This article was written in 2000.

Introduction

For almost a century, Palestinians have been struggling against the colonization of their land. They have  had to contend with loss, exile, occupation and violence. In response, they have resisted, and armed  struggle. But Palestinian gains and victories, although far from insignificant, have so far failed to deliver an independent state; as a result, feelings of inadequacy and resignation have taken root. Although women have been involved in the liberation struggle and have shared the objectives of men, on the whole their strategies have differed.

In this paper, I will argue that resistance, in the Palestinian case, has been strongly influenced by a sense of appropriate gender roles. This assertion contains historical, psychological and political dimensions. The conservative nature of Palestinian society has meant that the liberation struggle has been unable to distance itself completely from the Islamic traditional practices, which govern day-to-day life.

Secondly, in the patriarchal environment of Palestinian society, men-who bear responsibility for the honor of the community-tend to regard themselves as having failed to protect their land, their society and their women. Now that the struggle appears to be moving towards some kind of resolution, existence is beginning to fragment. Women find themselves having to confront not only the oppressive practices of the occupation but also some of the policies being put in place by their own government. Thus, their resistance strategies are being channeled into new avenues.

In the context of this paper, “resistance” will be used in the broadest meaning of the word. To resist means to combat the forces of oppression, wherever they occur and whatever means. Resistance is defined as “the power to resist something, an influence that hinders or stops something, a secret organization resisting the authorities, especially in a conquered or enemy-occupied country. 1 However, the notion of resistance “carries not just its common-sense implications of ‘acting opposition’ but reflection of the ‘potential for subversion and contestation in the interstices of established orders’…there are many forms of gendered resistance and…women’s collective actions do not axiomatically take the form of opposition to the exercise of violence by men, whether against other men or against women.”2

In the Palestinian case, resistance is usually understood to mean a struggle for survival and for preservation of a distinct national identity. But if we broaden the definition, it can include not simply attempts to resist colonial domination, but also undesirable practices against women on the part of the Palestinian regime and in the home. I will argue that, in all these spheres, Islam plays a central role, whether women use it as a conscious tool of empowerment or relegate its influence to private life.

Questions

The specific questions to be explored here are: firstly, given the perception of the female in Palestinian nationalist thought, what forms has women’s resistance taken?

What have been the objectives of their resistance activities? And how, in the light of the ongoing debate between nationalism and feminism, have these changed over time? Finally, how has the Islamic cultural and social environment, together with shifting male and female self-perception, influenced, inspired or constrained women’s participation in the movement for national liberation? In order to answer these questions, I will begin with a brief history of women’s participation in the national liberation struggle and then explore ways in which their resistance evolved and expressed itself as something other than a support system for men’s nationalist aspirations.

Theoretical framework

It has been argued that when conflict “intrudes into the society- as in the case of invasion of colonialism- it may become very difficult to maintain traditional social order, and boundaries, such as those of gender may well break down”. 3 At such times, women may be empowered by assuming hitherto unfamiliar or non-traditional roles. But there is also a danger of violence spilling over from the battlefront to the home front.

According to a feminist perspective on conflict, “women tend to make connections between the oppression that is the ostensible cause of a conflict (ethnic or national oppression) in the light of another cross-cutting one: that of the gender regime. Feminist work tends to represent war as a continuum of violence from the bedroom to the battlefield, traversing our bodies and our sense of self. We see that the ‘homeland’ is not, never was, an essentially peaceful unitary space.”4 There is a risk here of conflict in women’s minds as they struggle to reconcile the violent chaos taking place on the streets with the peace and sanctity which are supposed to prevail within the private sphere. The former pits one’s own people against the enemy, while violence in the home is harder to deal with.

Massad argues that Palestinian nationalism conceives of nationalist agency in masculine terms.

Nationalist masculinity, he believes, is a new type of masculinity, which has little to do with “tradition”. He suggests that “Palestinian women may have more to say in Palestinian politics in the…future, but given their discursive construction in nationalist thought, they will be able to do so not as Palestinian women struggling for Palestinian women’s rights, but as Palestinian women struggling for discursively constituted rights, where Palestinian is always already conceived in the masculine”. 5 I believe that one must challenge such assumptions, which disregard the fluidity of the current situation.

