‘My heart is in Palestine and I want to go back’

A Drogheda woman who spent five years fighting for the rights of political prisoners in Palestine says she was unable sleep for a year due to the horrors of life under occupation.

Jenny Boylan found her passion in the area of human rights and got the opportunity to travel to Palestine in 2010 where she worked for an organisation that supported political prisoners detained for breaking Israeli military orders.

Having only intended staying in Palestine for one year, the activist decided to make the country her home taking up residence in the city of Ramallah in central West Bank saying she “fell in love” with the people and culture and the need to help innocent people.

Since the October 7th horror Hamas attack on Gaza that killed 1,250 Israeli civilians and soldiers approximately 25,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict with thousands more believed to be buried under rubble. Jenny who was forced to leave the country after being denied a visa renewal in 2017 says she is “heartbroken” at the atrocity.

“I did my masters in Human Right Law and I pretty much knew I wanted to go to Palestine and I got the chance to go there in September 2010,” she said.

“I was working with a human rights organisation called Addameer and they support political prisoners,” added Jenny.

“I worked in communications assisting the researchers and the lawyers and help edit any documents that had to be presented or published in English. I would also work on press releases and we would have done a lot of work for Amnesty International highlighting particular cases of high profile prisoners.

“I only intended to spend a year there but I was so stunned and shocked, I felt like I couldn't leave. I just developed such a love and respect for the people and the culture.”

The Drogheda woman's role was centred in part around Israel's duel judiciary system with its separate system for Palestinians in the West Bank owing to the reason it was accused of being an Apartheid state.

“It was a real eye opener,” said the passionate activist. “ I watched student union leaders come out in jump suits and shackles in a court where they had been arrested for breaking military orders. The judge was military, the lawyers were military, it was crazy.

“A student union it is a vital part of university life but in Palestine any activity at all like that is regarded as a threat by Israel.

“Sometimes people won't be told a military order has been issued until it has been broken. There are specific courts for this in an enormous complex that has a cage running around it.

“ The courts are prefabs and you wait in the courtyard to be called to your hearing. All of the mothers, aunts and sisters of the women detained who were there to support them asked me if I'd been strip searched on the way in because they had.”

And although Jenny was aware of the volatile situation in the country, she says the stark reality once she arrived there was “shocking.”

“I literally couldn't sleep right for the whole of the first year,” she said. “I just couldn't believe the conversations I was having, the things I was seeing, the research I was reading.

“There is a certain amount understood about the situation but it wasn't a touch on the depth and scale of the persecution the Palestinians live under.

“It's a situation where the occupation reaches into every single part of a person's life, their public life, how they move around in the world and their personal life, who they can marry, where they can live, where they can go to school, where they can access health.”

Jenny points out that Israel controls all natural resources, and has denied the construction of all new Palestinian wells since 1967.

“When I was there in 2011, Israel demolished 89 water-related structures in the West Bank, even structures to collect rainwater were trashed,” she said.

“It controls the supply of water, selling water to Palestinians at higher rates than Israelis and limiting that supply so you have to be careful in your water use. We often ran out.”

Jenny says other parts of the West Bank had a greater military presence than Ramallah, something she found out during her time working in Nablus in the north and Hebron in the south.

“Israelis fly aircrafts overhead so fast that it breaks the sound barrier, it's part of what they call making their presence known,” said the Drogheda woman. “ The bang is like thunder, my head nearly hit the ceiling I jumped so hard but my Palestinian colleagues would barely flinch, they were so used to it,” she added.

Irish people are welcomed in Palestine with “open arms” according to Jenny who said:

“We have a long shared history of foreign domination and occupation and resisting it as well.

“I couldn't believe the welcome that we got. When I was interviewing for my job in Nablus, I lost my wallet and didn't realise until I was trying to pay for vegetables on a market on my way back.

“I was rooting through my bag, couldn't find my wallet and panicked. And the market trader gave me the bag of veg for free and gave me an extra- 20 shekels to get the bus home.

“Most of my Jewish friends I met in Palestine and these are American/Canadian/European teachers, aid workers, journalists etc who were really welcomed into the neighbourhoods where they lived. They are a very kind, welcoming, open people. It's only of the things that makes what's happening to them even more unbearable.”

People around the world watched on in horror as the events of October 7th unfolded before our eyes when Hamas launched its attack on Israel but for someone who had spent a large chunk of their lives there it was “harrowing” according to Jenny who said:

“My stomach turned when I was the footage on October 7th because I knew the pay back would be on the people of Gaza. For people in the West Bank they have been saying to me for the last couple of months that it is war there. Every town and village is surrounded by soldiers and they are looking for a reason to shoot.

“I think people don't understand how enormously vulnerable every single man, woman and child is there, nowhere is safe, not even your own bed.”

Jenny says that people's perception of Palestine has been hijacked by horror and war but the country is steeped in culture and beauty.

“I'm training to become a herbalist and I don''t think I would have ever done that if I hadn't lived in Palestine.

“They have a seasonal way of living when it comes to food, people are very connected to the land.

“I'm a farmer's daughter and I love that and I would go walking the hills with people who'd be able to tell me about their wild plants and what they use them for medicinally and in cooking. It is just such a rich beautiful culture.

“The nature is stunning, the poetry, the literature , the food, the music. They are people who love to live and know how to live when they get half the chance, they know how to enjoy life.”

Jenny was forced to leave the country she made home in 2017 when her visa was denied, something she said left her “heartbroken.”

“I was doing communications for EU projects when I went for a visa renewal and it was I spent Christmas morning in 2017 at a military base outside Ramallah having my interview and they just refused and didn't give any reason and don't have to give any reason,” she explains.

“ I was absolutely heartbroken. I had a small business there, I had cats I had to adopt out, I was very happy in my life there I did not want to leave. For people like me, it's understood that Israel is not friendly with anybody who does human rights work.

“My heart is there and I want to go back. I am hopeful that things are going to move forward and I'll be able to go back to a different Palestine.”

The former resident of Ramallah says she feels like it is her duty to speak out for the Palestinian people whose voices are being silenced in the occupied territory.

“The only thing they ever asked from us was to tell people what was happening there.

“Palestine cannot go back to the way things were on October 6th, it was no life. They will not accept their colonisation.

“ Does any of us want to live in a world where people turn the other way when they see your suffering, nobody benefits from a world where that is happening.”