“Can You Hear Us?” From Women of the West Bank

*Real names and locations in the story below are anonymous to ensure personal security.  

March returned, the global month of women, carrying with it a reminder: to revisit the stories of women from the year. Every March, the stories grow heavier and harder to bear than the year before. 

From classrooms to fragile households, from crowded cities to dusty roads, and from hidden traumas to overt violence, women continue to embody resilience – even when safety and protection exist only in words. Their voices carry across continents, a reminder that sacrifice and survival are not confined by borders, but are shared threads woven into the fabric of womanhood.  

Here in the West Bank of the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), womens’ struggles multiply.  

Across Israeli-controlled Area C of the West Bank, settlers disrupt every breath of Palestinian life. They often attack indiscriminately – targeting the old and young, men and women, infants and homes, livestock and harvests. Families endure, resisting for as long as they can. But when the violence is directed at women, communities rise with doubled strength: to protect, to honor, and to stand with them.

And just as communities in the West Bank rise in the face of hardship, so does Action Against Hunger. In this month of women, we wanted to do more than celebrate – we wanted to listen. We invite you to do the same.  

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Let us listen to the eighteen-year-olds whose youth were stolen, who fought with their souls to finish their last year in high school with good grades. Let us listen to Hala who walks for more than an hour along insecure dirt roads with her twin sister just to reach the nearest school bus. Let us listen about the burden of her Tawjihi exams – already heavy – yet made unbearable by displacement due to settler violence:

“I am in my final year of school, preparing for the Tawjihi exams. A Tawjihi student deserves the chance to attend additional courses – math, English, and others. But in our situation, it’s extremely difficult. Getting to school is in itself exhausting. There are no buses, and after the displacement, the distance between school and home grew much longer. Tawjihi is already a huge responsibility. Imagine carrying it alongside everything happening around us. 

The area we had to move to is difficult, especially the roads. There is no car to take us. My twin sister and I are both in Tawjihi. Look at our situation: we walk for more than an hour on dangerous dirt roads. If cars cannot drive on them, how are we supposed to walk them on foot? This is just to reach the place where the bus picks us up for school. This area we are in now brings consequences that are not normal, and they are unbearable. 

Today, I said to myself: I wish I had never entered Tawjihi. Sometimes, I wish I had never  been born at all.” 

Hala’s twin sister, Rana, explores a different side of displacement as a young student: 

“During the period of displacement, I had planned – as a Tawjihi student – that the subjects I hadn’t managed to study well, I would catch up on during the break between semesters. But because of the displacement, I couldn’t study anything at all. We were still taking end-of-semester exams during that time, and the electricity kept cutting off at night. A Tawjihi student studies at night – daytime is never enough in the final year. But when the electricity is cut off, how am I supposed to study? 

So, we wait until daylight, try to study a little, then go to school without having prepared. Our grades are terrible. We feel suffocated; our mental state is very bad. Just this morning I told my sister Hala: I wish I had never entered Tawjihi. I wish I hadn’t continued my education. 

After the displacement, our whole family, which is made up of six people, was living in one small, cramped room made of tent covers and unsupported walls. There is no space for me to isolate myself to study or focus. We can’t find any way to study properly. We go to school, write our names on the exam paper, then we leave the classroom, leaving the paper empty.  And when we get home, we still have to wait for the bus, which takes a long time, then walk a long, rough road. By the time we arrive, it’s nearly dark – and in the dark, there’s no electricity. 

So, when can we study? Not in the day, because there’s no space. Not at night, because there’s no electricity. There is no chance to learn.” 

Rana and Hala’s older sister watch as their dreams collapse. She confirms the number of times the twins went to her and said,  

“We wish we had never entered Tawjihi, never even known it. We don’t have time to study. There is too much pressure around us. We can’t focus; we can’t even speak. We’ve been shuffled from one school to another because of displacement.”

Their grades used to be good, but now they are low. Why do they have to endure such  pain in  a critical year of their studies? 

I always try to encourage them, tell them that success is beautiful, that joy is worth it despite all agony. But they are right – how can they study under these circumstances? When I was their age, I used to sleep late studying and wake up at 3 a.m. to resume until it was time to go to school.

*** 

Let us listen to the thirty-year-old mother who hides her fear behind a smile for her children; to the forty-year-old caregiver who carries the weight of displacement while tending to others; and to the fifty-year-old elder who preserves the memory of her village and community, yet is frightened for the future. 

Fatima, a 50-year-old grandmother, said:

“We tried to resist, but the pressure grew  unbearable. Eventually, we were forced to leave. Settlers attacked us almost every day,  and they stole my sheep one year ago. They keep filming us, they come to our house,  entering without permission, photographing everything.”

“After displacement, six-year-old children have to walk long, dangerous roads to reach  school. They return home frightened, telling me they saw settlers’ tractors blocking their  way. We live in constant fear. The children cry, saying they are scared to walk  alone,” Fatima continued, referring to her grandchildren.   

A 30-year-old woman said, “We left the area not by our own will, nor because we wanted to leave or abandon it. On the contrary, we left after long patience and suffering. They tried to drive us out in every way, using the worst methods against us. In the end, they resorted to targeting women and terrorizing them. They confined a woman in a room and placed a settler at the door while she was alone inside. This was the last incident that happened before we left – it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. This method is what forced us to leave our land in exchange for protecting our women.

We left and came to this empty place with no shelter; forced to take refuge because we had no other choice. The days of displacement coincided with the heavy rains that came this year. We were soaked in the rain, and people’s belongings were left under it. Some families had to adapt and set up tents and other unprotective shelters here. Other families don’t know where to start yet again.”

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For Women’s History Month, the women of the West Bank asked, “Can you hear us?”  

Action Against Hunger asked, “Did you listen?”