Background

From the beginning of the 20th century, what may be termed “resistance” activities by Palestinian women have passed through several stages. They began as charitable and social welfare work by a small group of upper and middle class ladies. After the First World War, women took part in demonstrations against British policies. The official “women’s movement” in Palestine was launched in October 1929; its inaugural event was the convening in Jerusalem of the Palestine Arab Women’s Congress, which as attended by more than 200 women from all over the country.6  Fleischmann argues that, although Palestinian women’s activity during the British Mandate period has been described as “politically unaware”, these women “established an organized and often militant movement that was actively involved in social, political, and national affairs.”7 She reports that women’s “frequent participation in demonstrations signified their willingness to engage in ‘unladylike’ and even violent behavior, thereby defying cultural norms that prescribed limited public visibility of women”. 8   In the 1930s, the uprising of Shaykh Izz al Din al-Qassan, through its use of Islamic symbols and

language, encouraged the participation of the mass of people in social action; Qassam’s ideology has been described as “Islamic populism” and was aimed at all levels of society, 9 including women. It was inspired by a sense of desperation at the rapidly deteriorating situation and the threat to the Palestinian national entity. Yet, even though women took some part in the 1936 Revolt, they tended to be protected from the general violence and insecurity that was besetting the society.

After the catastrophe of 1948, when the State of Israel was established and hundred of thousands of Palestinians forced to flee from their homes and their land, resistance activities had to assume new patterns. The Palestinian community, scattered throughout the Middle East and beyond, was in a state of shock. Women “describe the first decade of exile in terms that evoke death and a state of mourning.

The loss of country and home and a refugee status were akin to the loss of a loved one.”10 Losing Palestine, in the words of one exile, “was like losing a husband or a son.11 In this environment, women became the principal symbols of what it meant to be Palestinian. As time passed, organized resistance intensified. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964, and under its umbrella in  1965, the General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW). During this period, the character of the resistance was militantly masculine. But women were not standing idly by. For example, in the West

Bank, in 1965, the Society for the Resuscitation of the Family, In’ash el-Usra was founded by Samiha Khalil. The “objective of this organization was to help women, especially single of households, to increase their income.”12

In the wake of the 1967 war, in which Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip and thousands more Palestinians were displaced, women organized themselves to provide support services to the population. Women were also actively involved “in resisting changes imposed by the Israeli military government such as changes in the school curriculum, and women’s participation in demonstrations carried out against the demolition of homes”. 13 In addition, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, according to Cockburn, brought “a more intimate form of oppression as the occupying forces entered homes and harassed even women and children”. 14 This, in Mayer’s words, “intensified Palestinian nationalism in gendered ways by provoking a politicized response to the invasion of the private sphere”. 15

A small number of women became fighters; for example Leila Khaled, who carried out military operations as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the late 1960’s. In her autobiography, she says: “I realized that my historic mission was a warrior in the inevitable battle between oppressors and oppressed, exploiters and exploited. I decided to become a revolutionary in order to liberate my people and myself”. 16 She was, she adds, greatly inspired by Shaykh al-Qassam, the leader of the 1930s revolt, “a man who embodied the spirit of resistance and who organized the first working class and peasant revolution in the Arab homeland.”17

In the occupied territories, Palestinian women in the 1970s developed new organizations, affiliated to the four main political factions. They departed from the welfare organizations, which were on the whole run by urban middle class women. The “younger generation of women felt that welfare organizations did not stress independence and women’s issues, focusing instead on assistance programs. The women’s work stressed forming cooperatives for food processing and for agricultural products… Most importantly, they engaged women and women’s rights”. 18

With the intifada in 1987 came unfamiliar-although equally urgent-roles for women. They early days of the intifada were, in many ways, an exhilarating time for women as they participated in fundamentally necessary ways. It seemed to many that the struggle for women’s rights was proceeding hand in hand with the national struggle; a few women began to engage in feminist debate. During this period, suggests Sharoni, “the large-scale political mobilization of Palestinian women was not perceived as a challenge to social stability but rather as a necessary and valuable contribution to the national struggle.”19 But it was also an exhausting period in which Israeli repression grew increasingly harsh, and collective punishment routine.

