My name is Amani Mustafa and I’m the Country Director of Women for Women International in Palestine. I live in Hebron in the West Bank where I grew up. I want to share a recent experience I had, traveling with my four-year-old niece, to give an insight of how even the most mundane activities can be so filled with anxiety and stress under the Israeli occupation.
Due to the numerous Israeli checkpoints in various areas of the West Bank, which have drastically increased over the past year, social interactions and regular visits between friends and relatives have become nearly impossible. However, a person cannot live alone in this world. Despite all the difficulties, we always strive to maintain the spirit of sisterhood and friendship among all members of the community. Although I receive numerous invitations from friends and loved ones to participate in both their joyful and sorrowful occasions, the dangerous roads and intense checkpoints become a barrier that distance me and my family from social visits.
After more than seven months of not being able to see my close friends, I decided to attend my friend’s event celebrating the birth of her child. We usually celebrate the birth of a newborn, but since October 7, we feel a sense of shame in celebrating any occasion given the devastating death toll and unimaginable suffering. But our faith in life and our right to exist compel us to steal moments of happiness from this dark reality.
Since many children would be present at the event, I took my niece along as I knew it would be a rare occasion where she would be able to play freely with children and bring her some joy and laughter in the midst of a war. I was already aware that the checkpoints would pose one of the obstacles preventing us from reaching our destination,
but I did not expect that the journey would be fraught with dangers due to sudden changes in routes and the establishment of temporary checkpoints by the occupation soldiers.
My niece and I prepared ourselves and brought gifts for our friend and her newborn. I got into my car, taking a piece of my soul with me to spend a joyful time with the children. Normally it takes twenty minutes to drive to Bethlehem. But now with all the added checkpoints, side roads, forced diversions, I couldn’t estimate how long it would take. After only ten minutes since leaving home, when we reached one of the checkpoints, we learned that it was closed and that we had to take another side road to reach our destination. This side road was almost desert-like, filled with dust, and the entrances were very narrow, making it difficult for vehicles to move. It was the first time in my life that I felt such fear that my veins froze inside my body. How would I answer a child's questions about what was happening? Why were we being stopped by the Israeli soldiers? What would they do to us? Despite many cars stopping, the soldiers decided to let us pass without a direct stop, but just the feeling of being ‘escorted’ by occupation soldiers was enough to ignite my nerves.
We overcame this ordeal and reached the event where my niece enjoyed some sweets and played with the children in the front yard. She had such a wonderful time that she didn’t want to return home early. However, I felt we had to leave before it got dark given the arduous journey back home.
We arrived at the al-Nashash checkpoint, the southern exit leading to Hebron from Bethlehem. It was around 4:30 PM, and before us was a long line of cars waiting for a signal from the soldier at the checkpoint to allow them to pass. The first hour passed, then the second, while we waited, unsure of what was happening ahead in the long line of cars. As we began to approach the checkpoint, I felt I was losing control of my emotions, sensing that something would happen, especially since my niece saw some cars being stopped on the right side, with the drivers and passengers taken out for inspection. For me, that was a nightmare. I just wished for us to come out safe. Knowing that the best way to avoid a psychological crisis, as advised by many of my friends and partners in Gaza, is to give a child a sense of safety and that what’s happening around them doesn’t concern them.
Despite preventing our children from using mobile devices and watching YouTube due to its potential psychological side effects on their behavior and mental abilities, I dared to give my niece my phone and played her children’s songs to distract her from the chaos around. But it was a futile attempt, as I struggled to shield her from the reality that the faces she saw at the checkpoint, the uniforms they wore, and the weapons they carried resembled the images she had seen on our way to Bethlehem.
Children in Palestine grow up too fast. She also knew that if our town were invaded and a security curfew imposed on it, she would be deprived of going to kindergarten, where she eagerly rushes to go every morning.
Upon reaching the checkpoint, I tried to smile to hide the extent of the fear I felt inside. I desperately hoped to evoke compassion from the hearts of the female soldiers, showing them that I had a child with me who deserves to live in safety. One soldier asked me to turn off the engine, and I did, while she requested to see my identity card. I presented it to her, maintaining a smile as I sought to prevent my beautiful niece from seeing anything that could linger in her memory for life. When the soldier noticed that I was playing music for the children, she asked how old my niece was. I told her she was four and a half years old. The soldier didn’t ask many more questions, but she took my ID number, a picture of my ID, and a photo of the car’s license plate. After checking me by the crew at the checkpoint, they wished me a happy day. How happy that day felt! My niece asked me, “Who are they?” I told her they were just girls like us who wanted to check if we were alright. Is it easy to lie to children? Yet, she responded, “No, they’re soldiers. They carry weapons. They look like the soldiers we see on the news.” How can we hide this truth?
I tried to calm her down, attempting to divert the conversation by saying that maybe there was some resemblance to what they wore, but that they were just regular people like us. Finally, after three hours we reached home safely. I was shaking from relief and the sheer mental exhaustion of this trip. I am so grateful that nothing happened to us, but I keep thinking back to how helpless we were, to be at the soldier’s mercy and that things could have gone terribly wrong in an instant. The constant worry of how this would impact my precious little niece, the stress of it all, brought me to tears. For the first time I experienced true helplessness and intense fear, not for myself but for my niece. In that moment I imagined all the women, regardless of their names, religions, and ethnicities, how they could bear the burden of LOSS. It’s not just any loss; it’s a fear unlike any other. It’s fear for their children – their little angels who deserve to live in safety and with dignity.
Yet, today in Palestine over 16,000 children have been killed since October 7, 2023 and thousands more are living with life-threatening injuries.
I now know how difficult it is to feel so weak that you can’t protect a child who trusts you blindly and sees you as the only person capable of keeping them safe. This is how our children see us. The hardest thing for a person to feel is their helplessness and inability to ward off danger from a child who only knows the world through their innocence—their toys, their gifts, their schoolbooks, and their small belongings that represent their world.
In these moments, Hind Rajab’s voice echoes in my ears, calling out for help that never arrived. She was a six-year-old child who along with six other members of her family were trapped in a car which came under Israeli fire. How can we, as women—whether we’re biological mothers or not—witness what’s happening in Gaza and remain silent? What if Hind were our child? What would we have done to save her life? I believe that we, as women, must hold perpetrators accountable for the massacres of children, regardless of our positions in this ongoing conflict. We have a responsibility to protect these young lives and uphold their rights.
How can we, in this era, turn a blind eye to the pain and suffering endured by women and children in Gaza, the West Bank, Sudan, Yemen, the DRC, Ukraine and so many other war-torn places? They are drowning in wars, families pulled apart by the machinery of conflict. We must find the courage to give these children answers, to offer them hope.
We cannot and must not stand idly by in the face of destruction. We must do everything in our power to ensure their futures are secure, guiding them into a world built on the foundation of safety, love, and peace.
