“Let us recommit ourselves to standing up for inalienable human rights of all women around the world.”
Fran Heathcote spoke at a recent online ‘Women for Palestine’ event on Monday 9 March. You can read her speech in full below.
It is really important that we are here today, as women, to talk about Palestine – and about the plight of Palestinian women as we mark International Women’s Day.
PCS has been proud to support the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, proud to support the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, and proud to have led the way in the UK trade union movement in mobilising support for the Palestinian cause.
While much of the political and media focus is understandably now on the bombardment of Iran and Lebanon, the suffering and the injustice faced by the Palestinian people has not gone away.
Despite the so-called ceasefire, there is still a blockade of Gaza, still regular bombing raids in Gaza, still an illegal occupation, settlement-building and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
In December, it was reported that instead of the required 600 daily trucks of medical supplies, just five were being permitted into Gaza by the Israelis.
Half of all hospitals in Gaza are shut, some reduced to rubble. More than 1,700 healthcare workers were killed in the two years of bombardment before the ceasefire.
There are approximately 55,000 pregnant women in Gaza, all in urgent need of care, and around 5,000 women each month give birth, some without access to a midwife or even basic medical supplies like pain relief.
A 32-year-old midwife, Yasmine Ahmed from North Gaza, told reporters late last year:
“We struggle to find gloves, gauze, sterile scissors and beds. Sometimes we work on the floor or on blankets … the lack of electricity and water makes work almost impossible.”
A UN report tells a similar story – women giving birth with no access to pain relief, in far from sterile conditions.
Another midwife, Sahar, told the UN: “I had no gloves, no tools … I used a knife to cut the umbilical cord and wet wipes as bandages.”
Sahar described a birth she attended where the mother haemorrhaged after delivery. “There was no blood [for a transfusion], no transport, no doctor. We couldn’t stop the bleeding”. The mother died, leaving behind her newborn baby.
This is the reality of life in Gaza for Palestinian women – as told by Palestinian women. And we must tell their stories. Too often in war and genocide, people are reduced to numbers, statistics – and we lose sight of the real-life human impact.
And the Israeli Government ministers dehumanise Palestinians as “terrorists”, “animals”, “savages”. These are people, just like us, but in an inhumane situation.
According to the World Health Organisation last week, around 200 trucks are now getting through, up from five in December, but still only one-third of the necessary 600 daily trucks required. And there are 18,000 people in Gaza who need medical evacuation, but who are unable to leave.
According to a recent German academic study, the genocide in Gaza has reduced average life expectancy for Palestinians in Gaza to 26.1 years for men and 34.3 years for women.
Meanwhile, a recent study in the health journal, The Lancet, found that women, children and the elderly comprised over 56 per cent of violent deaths in Gaza in the 15 months following 7th October 2023.
These are the bald numbers, but behind each statistic is a human life or human death – and a story of the impact on those who remain in intolerable conditions.
To mark International Women’s Day, let us recommit ourselves to standing up for inalienable human rights of all women around the world, and especially those brave women struggling just to survive in Palestine.
Solidarity.
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