permit systems, and the family unification policies, which obstruct Palestinian women married to Jerusalemites from residing in Jerusalem. And that's very much connected with patriarchal structures, for applying for family unification or annual permits to stay inside Jerusalem, which was illegally annexed. That is an ongoing problem. For example, WCLAC deals with 70 per cent cases of gender-based violence and family matters that we litigate in Family Courts, because of these problems emerging from colonial occupation and patriarchal structures.

The colonial occupation enforces patriarchal structures, and women are very much under the mercy of the husbands if the marriage breaks, and therefore, to highlight that, which is still an ongoing problem that we face as of today, and we addressed in the report. Similarly, women with chronic diseases, under the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip for almost 19 years now, face a lot of problems. Those with cancer or with long-term diseases need to be referred to hospitals abroad or to Jerusalem or other parts of the West Bank, the occupied territory. Now, Israel controls that system, and has been controlling it, preventing this even before the military aggression of the war on Gaza. But that is a continuing problem for over the past two decades that needs to be highlighted, because that is also enforcing patriarchal structures.

Many women find themselves abandoned if they get chronic diseases, and husbands get another wife, and women are prevented by the Israelis as well from getting the care they need, due to the blockade on Gaza.

The report highlighted four issues which we chose, but there are many other issues that need to be addressed on the gendered impact of the occupation, and there was a very positive reaction. I do recall the side event which we had inside the United Nations during the Commission on Status of Women in 2018, when the room was completely packed, there were even people sitting on the floor, it was really overcrowded. That really showed how important it is to address these issues. That was one of the important components of the work with Karama.