Palestinian female tractor driver turns heads in West Bank
Ettihad Ayyad, a Palestinian woman who has farmland in Jericho, recently became the first Palestinian woman to obtain a tractor driver’s license.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Once Ettihad Ayyad, 50, harvested the crop she had grown on agricultural land she rented in Jericho in the West Bank, she placed all her vegetables in a small cart attached to her tractor and drove to the vegetable market locally known as Hisba.
While driving her tractor, the traffic police stopped her and asked for her driver’s license. But she did not have one. She had learned and practiced how to drive a tractor while she worked with her husband plowing their field whose surface area is about 25 dunams.
Soon after she was stopped by police, Ettihad decided to obtain a tractor driver's license and joined a driver training school.
In early July, the Palestinian Ministry of Transportation informed her that she had become the first Palestinian woman to obtain a tractor driver’s license in the Palestinian territories.
