Every blast of the engine was a cry for freedom, say Palestine’s first all-female motor-racing team ‘Speed Sisters’

Pondering the start of a remarkable journey, Palestinian aid worker Maysoon Jayyusi remembers the moment vividly. “I had to drive fast to avoid getting hit,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Young people and soldiers fired tear gas and threw stones at us.

“It was simple: I started driving fast to avoid getting caught.”

In 2007, Jayyusi, then aged 30, was making her daily commute from Ramallah to Jerusalem to undertake work for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). At the Qalandia checkpoint, run by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), Jayyusi learned that, more often than not, stamping down on the accelerator was simply the safest route to a smooth passage through.

At the time, what she didn’t know was executives in the Palestinian Motorsport and Motorcycle Federation had witnessed these quick getaways. Asked if she would be interested in heading up a women’s team in the country’s hurry-scurry racing circuit, Jayyusi quickly accepted.

Soon after, support and funding came from the British Consulate in Jerusalem. Energetic and brave young drivers were scouted and recruited. And just like that, the Speed Sisters, the first all-female motor-racing team in the Arab world, was born.

‘Beautiful impossibility’

“This was a team within a complex political reality,” Jayyusi, says, on a day which is hoped to be of immense significance to the region. She speaks to me from Ramallah where, hours earlier, 250 Palestinian prisoners exited a Red Cross bus across the city amid joyous scenes, with Israeli hostages also released by Hamas in the first phase of Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan.

Reflecting on the significance of the Speed Sisters’ formation, nearly two decades earlier, she adds: “It’s not easy being a woman in a conservative society. We knew that every blast of the engine was a cry for freedom. Every race was a challenge to the ordinary. It was all a beautiful impossibility.”

“You reach the top – now what?” Noor Daoud says, summarising a sentiment surely felt by thousands of Palestinians. “You cannot grow there [in Palestine]. I moved to Dubai, taking the decision to step out of this environment. It affects your energy, your soul, your vision, your dreams. If you want to grow, there’s not much possibilities.”

Noor Daoud was only 10 when she drove her mother’s car for the first time. Back then, racing full-time seemed like a distant dream. But the Speed Sisters gave her a launchpad.

“Ten years ago in the Arab world, women could not do stuff,” she tells me. “So, it was very powerful that we could compete with each other and against each other.”

Daoud was one of four drivers who formed the historic team, alongside Mona Ennab, Marah Zahalka and Betty Saddeh. With Jayyusi taking on the role of team manager, the five-pronged outfit competed against men in locations such as Bethlehem, Jenin and Jericho, with race meets usually taking place on abandoned market squares and airstrips repurposed for weekend events. Speed tests – qualifying laps, in F1 terminology – were the main attraction, with cones laid out to represent the course and penalties in place if you hit one.

Who were the Speed Sisters?

Maysoon Jayyusi – team manager

Noor Daoud – driver

Betty Saddeh – driver

Marah Zahalka – driver

Mona Ennab – driver

Their story was one of hope and freedom, learning and improving in a field previously inaccessible to women, in the face of a military occupation which hindered their goals at every turn.

“We had no tracks to practise on, but competing while Palestine is under occupation made it all more powerful,” Daoud adds. “There was a lot of competition between each other and sometimes there was jealousy, but that’s sport.

“We became like literal sisters. It was a beautiful time.”

With British support, driving instructors were sent out to Ramallah. Helen Elstrop, alongside Sue Sanders, educated the girls behind the wheel and in the classroom at venues in Ramallah and, on one memorable trip for the Palestinian contingent, in Silverstone.

“I just remember them being absolutely driven,” Elstrop says. “Abilities obviously ranged. But it was absolutely brilliant when you saw the penny drop – you could see it visually in their faces and in how the car was reacting.

“They inspired other people. At the start, a brother of one of the girls said to me: ‘I think it’s really good, but I don’t think my sister should do it.’ That was the challenge right there.

“But my main quote I said to the girls was: ‘I want to be a racing driver that’s a woman, not a woman racing driver.’ It may sound like semantics, but it’s very important and that’s how they came across.”

Documentary on the Speed Sisters

In fact, their story was so compelling that they caught the attention of Amber Fares, a Canadian filmmaker living in Ramallah. Over the course of the next five years, Fares and her team recorded the trials and tribulations of the Speed Sisters, culminating in the award-winning 85-minute documentary, released in 2015.

“The crux of it was: how can you tell a story about Palestine in an unexpected way?” Fares says.

“The local community were so accommodating. Most of the run-ins we had were with the occupation and getting stopped, given the girls had issues travelling through Palestine. We got stopped at checkpoints and that sort of thing.”

One disturbing scene in the film shows driver Saddeh – the quickest female driver in Palestine, alongside Zahalka – setting up a makeshift track to practise, at a parking lot outside Ofer Prison, before she is shot at by a tear gas canister. “They are b*****ds,” she mutters in Arabic. Fortunately, the injury is limited to a massive bruise at the bottom of her back.