The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) “ began organizing demonstrations, strikes, and other acts of resistance to the occupation…Key in mobilizing the population were the UNLU-and PLO-issued communiqués and the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, issued by the PLO in November 1988 from its Tunis headquarters”. 20 According to Massad, the UNLU, which issued the intifada communiques, seemed “at times ambivalent, while at others, fully complicit in continuing the earlier tradition of conceiving the masculine”. 21  Communique No. 29,for example, congratulates women in their role as mothers. It salutes “ the mother of the martyr and her celebratory ululations, for

she has ululated twice, the day her son went to fight and was martyred, and the day the state was declared”. 22 Communique No.5 describe Palestinian women as the soil on which “manhood, respect and dignity” grow. On the other hand, Communique No. 35 of 1989 declared its admiration for the Palestinian woman “for her heroism in the national struggle”. 23 Women are also praised, “as detainees of the occupation authorities, 24 and mourned when they, along with children and old people, are killed by Israelis”. 25

An informal system of organizations, the Popular Committees, emerged, to which members of the women’s committees contributed their skills and expertise. Women were involved, for example, in the construction of alternative educational facilities, as schools were closed down all over the occupied territories, and they developed methods of food production to replace Israeli products. Girls and women also took part in spontaneous confrontations with Israeli troops on the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

By the early 1990s, in the view of Hamami and Kuttab, two negative trends began to emerge.

The first was the negative social effects on women of the intifada in terms of control over women’s mobility, constraints on women’s behavior, and a tendency towards earlier marriage for girls. Secondly, it was becoming apparent that the national issue could easily be hijacked “by an ideology that saw women’s political activism not as a contribution to national liberation but as threat to it”. Women activists were being physically attacked by young men in the name of religion and Islamic dress was being imposed on women.26

In September 1993, before an astonished world, the Prime Minister of Israel and the Chairman of the PLO unveiled an agreement which would give Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip limited autonomy and control over some parts of their land. Many believed that this represented a decisive move towards the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories. The Palestinian began to organize their own government. Planning failed, however, to take into account women’s aspiration for equal rights of citizenship. The new Palestinian Authority (PA) was almost exclusively male and the proposed constitution ignored women.

In response, women began to organize on their own behalf. They produced a Declaration of principles on Women’s Rights, which stated: “We, the women of Palestine, from all social categories and the various faiths, including workers, farmers, housewives, students, professionals, and politicians, promulgate our determination to proceed without struggle to abolish all forms of discrimination and inequality against women, which were propagated by the different forms of colonialism on our land, ending with the Israeli Occupation, and which were reinforced by the conglomeration of customs and traditions prejudiced against women, embodied in a number of existing laws and legislation.”27

As the conflict has persisted, there is evidence of an increase in domestic violence against women, although no figures are available. This has resulted from the lack of an independent judiciary and-until recently- a police force, combined with men’s perception of their own powerlessness, which seeks a release in aggression against weaker member of the family. Palestinian society, “like patriarchal societies, discriminates between the sexes, for example, the upbringing of girls and boys”. 28

Unfortunately, “when a woman is physically abused by her husband and ask for support and protection from her relatives, her relatives often force her to return to her husband under the pretext of the children’s welfare”. 29 Workshops organized by the women’s centers help women to deal with what is happening to them and, as far as possible, to combat the situation.

Modes of Resistance 

Resistance can take many forms. It can be active, violent, passive, constructive or subversive. For Palestinian women, resistance has ranged from the provision of support services to violent confrontation with the enemy. It was been influenced by models of appropriate female behaviour, which have changed over time. Yet it has also subverted conventional expectations. This is a result, on the one hand, of the desperation of their situation and, on the other, of a determination to create a “women’s movement”, which is distinct from male coping mechanisms.

