On International Women’s Day… Palestinian women icon of resilience and sacrifice in resisting occupation

On March 8th every year, the world celebrates International Women’s Day to emphasize the women’s need to enjoy their rights under international standards and laws.

Despite the growing suffering of Palestinian women under Israeli occupation, who commit the most egregious violations against them, the international community continues to remain silent to their pain and fails to support them in their struggle to counter the occupation.

Palestinian Prisoner’s Club spokesman Amjad al-Najjar said in a statement to SANA correspondent that International Women’s Day falls this year while women prisoners are experiencing the worse kind of suffering, with 29 Palestinian prisoners held inside the occupation prisons and subjected to physical and psychological torture, in addition to denying them access to their children and family visits, seven of them are wounded prisoners deprived of treatment.

The first prisoner is Israa al-Jaabis, who has been detained since 2015 and suffers from severe burns on her face and body, the Israeli occupation refuses to provide her with treatment.

Al-Najjar explained that more than 16,000 Palestinian women have been arrested since 1967, and the occupation has exerted against them all forms of pressure, oppression and torture within its detention centers, which constitute a cemetery for the living, , while the international community continues its silence with no regard to the suffering of Palestinian women, who were not prevented by the heinous crimes of occupation from standing firm and continuing to fight side by side with men for the liberation of land and the restoration of rights.

Member of the political bureau of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ektemal Hamad, stated that the difficult conditions of Palestinian women under occupation had increased their insistence on continuing the struggle and engaging in the battle of national liberation, upholding national issues and resisting as the only way to obtain rights, calling on all women of the world to support the Palestinian women and expose occupation practices that violate all international laws and norms.

The member of the General Secretariat of the General Union of Palestinian Women, Noha Al-Buhaisi, called on the United Nations and international human rights organizations to provide urgent international protection to Palestine women in the light of the occupation’s grave violations of their rights, especially women prisoners, and to pressure it to release them immediately and lift its unjust siege against the Gaza Strip, and consider the occupation an apartheid entity that violates all international humanitarian laws.

President of the International Commission for Supporting the Rights of the Palestinian People, Salah Abdul-Ati, confirmed that 8 March this year comes under the frenzied attack from the Israeli occupation, which escalates killings and displacement, and expands settlement operations to implement colonial annexation schemes, but all these attempts will fail as a result of the determination of Palestinian men and women to continue the path of struggle and resistance.

Amal Farhat