SEMINARS Passia Seminar 1999 Media and Communication Skills

 

 

 

 

Terry Boullata[1]

 

 

 

 worked from 1995 to 1997 with the Women’s Affairs Technical Commit­tee (WATC), which is a coalition of women’s grassroots organizations and study centers. It then represented the only lobbying center for women’s rights at a time when the country was undergoing incredible political and social changes - changes that included, amongst other things, the first elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

 

Women played an important role in introducing new rights for women dur­ing the aforementioned period. The WATC’s strategy consisted of lobbying – working toward trying to influence decision-makers – and campaigning – widening the circle of people interested in a particular issue, which together represent the democratic way of introducing change. Of course, one’s per­sonal relationships play an important role in both lobbying and campaign­ing, because it is always easier to influence a decision-maker who is known to you.

 

Using this strategy, the Palestinians began preparing for the PLC elections in 1995 by introducing the Palestinian Election Law. From the beginning, we lobbied to have a woman representative in the committee dealing with the new law, in order to guarantee that we would have access to informa­tion about what was being discussed. This was very important in order to ensure that the committee knew our input and comments concerning the law.

 

At the same time, we were busy campaigning, encouraging all Palestini­ans, but particularly women, to be a part of this important first step towards full democracy, one that would determine many if not all of the political de­cisions to come. It was not easy to convince women to participate in the elections as they regarded voting as a totally new, somewhat complicated, and even unnecessary experience. For many, their apprehension was combined with a fear of incurring the wrath of their fathers, husbands or other family members by ‘daring’ to go and cast their vote in what is, after all, still a male-dominated society.

 

In fact, there was a real problem in the villages at one point because the women were being told by their male relatives that under no circumstances were they to go and vote. Others, meanwhile, were being told, “Okay, you can go and vote, but only if you vote for the person that I am voting for.” In fact, the same thing was happening, but to a lesser extent in the towns and cities. In spite of the fact that the women there enjoy relatively more free­dom, some were afraid of being accused of ‘shaming’ their families by vot­ing.

 

Campaigning has many elements, such as the holding of workshops and lectures and the preparing of leaflets, posters, and small studies to provide would-be voters with some basic and some not-so-basic information rele­vant to the issue in question. It also involves making good use of the me­dia, which, in this particular instance, was very useful in helping us to influ­ence women to such a point that many became willing participants in the first elections.

 

Because we were targeting all women, we had to make sure that the words and images on the posters we distributed would be easily understood. All of our slogans had one message, namely, that every woman has the right to vote. We even put up posters in all the major population centers reading, “When you vote, it is God alone that sees you.” This was our way of telling women that they should not be persuaded by their husbands or fathers to vote for a particular candidate.

 

Other posters were specifically designed to influence women to vote for women, which brings us to another issue: the campaign to encourage women to become candidates. It was actually not that difficult to convince some women to become candidates. Throughout the Palestinian struggle, there have always been courageous women who are prepared to go against tradition and social custom in the name of furthering the national cause, and the women who eventually ran saw nothing strange in what they did. It was, however, far more difficult to persuade women to vote for women. One has to remember that we had some of the Islamic groups, including Hamas, saying things like “There is no good in a people whose head is a woman” and so on, which certainly did not help. What was even worse, was that even women were saying such things; for example, “But a woman’s place is in the home, looking after her husband and children.” Although hearing such things made my colleagues and me very angry, we knew where the women were coming from and that it was unreasonable to expect them to change their whole way of thinking in a moment.

 

Fortunately, in many cases the fact that voters could vote for more than one candidate actually helped us to persuade women and even some men to vote for at least one female candidate, and we actually had women say­ing, “I don’t really believe that a woman would be any good as a politician, but as I can vote for several candidates and one of the candidates in my area is a woman, I might as well vote for her.” In Jerusalem, it was much harder because 3 out of 7 were women, but I think that the male candi­dates were not good candidates in comparison with their female counter­parts, which helped us quite a bit. Many people would say “I have heard about Abu Ala’, but who is this guy Ahmad Al-Batsh?” Al-Batsh is quite well known in Jerusalem, but not, for example, in Hizma. At the last moment, Al-Batsh came to Abu Dis and the people there decided that he is a decent man and gave him their vote. Zahira Kamal, fortunately, was more well known than any of the other candidates, even Abu Ala’ with his financial support, because she has been here all her life.

 

Another important aspect of our work involved holding meetings with women in as many towns, cities, villages and camps as was possible. Prior to the meetings we printed about 10,000 copies of a very simple manual, telling women how important it was for them to vote and how easy the pro­cess actually was. Part of the manual was in a question and answer format, which made it easy to understand and helped dispel a lot of the myths sur­rounding the right of women to vote and the voting process itself. I started preparing the manual with the help of my colleagues when the Election Law was introduced at the end of November 1995, and I spent hours and hours trying to come up with something that would be easily understood by everyone. The manual was actually a very important tool, especially as it helped us to gain access to the women in the villages; we would show it to the head of the mosque, for example, and tell him that we wanted to hold a meeting there in order to teach the women living in the village how to vote. Once we had gained his support, it became much easier to win the support of the rest of the village.

 

Of course, we also used these gatherings to encourage women to vote for women and to introduce the local female candidates, and I believe that this face to face contact was very important. There was one huge rally that took place in a hall used for weddings where we managed to get Zahira Kamal, Rana Nashashibi and Hanan Ashrawi together; it was really excit­ing, espe­cially as the rally was attended by both men and women. So basi­cally, our campaign involved two things: one, making women aware about the need for them to vote and the actual voting process, and two, encour­aging women to vote for women.

