Patricia Smith Melton
WASHINGTON - Some people know a lot of things about some people who live in Israel or Palestine, but to apply the word "expert" to any one person for the region is problematic. One person's expert is another's fabulist, or even propagandist. "Expert opinions", and there are many, contradict each other, whether they read as rational or emotional.
Even with the best of intentions, no one person can have the brain power, detachment from conscious or unconscious personal agenda, historical knowledge, on the ground connections across the divides, or calculation moxie to be expert on the whole of the Palestinian and Israeli people, their histories, intents or hopes. The infinite variety of historical and perceptual "truths" form a mosaic that looks different depending upon where you stand and the amount of metaphorical sun or dark at that moment.
In the region we can only know what we witness first hand, and even that goes through personal filters. My own witnessing has been with Palestinian and Israeli female activists, on both sides of the wall. Over the past three years I have also witnessed, and put through my filters, several trends: subtle but significant changes in language, emerging concepts, and fluctuations in the hope quotient.
First, the women: by definition a female leader is a woman with both the personal power and a cultural "window" through which to rise to her uniqueness within the crucible of the Holy Land. She is tempered out of fire. These self-selecting women possess certain qualities that I witnessed across the cultural and physical divides of the region. They include emotional resilience and stamina, confidence in themselves that started when they were young, the capacity for inner joy, comfort with command positions, the ability to strategize, the willingness to try new methods, and the courage to face off entrenched male leaders in their governing bodies.
Whether the woman is Jihad Abu Zneid, member of the Palestinian Legislative Council from Jerusalem and founder of the Women's Centre of the Shu'fat Refugee Camp, or Tal Kramer, Executive Director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers of Israel, these qualities prevail. Whether she is Shula Keshet, Executive Director of Ahoti, the umbrella organization for Mizrahi women (Jewish women from Arab or Muslim countries) of Israel, or Ghada Issa, co-director of Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem, the women know what they are up against and they are not daunted by it.