During the struggle, women have been active participants “in all sectors of the Resistance- military, political, and social. They [did] however, have a more concentrated presence in the social field (mass work, education, information, and health) and/or in the lower echelons of the administration, serving as secretaries, clerks, telephone receptionists, etc. They appear[ed] least in higher-level political  positions and the military. Their participation in the contemporary national movement dates from the origins of the movement in the 1960’s.”30

For women-as for men-the are acceptable modes of resistance. It used to be a matter of honour that girls and women should be protected from direct contact with the enemy. This has become increasingly difficult to sustain. After the initial breaking down of barriers in 1967, women started to be deliberately targeted by the Israelis, as a way of humiliating men. Later, as women grew more confident, they chose to confront the Israeli army, in demonstrations and to protect their children. Eventually, women began to be arrested and imprisoned; while in prison, they were sometimes subjected to physical and psychological torture, including sexual threats or actual abuse.31

The new political situation, it has been suggested, “needs new strategies and answers-one of them being new ways in which the women’s movement links gender liberation to national liberation (both strategically and ideologically). Central to this new program is the need to understand democratization as the link concept and strategy between national liberation issues on the one hand, and the achievement of women’s social and economic rights on the other”. 32

Role of Islam

For many Palestinian women, identification with Islam has proved empowering. The Islamic movement developed “in the context of occupation and resistance, subjugation and struggle in which the hijab is ideologized and transformed into a symbol of resistance”. 33 It has been suggested that this is less true in the Palestinian case, where the women’s movement evolved along decidedly secular lines.

Nonetheless, a parallel and equally determined Islamic women’s movement exists alongside other forms of women’s organization.

There was concern in the early 1990s that “instead of being one for national liberation that would end  in the founding of a democratic secular state in which all citizens would be equal…[the Palestinians]  were suddenly struggling towards a theocratic state in which there would be no room for pluralism,  difference of democratically expressed ideas and one in which women’s needs would be defined by  Islamicists”. 34

One can discern a degree of ambiguity in the approach taken by the Palestinian leadership towards Islamic groups. While, on the one hand, such groups are dismissed as marginal, and even divisive, on the other, there has a reluctance on the part of the leadership to publicly condemn the Islamists and  thereby create dissension in the Palestinian ranks. After all, support for the Islamists is estimated to be as  high as 40 per cent in the Gaza Strip and 20-25 per cent in the West Bank.35

Groups such as Hamas offer the people of these areas “a vision of an all-Islamic Palestine, to be realized  only through tireless work in spreading Islamic consciousness all over the Arab and Islamic worlds and through mobilizing Muslims everywhere to join the ranks of the fighters for Palestine”. 36 But this highly  idealized, and some might argue unrealistic, vision is balanced by a strong social programme. “In line  with the spirit of Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas has from the outset supported a network of mosques,  schools, social clubs and other social and educational facilities”. 37

In common with Islamist movements elsewhere, one of the most striking signs of the success of Hamas has been its impact on women. According to the Hamas Charter: “The Muslim woman has a role in the  battle for the liberation which is no less than the role of the man, for she is the factory of men”. 38 There is no doubt that, for many women, the current popularity of militant Islam is welcome since it offers what  they regard as the proper environment in which to lead their lives. For others, though, it is perceived as an imposition.

The so-called “hijab campaign “ in the Gaza Strip in the early part of the intifada is an illuminating example of what many women regard as the removal of choice. Since the late 1970s, Islamic groups have been seeking to re-impose some kind of hijab, or head-covering, on women, even though many Palestinian women had chosen to dispense with this. Hammami describes it as “fundamentally an  instrument of oppression, a direct disciplining of women’s bodies for political ends”. 39 although a lot of  women in Gaza prefer to cover their heads-indeed, Palestinian women or rural origin have always worn  some form of head-covering, partly as a sign of their status and partly their socio-economic conditions

did not permit the adoption of so-called “modern dress”. 40- others do not and, until the early part of the intifada, “social space continued to exist for women not wear any form of hijab”. 41 However, by December 1988, it had become impossible for a woman to appear in the streets of Gaza without a head-covering. This was achieved “through a mixture of consent and coercion”. 42

