Palestinian Kippot and Chinese Kaffiyot: Occupation has another meaning

Accoriding to an article entitles From Palestinian embroidery to Israeli skullcaps, Arab women in the West Bank are occupied. Their occupation is knitting Kippot (skull caps) for Orthodox Jews. The article doesn't say if the kippot have embroidered on them "Jerusalem" or other such messages. It tells us: 

Of all the cottage industries you might expect to find in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian crocheting of Jewish skullcaps may seem one of the oddest. In fact, it is no more incongruous than the global economy itself. Creating the colorful cap – known as qors (disc) in Arabic and a kippah (dome) in Hebrew – keeps hundreds of women busy in villages like Deir Abu Meshal. The village's women have been making the religious headgear for their Jewish neighbors for some 40 years, though before that they were renowned for their traditional Palestinian dress embroidery.

 

Almost every house in the village of 3,000 west of Ramallah makes the little caps. It's a social event as well as a helpful cash-earner. Women bring their wool and needles to each other's home to crochet and chat.

 

"We make qors while having a gossip," said Umm Ali, a mother of three whose husband is unemployed. "We meet each other and we make money at the same time."

 

The women make around five caps a day, worth about $3 each.

 

"Women here can't sit down without knitting," jokes Ruqaya Barghouthi. "We've gotten used to it."

 

Six Palestinian skullcap dealers distribute the wool, needles and the models to women in this village and 10 neighboring villages. The finished articles are collected each week and shipped to Israeli retailers. The skullcaps are also exported to the US.

 

"The kippah business is what makes my shop busy," said Riyad Ata, whose grocery store serves as a collection point for finished caps from some 100 women. "Women buy stuff from the kippah money they earn."

 

Observant Jews wear a kippah to cover the head in acknow­­ledgement of the supreme God.

 

The women of Deir Abu Meshal see it as a matter of business. They have no qualms about furnishing skullcaps for the people of the occupying po­wer, some say; the work is convenient and they don't have to travel.

 

Working for the occupier is hardly a new thing among Palestinians. Unemployment levels in the Israeli occupied territories, and among Palestinian citizens of Israel, are so high that they have been employed in a wide variety of apparently incongruous labor – from work in Israeli flag factories to building the Israeli separation barrier, which is being erected on expropriated Palestinian land.

 

"Without this knitting business, people here would be very poor," said Nema Khamis, 50, who passed on her skills to her daughters and daughter-in-law.

 

Palestinian weavers used to make the traditional keffiyeh, the chequered Arab headscarf late leader Yasser Arafat made a national Palestinian symbol. Much of that business has now gone to China, where costs are lower.

 

One meaning of "occupier" evidently, is "one who provides an occupation!

 

Ami Isseroff