 

Prior to the elections, we were also very busy with another issue: the regu­lation issued by the Ministry of the Interior that banned all women from hav­ing their own passports unless they first obtained the signature of a male relative or guardian. So we were telling women not only that they should use their right to vote, but also telling that they should lobby deci­sion-makers and get the ministry to cancel a very negative regulation that affected every single Palestinian women, even those running in the elec­tions. During the demonstrations, we would shout at the male officials, “Um Jihad, Um Jihad, go and ask for permission from Jihad.” The regulation was ridiculous! Here was a woman candidate, a national hero, the widow of Abu Jihad, and now she was being expected to go and ask her son’s per­mission to obtain a passport. Fortunately, the majority of people realized how stupid the idea actually was. Zahira Kamal was another good exam­ple; when her father died, she had been forced to bring up her brothers and sisters, being the eldest. “And now,” she would say, “you want me to go and seek the permis­sion of a brother that I myself raised as if I were his mother?” It was hard for people to justify the regulation in the face of such logical arguments.

 

Everyone may remember the large demonstrations during which thousands of women threatened the Authority that if it did not show them respect and grant them their rights, including the right to obtain a passport, then even though they had struggled throughout the Intifada to have a national author­ity, they would refuse to legitimize it by voting. We even approached the male candidates directly, telling them that if they did not give us their sup­port, we, in turn, would not give them ours; fortunately, a large number of them decided to march with us. In Ramallah, for example, at least eight male candidates marched with us and guaranteed the women watching that “If you vote for me, I will guarantee better legislation concerning women’s rights.”

 

In this very busy period we used both the local and the international media to highlight the issue and held several demonstrations and sit-ins. At one point we brought the Minister of the Interior to our office to face hundreds of women, all of them standing there shouting; he looked absolutely petrified! We spent the three or four months prior to the elections trying to bring this issue to the foreground, and, happily, the regulation was eventually can­celled on 18 January 1996, just two days before the elections took place. That was really a great triumph for all Palestinian women.

 

Returning to the elections themselves, we knew all along that there was no point in encouraging women to vote unless we actually ensured that they went from their homes to the ballot boxes on election day. The way I played the game on election day was to bring three Arab women – one from Algeria, one from Tunisia, and one from France – and take them with me to visit women in the Old City of Jerusalem, for which I was responsi­ble, and en­courage them to tell their stories. They really helped, because they were able to tell the women they met as they went from house to house, “We as Arab women had the same experiences, and we are telling you not to be afraid.”

 

The Israelis really did their best to disrupt the elections in Jerusalem. In the Old City, for example, the Shin Bet were at the doors of the polling station, telling women that if they voted, their photo would be taken and their rights to national insurance and healthcare etc., would be withdrawn. It eventually turned into a game of cat and mouse, with us running around telling the women – some of whom were really scared, despite the fact that they were convinced of the importance of voting – that they should not be afraid. Fi­nally, after some fights that took place with some Hamas people, not to mention the Shin Bet, in the middle of Al-Wad Street, we were able to col­lect the women and take them in three buses to Dahiet Al-Barid to cast their votes. In the end, the percentage of women who actually voted was fairly high, which we considered a great success, especially as this was our first election experience.

 

The elections were not a success, however, if you see how many women candidates won; out of 28 candidates from all over Palestine, only five ac­tually won a seat in the 88-member PLC. This was very disappointing, es­pecially as it really looked at one stage as if all three women candidates in Jerusalem were going to get through. Of course, we will never really know what happened – that is another question altogether. What I can say is that all the Abu Dis women swore on the Quran that they had voted for all three of the female candidates in Jerusalem, which means that at least 3,500 women voted for them in Abu Dis alone.

 

Discussion

 

Participant: Because no one really knows what happened, do you not think that it will be difficult for you to persuade women to vote in the future?

 

Terry Boullata: People are now questioning the value of the whole elec­tion process and I am not so sure that there will ever be another election. One has to remember that whatever affects women also affects men, which is why, in general, there is now so little faith amongst the general population.

 

Concerning what happened, we continued to lobby even after the votes were in, and we held several press conferences during which the issues of cheating and the loss of some ballot boxes were discussed. I remember that at one point after the votes had been counted, Zahira turned up with six ballot boxes from Beit Safafa; this was after the results had been an­nounced. I also remember the case of the ballot boxes from Izzariyya that arrived in Abu Dis two days too late; considering that the two areas are right next door to one another, there was clearly something amiss.

 

Participant: But why didn’t you go the media or the monitoring committee and explain what had been going on?

 

Rami Khouri: Whether the elections were fair or whether there was cheating are extraordinarily important issues, but they are not connected with what we are discussing today, namely, how to guarantee effective communication.

 

Terry Boullata: During the preparation period, we held a training course for women candi­dates, funded by the British Labor Party, during which some British experts provided our women candidates with training in media and communication skills. Not all the women were running as candidates for the PLC; some of them were working hard to be appointed as members of the local councils and I know that several of them were eventually elected. The course was very useful, as it taught women how to stand in front of a cam­era, how to sit, what to wear, how to gesture, and, when ad­dressing the public, how to stand, for example, and how to prepare a speech, especially how to be to the point and not patronize or bore the audience by using flowery and un­necessary language. In other words, to talk about points one, two and three without going off the track, which is a common tendency amongst Arabs. Many of Ramallah’s local council women took part in the program and benefited a great deal. I myself learned how to deal with the media more effectively, and now, if a journalist rings for an interview at an inopportune moment I simply say, “Give me your phone number and I will call you back in half an hour,” by which time I am usually more relaxed and far better prepared.