Hammami argues that the Islamists used the hijab as an instrument of social pressure. It is clear, she says, that the “intifada hijab” is “not about modesty, respect, nationalism or the imperatives of activism but about power of religious groups to impose themselves by attacking secularism and nationalism at their most vulnerable points: over issues of women’s liberation”. 43 A climate of fear was created in Gaza,  in which many women dared not to go out of doors without a head-covering in case they were attacked  religiously-motivated young men, reminiscent of the “morals squads” in post- revolutionary Iran. This form of intimidation appeared cruelly ironic in the sense that women were forced to fear not only actions  by Israeli military personnel but also by the youth of their own community.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the “hijab campaign” was the initial apparent disinclination of the UNLU to act on behalf of women. Many suspect that “certain element within the Unifies Leadership actually supported the hijab campaign, and that Fatah, in particular, was trying to form an alliance with religious groups.”44 Others were of the opinion that the issue was either “too divisive or, even worse… secondary”. 45

Whatever the reasons, it took the leadership a whole year to issue a statement condemning the imposition of the head-covering. Hammami attributes the “inability (or reluctance) of activist men to deal with the hijab campaign [to] both the weakness of the left and of feminist agendas in the West Bank and Gaza”. 46

Nonetheless, for some women, the idea of secular state is unappealing. Some Palestinian women have been influenced by trends elsewhere in the Muslim world, for example the “Islamic feminist” movement whereby women, believing that Islam is the best system by which to govern day by day affairs, seek to reclaim its meanings for themselves. Many Muslim women “have begun to take an active interest in theological arguments regarding women. They claim the right to interpret laws and religious texts themselves and to learn the skills necessary for such interpretation; they challenge androcentric and misogynist interpretations of texts; and they are determined to find in Islam justifications for demanding

individual freedom and women’s rights. They have, in other words, joined the political struggle over the right to make their religion work for them”. 47 It is natural, suggests one commentator, “that contemporary Muslim feminists, when they look at the history of their religion, are very skeptical when assured that Islam, which initially aimed to remove the disabilities women had suffered in pre-Islamic Arabia, provides the rationale for keeping women in a subjugated, inferior status”. 48

Conclusion

To conclude: At the beginning of the 21st century, the Palestinians continue to seek peace with justice. They still do not have a state of their own; and many remain in exile. Seven years after Oslo, Palestinian women are still engaged in resistance activities. They continue to resist the Israeli occupation of part of their land and the failure of Israel to honor its agreements, and they continue to struggle towards eventual statehood; but they are also fighting the Palestinian Authority itself. Perceived as corrupt and unrepresentative, the PA has failed to reflect the democratic aspiration of the Palestinian people, women

and men, and many feel a sense of betrayal. Today, according to Hamami and Kuttab, “the main issue confronting the society remains the occupation (on all levels) but with the added crisis and complication of the presence of an undemocratic governing leadership inserted between the mass of the population and the occupation.”49

However, not only do women have to resist the occupation and some of the policies of the PA, they must also tackle the issue of violence within the family, which is believed to increase during situations of conflict; at such times, according to feminist literature, there tends to be a spillover of violence into the home. But it is equally possible that this kind of violence may intensify once the conflict has been resolved. In a post-conflict situation in which women begin, firstly, to learn more about their rights; secondly, to seek to put those rights into practice; and, thirdly, to benefit from a process of empowerment, it is not inconceivable that men will take out their sense of frustration and powerlessness on family members.

In the Palestinian context, there are several ways of dealing with this. Firstly, as we have seen, through legal and constitutional channels; secondly, by resorting to the Islamic model of an ideal society; and, thirdly, by assuming it is a temporary phase and that things will improve once the sate is up and running.

In a paper, which explores the transition from conflict to post-conflict situations, Sharoni asks whether peace is more conductive to gender equality than conflict. What happens, she wonders, “to conceptions of masculinity, grounded in militarism and acceptance of violence is outlawed”. 50 She concludes that “the meanings assigned to begin a man or a woman in a particular context are not fixed or static but rather changing over time and in relation to particular political developments”. 51

Therefore, in order to challenge “the narrow formulations of peace, which inform the Oslo Accords”, 52 the leadership must come to terms “with the formation and transformation of gender identities and roles and with the ability of ordinary men and women to transform their own identities and act as agents of social and political change”. 53

Today, there is not a single “women’s movement”. Rather, a number of trends exist within the society. These have been present for some time and each contains its own mode of resistance. They also differ in terms of objectives. The danger of fragmentation among women means that there is little overall consensus about possible ways forward. One can no longer speak of a conflict between nationalist and feminist discourse.

