How difficult is it to be gay or lesbian in Palestine?
Have you found any other place in the world which is
easy to be gay and lesbian? [Laughs] Every time
I think there is a place where to be gay is easy,
something happens that shocks me how homophobic the world
is. Not only homophobic but racist, chauvinistic, unfair,
unjust. I'm so pessimistic right now. You
called me [after] a demonstration where I almost
cried, hearing slogans and seeing children running in the
street, calling, "We want Palestine
free." For a Palestinian person, the main
threat is the Israeli army.
So the fact of occupation is more important than gay
rights at the moment?
For the West Bankers and Gaza Strip people,
before even starting to deal with women's
rights and gay rights, the first thing is human rights and
the Israeli occupation. We're talking about a
community that hasn't had a chance to develop
themselves as a society. So for me, putting the issue
of homosexuality on the Palestinian societal agenda was a
huge step and a huge challenge. With my personal
struggle and the collective struggle of Aswat, we have
really succeeded to put that issue [there].
But still you must face many obstacles.
Last month a woman told me, "But you know that
Palestinians are considered really backward on the
issue of homosexuality and women's
rights." I told her, "What is backward?
Backward to whom? Are we comparing the Middle East,
the Arab community, to the Western world? This is not
a fair comparison." She said, "Why?" I
said, "Because you're comparing our
scale to your scale without really taking into
consideration if we have our own scale." I think that
this is something that maybe Aswat is starting to do
by creating our own language.
Is that your goal, to offer a sense of camaraderie and
support, not to mention visibility?
I want to reach every woman in our community and
just tell her that she's not alone, that
she's OK. I think for many gays and lesbians,
sometimes they're living in a place where they
think they're the only ones and they're
probably freaks. That's the main goal for me: to be
out, to be active, and to continue my own struggle and
our collective struggle as Aswat. I will give you a
simple example: Me and my partner, we have the radio
always on one Arabic channel, and last week there was a
youth program on and they were discussing
homosexuality. The question was, "What if your
brother or sister is gay, what would you do?" The
people who were calling to respond were horrible, so I
decided to call. I said what I had to say, not only as
Aswat but just as a person. They of course recognized
me and had a lot of questions to ask.
Being so well-known must be hard.
I want to be nobody sometimes. But it's OK. I
hope that something good comes out of it. Yesterday I
was in Jerusalem, sitting with a friend of mine, and
she said, "Well, I have to tell you, a guy that
called to the Jerusalem Open House [an LGBT center],
he heard you on the radio and he knew how to search
for a place for him. He said he was thinking he was
sick, and when he heard this [radio] program, he had the
courage to call and to find the group that he can
belong to."
