A Palestine passport

"Only the solidarity of a group permits action, struggle, resistance, or victory. The isolation of individuals leads them to disaster. Women live in separation a shared condition.”

— Simone de Beauvoir

Back in 2016, in Doha, her desperate eyes pierced my soul. She was asking for legal help — to leave behind a life without rights and begin again in a country where she could live freely and independently.

In her hands the Palestinian passport. A document that, in theory, should have opened doors, but in reality served only to remind her of her statelessness. Little can be done for those who belong to a nation trapped in the bureaucracy of embassies, unrecognised by most countries — and as a result, barely able to recognise themselves.

She, like so many others, suffered a double discrimination: for being Palestinian, and for being a woman. Women who, like you and me, seek nothing more than to preserve their dignity.

What I witnessed then was a symbol of a broader, ongoing tragedy — one that continues to unfold in 2025. Palestine is being dismantled before our eyes. Gaza lies in ruins under siege and bombardment, the West Bank is being carved up, and an entire people are being dispossessed of land, rights, and identity. The systematic destruction of a nation, often met with silence or paralysis by the international community, is not only a political failure — it is a moral collapse. And it is the most vulnerable, like that woman in Doha, who carry the weight of that collapse alone