“We got hit,” Daoud recalls. “Even though it was on our side of the West Bank, we still couldn’t practise. There was nowhere else. Betty got hit by tear gas and we didn’t go back there. It was very dangerous.”

Real inspiration

The film received acclaim worldwide and, perhaps more significantly, in the region. Even Emmeline Pankhurst’s great-granddaughter attended the London premiere. “For Arabs across the region, I think the girls became a real inspiration,” Fares says. “All the men by the end were very supportive.

“I think when you’re in a war zone, when you look at Gaza now, any type of diversion is important, whether it be music or sports. I think the surprise element of seeing female racing drivers was really cool. It takes you into Palestine in a way few other stories do.”

But the reality of the conflict-ridden region soon took hold. Regrettably, soon after the film, the Speed Sisters disbanded. Jayyusi tells me the occupation impacted the team and their ability to train, while Palestine’s motorsport activities were also limited. In the last two years, since the war in Gaza broke out, there have been no events whatsoever.

The racers moved on with their lives, too. Saddeh is now married and lives amidst the largest Palestinian community outside the Arab world in Chile, and is a regular spectator at Club Deportivo Palestino, a top-flight Chilean football club based in Santiago. Ennab and Zahalka, meanwhile, both moved to Jenin, while Jayyusi also married and moved to Jordan.

Daoud, whose tagline on Instagram characterises herself as a “wildchild/stuntwoman”, continues to compete and is an international drift racer, representing the flag of Palestine at events worldwide. The 35-year-old speaks to me from Johannesburg in South Africa, where she is filming stunts for a new Netflix show, and explains why she felt the need to leave Palestine.

“You reach the top – now what?” she says, summarising a sentiment surely felt by thousands of Palestinians. “You cannot grow there [in Palestine].

“I moved to Dubai, taking the decision to step out of this environment. It affects your energy, your soul, your vision, your dreams. If you want to grow, there’s not much possibilities.”

Sanders, who taught the girls in Ramallah and previously delivered training to self-employed women amidst the troubles in Northern Ireland, concurs: “I don’t think the opportunities were there long-term. It was very difficult from a financial perspective.

“They wouldn’t have had the real opportunities to demonstrate the skills they had. They were amazing women, and we saw a fantastic atmosphere for them in Ramallah. But we saw how difficult it was for the Palestinians to live and work in their own homes.”

Modern-day model of female empowerment

Yet the wider significance of the Speed Sisters – the team, the film, the dream – on the Arab region is indisputable. The group were a modern-day embodiment of female empowerment, in a conservative society where most of the population are keen to modernise and flourish. Now, as Palestinians hope for a more prosperous future as the ceasefire begins, there are plans afoot for sport to be a vehicle for change.

Palestine’s national football team came within six points of qualifying for the 2026 World Cup, despite not having hosted a match in more than six years. They play their home matches in Jordan or Qatar, but they are expected to beat Libya next month and qualify for December’s Arab Cup.

Mohammed Dwedar, meanwhile, was Palestine’s sole athlete at the World Athletics Championships last month and spoke about how he had to leave his homeland to train on an actual running track in Germany. Palestine will also send a team to the quadrennial Islamic Solidarity Games in Saudi Arabia next month.

Lofty ambitions

And within motorsport, with the national federation having regained their FIA membership, there are lofty ambitions in the works. A national motorsport circuit in Jericho is in the planning stage, with the potential of hosting numerous events. In turn, this could attract hundreds of new faces and the next generation of racers.

“My plan is to inject new blood into motorsport and recreate the Speed Sisters again,” says Abdullah Sharawi, chair of the Palestinian Motorsport and Motorcycle Federation. “We want at least 5 to 10 new female racers, and we will train them and invest in them.

“The circuit will expand the motorsport base and will serve as a new source of income, so we can have self-financing motorsport activities in Palestine. Even though it’s an expensive sport [a modified car for speed tests costs £27,000], we still have a community that loves motorsport, whether it be speed tests, drifting or 4x4. We want a comprehensive calendar in place for 2026.”

Beyond the sporting technicalities, Sharawi emphasises that the road ahead for Palestine is a long and complicated one. “You cannot imagine the destruction and killing, it’s affected every single detail of our life,” he says. “It’s been very difficult on all levels and obviously impossible to organise sport. Nothing is guaranteed, but we just hope we can resume our sporting activities.”

The role sport can play, as a tool of inspiration and distraction amid the reality of war, is significant. The Speed Sisters proved that. As Jayyusi points out: “We broke the ice – women in the Arab world can participate in motorsport now.” The hope is that the team from a decade ago are not just an outlier of the past, but trailblazers for the future.

“I want to become the best drift racer,” Daoud insists. “I want to represent Palestine all around the world and show that we are about life and peace.

“That is all we want: to be free and to show we are not on a different planet. We are humans. We want to live, we want to give, we want to dream.”

The Independent