Yusra Berberi

"The political situation today reminds me of the world fifty years ago."

Palestinian Women’s Union (PWU)

Yusra Berberi (born 1923) recalls that she began resisting the Israeli occupation since she was as young as four years old. Following the 1948 war and Israeli occupation of Palestine, she began holding meetings with women’s group in her house to discuss the consequences of the occupation and the methods of helping the refugees who were forced to quit their homes. She says, “We began to collect money, and I was chosen to carry the box around.”

While still a youngster, she mobilized her school friends to go out on demonstrations. “I became politicized in my home,” she said. During this period, the situation in Gaza was critically constrained, but different from other places in Palestine. Women could actively get involved in the decision making process. They worked hard to support their families, and they carried food and ammunition to the Palestinian resistance militiamen. “The situation that during the Intifada (Palestinian Uprising) women were obliged to work and subsist their families was the norm.” she said.

Over the years Berberi’s life was deeply affected by the political situation in Gaza. She believed in peace and coexistence between Jews, Christians and Muslims. “The midwife who helped my mother through my birth was Jewish. For me that incident always remained a key symbol of peaceful coexistence that had been dominating the relationships between Jews and Muslims until the 1920s,” she said.

Berberi was not able to continue her education because two of her brothers were already studying, and her family could not afford paying tuition fees for all the children. In addition, the road to school was vulnerable to potential attacks and counter attacks between Palestinians, Jewish militias and British troops. Berberi stayed at home in Gaza, participating in women’s activities in the community. She learnt needlework and she knitted pullovers for soldiers during the Second World War and donated them to the Red Crescent, which was involved in charitable work. The partition resolution of the United Nations in 1947 had an immense impact on Berberi’s life, while she was still a student in Cairo University. “During those hard times the charitable and women’s organizations in Gaza duplicated their activities. They organized escorting groups to direct the influx of refugees to places where they could find shelter in schools and mosques, because at the beginning no tents were available. The first refugee camps were established only when the Quakers came,” Said Berberi.

In 1949, she returned to Gaza after she had finished her studies at Cairo University, and she began working as a teacher in preparatory schools. “As Gaza’s first female university graduate, I was so famous and highly respected by the local people. After one year I became the school headmistress,” she added.

In 1963 she was chosen as a member of the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations. She traveled to the US with Dr. Haider Abdel Shafi, being herself and another woman from Beirut the only female members in the delegation at that time. “I remember that Golda Meir, the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, was present in that UN meeting as well. When the head of the Palestinian delegation, Mr. Ahmad Shukeiri, addressed the political committee and explained the Palestinian question, Meir’s only comment was "there’s no such thing as the Palestinian nation.”

After her return to Gaza, Berberi and her partners worked to open new centers and workshops to help improve women’s economic situation, to tackle issues such as illiteracy and health, and to assist in the accommodation of refugees. After the 1967 war, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, which placed further pressure on the working organizations in Gaza. “The Israeli authorities,” indicates Berberi, “tried to control all the institutions and to adapt their constitutions in order to fit Israeli interests.” In protest, Berberi quitted her job as a government employee.

Berberi emphasized that the Gaza Strip was the birthplace of the Palestinian uprising (Intifada), where demonstrations broke out on 9th December 1987 in Jabalia refugee camp. Many Israeli women from different organizations went to Gaza before and after the Intifada to work with Palestinians in support of peace. "Peace activists came on truth-finding missions to show their solidarity with Palestinians,” says Berbari. Presenting her vision about the UN resolution vis-à-vis the division of Palestine between the Jews and the Palestinians, Berberi says, “Even if we have to have two states for a short period, in the future there will be one state accommodating both Jews and Palestinians living side by side in peace just as they did at the time of my forefathers.”

Yusra Berbari played a crucial role in social, political and educational activities in the Gaza Strip. After graduation, she began a teaching career and later became the headmistress of the only girls’ preparatory school in Gaza, where she set up a teacher training program for women, which evolved into an Institute for women teachers. Yusra headed the women’s branch of the Gaza Open University, was the only women in the Palestinian delegation to the UN in 1963 and one of the few women members of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) in 1964. Since 1964, she has been the head of the Palestinian Women's Union (PWU) in the Gaza Strip and she helped to found ten illiteracy-fighting centers. Since 1972, Yusra has been a member of the board of directors of the Red Crescent Society, and she has continued to provide assistance to the needy and the families of Palestinian detainees and politically activist prisoners.
An an active participant in non-violent resistance against the Israeli occupation, joining demonstrations and sit-ins and preparing memorandums on national issues, Yusra also participated in the first committee of the new women’s movement in 1978. She was tried before an Israeli court on the claim that she organized sewing classes and ran English language teaching sessions, activities that the court ruled to be provocative against the Israeli occupation. The court verdict was to ban her from traveling for a number of years. Yusra is a dedicated and self-motivated person, with a distinguished record of educational and nationalist achievements. At a young age, she launched a fund raising appeal to collect money for the wounded Palestinians, and she worked with the Red Crescent Society during the Second World War. In 1948, she gave aid and shelter to Palestinian refugees. Later, she became a member of the National Rehabilitation Society for the disabled in Gaza.

For nearly six decades, Palestinians have suffered in appalling conditions. In the course of the British Mandate, which began in 1919, in the ensuing Jewish immigration and sale of the Palestinian land between 1936 and 1939, Yusra Berberi became active in politics and women’s affairs in Gaza.

Central Asia and the Middle East | Occupied Palestinian Territory