Cut from a different cloth: Palestinian textile company bridges the divide
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Version 0 of 1. Tamara Alarja walks between the factory floor, where machines making and dyeing fabrics are whirring, and her office, where 20 orders are in progress. The Palestinian woman, 29, is managing the only remaining textile factory in historic Palestine. Not only does the business have a history of female leadership, it is defying the Israeli occupation and bridging the Israeli-Palestinian divide by servicing both markets. The business started from Tamara’s grandmother’s house in the Palestinian Christian town of Beit Jala in the mid-1960s. Leila Alarja, now 79, and her husband, Geries, 85, had little money in the 1960s – Geries worked as a waiter in a local hotel and Leila started sewing at home. They had nine children. “It grew slowly over time. When her children were teenagers she had gotten good at sewing and had expanded to two sewing machines,” says Tamara. Her grandmother started getting orders for school uniforms. Eventually demand grew, and the family added more sewing machines. Geries quit his job and created a fabric knitting and dyeing section in their home. By the 1980s, Arja Textile Company was fully operational and in the 1990s two tall factory blocks were built around the couple’s house, employing more than 120 local Palestinians. Inside her house today, Leila sits playing on her iPad and checking on her grandchildren on Facebook as she enjoys her retirement. “I started this whole thing with two sewing machines. Thank God for everything,” she says. Today, the factory produces half of its own fabric (the rest is imported) and employs 70 people, of whom 50 are women, a figure that defies a trend in the Palestinian territories. In a speech to mark International Women’s Day in 2015, the president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Ola Awad, said only 19% of Palestinian women participated in the labour force, compared with about 71% of men. Samia al-Botmeh, policy adviser for the Palestinian policy network al-Shabaka, says the low participation rate of Palestinian women is striking as girls have high education rates. “By 2000, Palestinian girls had higher school enrolment rates and lower dropout rates than boys,” she says. “Palestinian girls’ primary and secondary school enrolment ratios are also higher than boys in the entire Middle East and North Africa region.” According to Awad, the gender pay gap is also wide, with men earning, on average, 106 shekels (about £18) a day, while women earn 81. Across the Palestinian territories, nearly a quarter of the workforce is unemployed, and the economy is stagnating, propped up by foreign aid. The long-running conflict means restrictions on the movement of people and goods. The Palestinian economy is heavily reliant on Israel, which buys 90% of Palestinian exports, including raw material and produce. According to PalTrade (Palestine Trade Center), exports have long lagged behind imports to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 2012, the last year for which figures are available, Palestinian imports were worth $3.83bn (£2.58bn), while exports stood at $739m. Almost three-quarters of those imports came from Israel, followed by Turkey and China. Keeping Arja Textile Company open has been a struggle in the face of two intifadas – Palestinian uprisings against Israel, which have weakened Palestinian businesses. The explosion of Chinese imports and steep overheads for water, electricity and fuel have only made things harder. Defying these odds and keeping the factory doors open is a challenge for Tamara, who left towards the end of the second intifada to study. The costs of running the factory and supplying it with enough water to carry out the dyeing process are high. But the business is still selling up to 5,000 items a week and making £2m in sales a year. “It’s a struggle every day to keep this factory going because we have to deal with so many expenses and difficulties with Israeli checkpoints, timing and accurate papers for the drivers. But the more difficult it becomes the more determined I become that I want to keep this going.” On one side of the factory, Muslim Palestinian women wearing headscarves are producing dresses for conservative Muslim women. On another side orders are being filled for Christmas sweatshirts. Pre-packaged orders sit next to a pile of T-shirts for Christian pilgrims visiting Jerusalem’s Old City. Tamara flicks through a booklet of cotton items that are in high demand in Israel. It includes leggings, crop tops, shorts, wrap dresses and harem pants – things you’d see on the beach in Tel Aviv. Her two biggest customers are a distributor in Israel that serves secular markets and another in the West Bank city of Hebron catering to Muslim women. This business framework has been criticised as Palestinians come under pressure to boycott Israel. “I understand boycotting is a peaceful way to demonstrate what you’re feeling against Israeli policy, but at the same time life has to keep going and you have to choose your battles,” she says. “A lot of people I know have stopped buying basic products made by Israel, like dairy products. Honestly, I don’t think it’s a legitimate way to protest [against] Israel’s policies. “I told the Palestinian ministry of commerce that they have so many campaigns on boycotting Israeli products, but they could have used the same money to advertise Palestinian products,” says Tamara. She sees Israel and Palestine as one market: “I still believe it’s the same market – one country. No matter how you try to divide it, it’s the same environment. “I know politics divide us and they want us to have two states, but if you look at things from the ground, I think it’s one country: if Israel’s economy is not doing well, our economy is not doing well,” she says. |