Threads of hope: Women in Hebron and the power of solidarity

When UNISON president Catherine McKenna, visited Palestine in 2019, she thought she knew what to expect.

“I knew about walls,” she said. “I come from west Belfast – we have the walls, but I can walk around them. They can’t. There shouldn’t be any walls in any cities dividing people. I can still drive around the wall in Belfast; you can’t in Palestine. It’s completely splitting families in two.”

In Hebron, Catherine saw devastation — soldiers, checkpoints, and separation. “A lot of the women were talking about how their husbands are in prison and unable to provide for their families,” she said. “It hit me how strong these women were.”

Among those women was Nawal (pictured above with Catherine McKenna), founder of Women in Hebron, a fairtrade cooperative. “My life was very hard,” Nawal recalls. “I grew up and got married, I had two children, and my husband was in prison for 12 years and I waited for him all this time. I had no money; the first thing I could think of was to create traditional Palestinian embroidery.”

What began as Nawal’s way to survive became a movement. “For years I was working with a group of women in the city on this project,” she said.

“We moved to the old city, and in 2007 it became a big story, not a small dream. I was marketing my dream, telling people how they could support the women. Then it became Women in Hebron.”

“In Hebron we’re giving them a chance to provide food, medical aid and education. Food is the most important thing in Palestine. The women embroider for us, we make sales and go back and pay the women.”

But the challenges are constant. “We have to keep going,” Nawal says. “We had to close our centre for two months because of shootings. Now we work only two days a week—it’s dangerous. We don’t want soldiers to focus on the centre.”

Despite the devastation, she refuses to give up. “It’s the hope – we don’t want to lose hope because if we lose the hope, we lose everything.”

Catherine echoed that call for solidarity and it’s why she has chosen Women in Hebron as her presidential year charity. “If branches and members donate to the charity, they can buy material and equipment so the women can sell their work and earn money for their families.”

“We have to carry on,” says Nawal. “My dream is to have a shop here in the UK – something big – to keep our hope alive.”

The article Threads of hope: Women in Hebron and the power of solidarity first appeared on the UNISON National site.