Nabila Espanioly

Nabila Espanioly is a Palestinian-Israeli psychologist, social worker, feminist, and peace activist. She is the founder and director of the Al-Tufula Center in Nazareth.

Early life and education
Espanioly grew up in a communist family in Nazareth, where she also attended school; she was involved in the Nazareth branch of the Movement of Democratic Women in Israel beginning as a child. Her family were Catholics with a long history in Nazareth dating back to at least the 16th century; their neighborhood there bears their name. Espanioly began organizing politically with Hadash around the time she applied to the University of Haifa to study social work.

Espanioly says she was initially rejected from the university, and took her rejection letter to its administrative offices to ask why they had declined to admit her. She states that one office told her she wasn't smart enough, and others said she wasn't fluent enough in Hebrew or English. She argued for them to admit her, eventually succeeding. Espanioly received a B.A. in Social Work from the University of Haifa, and an M.A. in Psychology from the University of Bamberg.

Career
In 1975, Espanioly attended the first Nazareth General Assembly as a student representative. Various new laws were expanding Israeli control of Palestinian-owned land in the area, and Israel had just announced a new land seizure around Sakhnin. Espanioly understood this as an existential threat for Palestinians in Israel, and Tawfiq Ziad successfully argued in favor of a general strike at the meeting. It was the first Palestinian general strike since 1936. Espanioly woke up early in the morning to join a group that stood on street corners and asked people not to go to work, handing flowers to those who turned back. 95 percent of businesses in Nazareth closed for the day. Israel attempted to repress the strike, declaring curfews across the region and killing six Palestinians during protests. Espanioly later described this as "a defining moment" in her life, during which Palestinians were "behaving as a national minority" rather than multiple disparate groups.

Espanioly became active in the Israeli women’s movement during the First Intifada. As a member of the Haifa Feminist Center and a well-known Palestinian-Israeli feminist, she appeared regularly on Israeli national news programs. She advocated for the formation of groups for Palestinian women within larger Israeli women's organizations, notably supporting the concept at Israeli feminist conferences in 1994 and 1995, while also emphasizing her view that women are "united by [their] oppression."

After the 2008-2009 Gaza War, Espanioly participated in protests led by the Israeli Communist Party and by pacifists, and worked with local women's cells of the Party to organize humanitarian aid for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Espanioly ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Knesset as a member of Hadash in 2013. She was also involved in the founding of the Mossawa Center, which later presented her an award for her activism.

Al-Tufula Center
Espanioly is the founder and director of the Al-Tufula Center in Nazareth, which works to support early childhood education for Palestinian families. She founded the Center in the late 1980s.