Years ago, it became evident that every visitor to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, stationed and teacher in the mosque, Hanadi Al-Halawani, interconnected at its doors and corridors, sometimes reading the Qur’an and starting a live broadcast of the facts of the call to prayer from its space, and forcibly outside it with the number of years being removed from it until now 7 years.
With a gentle smile, she responds to those who greet her, and hides behind her the chapters of a long story of pain that is far from her heart's desires, her challenge, and her insistence on continuing her journey in support and spreading the issue of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The teacher at Al-Aqsa Mosque and the stationer, Hanadi Al-Halawani, with a group of people who are separated from the mosque (Al-Jazeera)
Al-Maqdisiyah Hanadi al-Halawani was born in 1980, and she grew up in the Wadi al-Jouz neighborhood in a house whose outside balcony overlooks the Al-Aqsa, and her attachment to the place began from an early age, as she constantly accompanied her grandmother to this holy place, which was considered the main place for neighbors and relatives to meet to perform worship and entertainment.
When Hanadi reached the age of eight, she was sitting on the balcony and singing. I was surprised by her grandmother crying, and when I asked her about the reason, the grandmother replied, "I hope to hear your beautiful voice this beautiful Quran being heard in the Al-Aqsa Mosque one day."
This phrase stuck with the girl until she became a young woman, and after her marriage she enrolled in the specialization of social and family service at Al-Quds Open University, but the phrase echoed in her memory, especially since her grandmother used to tell her when she was young that she wished she had the opportunity to learn the Qur’an.
Murabitat banned from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque, including Al-Halawani, confronting the occupation soldiers and settlers (Al-Jazeera - Archive)
The science and bond trip
In 2007, Al-Halawani decided to join the Qur'an House in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and at that time she was pregnant with her youngest child Hamza, who had completed with her since his birth the journey of learning the Qur’an over the first six months of his life.
About that period, she said, "I got the first Quranic leave that year, and I continued to go to Al-Aqsa, and I decided that as soon as Hamza entered the school, I would give my time to ribat in the mosque while my children were in school."
Rabat’s wish in the first two qiblah was fulfilled in 2011 with the launch of the mastabas project, which I heard about by chance and decided to join it by any means. I applied to join it as a teacher, and when I was asked about the reason for applying for the project in the interview, she said, “My love and my love for Al-Aqsa Mosque,” so she was accepted directly.
Hanadi began with a quorum of a daily class, but she refused to leave the mosque and remained in the mosque from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon, and she witnessed the birth of the project and its expansion later, with 600 women joining the circles of knowledge.
Within a year, she turned from a Qur’an teacher to the coordinator of the mastabas project in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, from which other projects emerged, such as summer camps that included a thousand children in the mosque while their mothers received various religious sciences.
The role of the marabouts during the storming of extremists angered the occupation and pushed it to intensify its pursuit of the Halawani Association (Al-Jazeera - Archive)
Thus, the intelligence services and the Israeli occupation police began to pursue the Halawani station, and the first of the prosecutions was her threat from an intelligence officer inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque, who told her, "I am here to tell you that it is my job to maintain calm in a place for the three religions, not only for Muslims, and you are stirring up trouble in it."
She did not yield to his threats and he did not stop her in return, so he expanded the circle by contacting her husband, father and brother and threatening them with the necessity to leave her work in Al-Aqsa, and for this she said, “My role in the mosque intimidated them by distributing science circles in sensitive places that the extremists target inside the mosque, and by urging women to protest To break-ins and not to be silent. "
In late 2012, Al-Halawani was summoned for investigation for the first time, and at that time she was threatened to prevent her from travel and treatment, and the officer told her at the time, "It is forbidden for your daughter Alaa to marry while you are far from her because we will deport you to Gaza or Turkey and you will not enter Jerusalem again," Al-Halawani says. "And in the same year they handed me a decision. By deporting two months from Al-Aqsa. "
A group of expelled women listed on the blacklist, which Al-Halawani turned to the golden list (Al-Jazeera-Archive)
Perseverance and persistence
Al-Halawani responded to the decision to deport her by learning a new Quranic leave, and she took her exams in Jordan, then returned to her activities in Al-Aqsa as she was with a new flag, and at that time she was called "Farasha Al-Aqsa" in light of her constant movement between the circles of knowledge responsible for her.
With the science terraces project banned and the Almoravids considered a "terrorist organization" in 2015, Halawani was included with dozens of women on the "blacklist" banned from entering the mosque, so the name was changed to the golden list and printed on golden scarves worn by all women, which angered the intelligence services even more and made it vulnerable to more. Abuse.
Hanadi al-Halawani's star shone in the two revolts, Bab al-Lions' Gate in the summer of 2017 and Bab al-Rahma in the winter of 2019, and during the last rampage, while she was away from the mosque, a large intelligence force stormed her home and took her for investigation at the police station.
And she said, "I used to publish extensively on social platforms about the developments and seriousness of the situation, and appealed to the endowments and the Jordanian king, so the investigator told me: You traveled to Indonesia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey and others to talk about the occupation and conduct daily press interviews for the same purpose. I did not respond to everything he said then. I said calmly, there is no need to send all this force to arrest me while I am already away from the mosque. "
The officer replied to that by saying, "The most dangerous woman in the city of Jerusalem requires us to send all these forces with drivers trained at high speed." Since then, Halawani has realized that the occupation is pursuing her and is targeting her based on this title that he gave her.
Deportees from Al-Aqsa, including Al-Halawani, perform the Maghrib prayer in front of the Bab Al-Rahma cemetery near the Lions Gate (Al-Jazeera)
The spread of her story about the violations goes on, but the cruelest thing she remembers is undressing her clothes completely in her solitary cell equipped with surveillance cameras for a quarter of an hour in one of her arrests, and forcing her months ago to attend one of the court sessions without her headscarf, and she was forced to put the muzzle on her neck to cover it while she covered her head with a small piece of cotton.
The total of her arrests and interrogation sessions with her since 2011 until now has reached 62 arrests and investigations, in addition to a total of 7 years of deportation from Al-Aqsa Mosque, and 5 other deportations from the Old City, and more than 12 incursions into her home and the destruction of its contents.
Regarding her message to women as a Jerusalemite woman on International Women's Day, Hanadi Al-Halawani concluded her speech to Al-Jazeera Net by saying, "As you celebrate our International Day, you must know that Jerusalem women are deprived of their most basic rights in their homeland, such as freedom of movement, worship and granting safety to their children. I live in a house that is permissible to storm and search every moment and arrest me in front of My husband and children are constantly talking about what celebration of Women's Day?
Before you bid us farewell, Al-Halawani said that she recently went to study a master's degree in democracy and human rights at Birzeit University, hoping that she might be able to help and support women and prisoners, just as she devoted her life to supporting the Al-Aqsa Mosque a decade ago.