Hundreds of Arab Israeli women marched on July 27th in Nazareth to demand a safer public space, and to protest the disparity in health services between the country’s center and its periphery, namely the Negev and the Galilee. The protest was symbolically combined with a sports activity.
The protesters claim that alongside the discriminatory national policy, the local authorities act lazily in everything related to the promotion of a healthy lifestyle. An example of this is the lack of safe walking routes and the lack of specialist doctors in the neighborhoods.
According to the organizers, women especially suffer from this reality because of the difficulty of leaving their neighborhoods alone safely for health or leisure purposes.
"Imagine a situation in which a woman lives in a neighborhood where there are no specialist doctors, there are no safe walking routes to play sports and there is no organization in the local authority that promotes health,” the organizers said. “This is the situation that prevails in most of the neighborhoods in the Galilee.”
The organizations that participated in the march were: Mothers for Life, Committee of the Heads of Authorities, the Scottish Hospital, Shatil, the Society for the Promotion of Health in the Arab Society – Hari, the Civil Forum for the Promotion of Health in the Galilee, the French Hospital, Walktogether, and Kung Fu Sakhnin.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Matt Levy.
