Asian Dignity Initiative(ADI)  Releases 2021 Annual Research Report “Palestinian Women Who Cross the Line”

As of March 2022, ADI’s Palestinian Research Team has released the English translation of its 2021 research report Palestinian Women Who Cross the Line, which is the fourth installment of its annual research report series (Korean original released December 2021). Like preceding reports, Palestinian Women seeks to shed light on human rights issues within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through interviews with Palestinian women. Interviews were conducted by staff members at the Women’s Support Centre (WSC) in Nablus, Palestine, and supplementary text was prepared by the Palestinian Research Team based in Seoul, South Korea.

The “line” in the title refers primarily to the borders, boundaries, and limitations that Palestinian face, including both the physical as well as the abstract. Specifically, the report focuses on five groups of women affected by some “line”: 1) Women who live in the West Bank and work in illegal settlements, 2) Women who enter the 1948 territories (a term used by the Palestinians to refer to Jerusalem and the territories claimed by Israel through the 1948 Arab-Israeli War) 3) Women who work in illegal settlements and the 1948 territories without a valid work visa (of undocumented status) 4) Women who are forced to cross the “line” to serve sentences in Israeli prisons and 5) Women who live in the Gaza Strip. These women offer an honest reflection of their stories, what they hope for and what they cannot, revealing the stark reality of life under the Israeli occupation.