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WISE WOMEN | PAGE 2 OF 3 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - What makes the trio's approach unique is that, unlike many of the Israelis and Palestinians who come to the United States to lecture about the Arab-Israeli situation, none of the women offers easy answers that reduce the conflict to ideological formulas or pithy sound bites. Instead, they provide a personal, female view of a grinding communal war, where the front lines are wherever a Palestinian and a Jew happen to meet -- on a bus, in the supermarket, on the street -- and where the feelings of real people caught up in the bloodletting are seldom heard. Asali and Habash recall paying condolence calls to the families of Palestinian youths killed in street clashes with Israeli soldiers and settlers. "It's not like the news reports that simply say, '10 people were killed today,'" says Habash. "These young people who die are not just numbers. They were somebody's son. We try to explain what it's like to go into their homes and talk to their mothers." Shohat, a mother of three, talks about watching her 18-year-old son go off to the army to fight in a conflict she despises. She talks about her inner conflicts -- a mother's urge to protect her son from the war's ugliness and danger vs. an Israeli's civic responsibility to obey the law. "It's a very difficult issue for a mother to send her children to the army during these times," she explains. The women also paint a realistic picture of Jerusalem that differs greatly from official Israeli claims that the city is united and all its residents, both Jews and Arabs, enjoy equal services. As a member of the city council in the holy city, Shohat speaks with authority when she talks about the huge discrepancy in conditions between the Jewish west side and the traditionally Arab east side, both of which have been under Israeli rule since 1967. Since then, West Jerusalem has grown into a very modern city, while East Jerusalem remains like a large Arab village, with poor roads, bad sidewalks, poor sewage, insufficient electrical power, poor telephone service and very few gardens. Another example of the inequality, Shohat says, can be found in the schools. Israel's Education Ministry funds schools on both sides of the city. But Shohat says Jerusalem's municipal government quietly provides extra funds to Jewish schools in West Jerusalem, denying similar funds to East Jerusalem schools. The same goes for building permits. Some 100 such permits are approved for Jews for every one that is approved for a Palestinian, she says. As a result, the East Jerusalem Arabs live in crowded, uncomfortable conditions, while the Jewish population of the city flourishes and grows. In this way, Shohat says, the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is creating facts on the ground to bolster his argument that Jerusalem is a Jewish city. And while Netanyahu is creating these facts, he's been busy destroying others. Asali and Habash tell their audiences heart-rending stories of the Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses, usually on the pretext that they were built without a permit. Often the houses are the homes of large Palestinian families that have lived in Jerusalem for generations. "Imagine the government comes to you one morning, gives you 10 minutes advance notice to save your belongings and then bulldozes your house," Asali says. "What would you do? How would you feel?" Audiences usually don't have an answer.
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