Army misbehavior sometimes took bizarre and anti-female forms.
Have you heard about the incidents of 17 Palestinian women in Hebron who have been strip-searched by Israeli police looking for weapons? The B’Tselem human rights organization did excellent work in learning about this, documenting it, and publicizing it.
On Sunday, 40 Israeli women went to Hebron for a solidarity visit with two of the Palestinian women who had undergone a strip search. The B’Tselem fieldworker took us to the home of two of the victims and their families, with their prior agreement, of course, and we sat on their large balcony as they described the event: Israeli police entered their home, forcing the women to undress completely, doing body searches for weapons. In this case, policewomen conducted the searches, although in 2 homes, policemen were present during the undressing. No weapons were found anywhere, and no men were told to undress. This was clearly a case of harassment. We expressed our anger and shame to the women, and they expressed surprise that we had come out there just to tell them this.
In the next room were some 15 children, the smallest ones terrified of having Israelis in their home again, so I spent my time finding ways to get close to them, being playful in broken Arabic. On the balcony, I heard one of our women take a scarf off her neck and place it on the woman telling her story and embrace her. Another removed a peace dove pin and placed it on the other Palestinian woman. The ice broke, and soon the women were chatting, the baby (who had also been strip searched!!) was being passed from lap to lap, and we ate tangerines and sipped sweet dark coffee, trying to dissipate some of the bad feelings. It was good we had made the visit. As we were leaving, the children came over to me shyly, one by one, and shook my hand.
By the way, representatives of Bat Shalom, who met with the Minister of Internal Security to protest the strip searches, were told that this was not a policy. Seventeen cases in 3 months sounds a lot like policy, though.
Marching in Tel Aviv 1988. Photo: Rachel Ostrowicz