Samiha Khalil.

• Author: Talhami, Ghada
• Position: Palestinian woman leader - Obituary

(1923-1999)

Samiha Khalil, known lovingly to her devotees as Um Khalil, died in 1999 in Ramallah, Palestine, after a full and eventful life. Although she could be eulogized as the first woman in the Arab world to run for the office of President, Um Khalil will be memorialized instead for her good and charitable works on behalf of Palestinian women and the poor. She rose to defend the victims of the nakba in 1948 not with a fighter's sword but with the healing hand of an angel of mercy. Her dedication to those victimized by Israeli policies during the years of the occupation knew no bounds. Her first institution, known as Ina'ash al-Usrah (The Family Welfare Society), grew from its humble beginnings into a magnificent effort to teach the children of Palestinian martyrs and equip their mothers with vocational skills. Building on the well-established legacy of Palestinian female volunteerism and social welfarism, she developed these further by charting for herself and her organization a steady path of philanthropic works and self-sustaining projects.

Um Khalil also developed her own philosophy of resistance to the Israeli occupation, a philosophy based on passive resistance and conscious lack of cooperation. Because she regarded women as the most vulnerable economic element of society, she struggled to spare them a life of humiliation and suffering in the Israeli job market. Because she understood the role of women in the domestic economy, she encouraged the idea of boycotts long before the intifada. She provided the inspiration and the main working ideas for this extensive campaign of resistance to the Israeli occupation. Thus, her economic activism thrust upon her political leadership roles such as membership in the...