As women have become better educated, they have grown more aware of their rights and have begun to articulate certain demands and aspirations. A variety of organizations have been established by and for women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including research centers, training institutes, legal centers, and others. Women are now represented in most sections of society: they are university lecturers, poets, doctors, business leaders, and members of the Palestine Legislative Council (PLC).

It is clear that women’s resistance activities have changed over time. They have evolved in response to changing circumstances but also to ideological currents within the society and in the wider region. Now women are coming to grips with political exclusion and marginalization, and with the day-to-day business of survival in a patriarchal and still dangerous environment. The history of Palestinian women’s involvement in the resistance movement and their evident organizational ability gives one confidence that they will eventually succeed in linking national liberation with gender liberation.

* Maria Holt  is a Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster. She has a long involvement in Middle East politics, both as an academic and a lobbyist, and has published a number of books and articles on Arab Muslim women and violent conflict.

Footnotes:

1 The Oxford Paperback Dictionary

2  Jacobson, Ruth, Jacobs, Susie, and Marchbank, Jen, “introduction: States of Conflict” in Jacobs.

3  Macdonald, Sharon, “Drawing the lines-gender, peace and war: an introduction”, in Macdonalds,    Sharon, Holden, Pat and Ardener, Shirley, -editors, Images of women in Peace&Wae: Cross-    Cultural l& Historical Perspectives, London: Macmillan, 1987, p.9

4 Cockburn, Cynthia, The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict,     London: Zed Books, 1998, p.8.

5 Massad, Joseph, “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism”, The Middle    East Journal, Volume 49, Number 3, Summer 1995, p.483.

6 Fleischmann, Ellen J, “The Emergence of the Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1929-39”, Journal of Palestine Studies XXIX, no 3, Spring 2000, p.18.

7 Ibid. p.16.

8 Ibid. p. 24.

9 Johnson, Nels, Islam and the Politics of Meaning in Palestinian Nationalism, London: KPI, 1982, p.54.

10 Peteet, Julie M, Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement, New York:    Columbia University Press, 1991, p.26.

11 Madame Haddad, a middle-aged woman from Jaffa, quoted by Pateet, ibid.p.26.

12  Sabbagh, Suha, “Palestinian Women and Institution Building”, in Sabbagh, Suha, editor, Arab Women: Between Defiance and Restraint, New York: Olive Branch Press, 1996, p, 108.

13 Ibid. 107.

14  Cockburn, The Space Between Us, op.cit.p.118.

15  Mayer, Tamar, “Heightened Palestinian nationalism: military occupation, repression, difference    And gender” in Mayer, Tamar, editor, Women and the Israeli Occupation: The Politics of Change,    London: Routledge, 1994, p. 63.

16  Khaled, Leila, My people shall live: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary, edited by George Hajjar,    London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973, p. 22.

17 Ibid.pp.26-7.

18  Sabbagh, “Palestinian Women and Institution Building”, op.cit.p.109.

19  Sharoni, Simona, “Gendering Conflict and Peace in Israel/Palestine and the North of Ireland”, Millennium,  Vol 27, No. 4, p. 1064.

20  Massad, “Conceiving the Masculine”, op.cit.p.474.

21 Ibid.pp.474-5.

22  Communique No. 29, “The Call of the Wedding of the Palestinian Independent State”, quoted by Massad, ibid.  p.474.

23 Ibid.p.476.

24  Communiques No. 17 and 22, Ibid.p.475.

25  Commniques No. 21, Ibid.p.475.

26  Hamami, Rima, and Kuttab, Eileen, “The Palestinian Women’s Movement: Strategies Towards Freedom   & Democracy”, News From Within, Vol XV, No. 4, April 1999, p.3.

27 “General Union of Palestinian Women, Jerusalem-Palestine: Draft Document of Principles of Women’s Rights (Third Draft), in Sabbagh, editor, Arab Women: Between Defiance and Restraint, op.cit.p.259.

28 Ibid.p.5.

29  Yahya, Mohammad al-Haj, “Violence against women leads to oppression”, Sparks, April 1992, p.5.

30 Peteet, Gender in Crisis, op.cit.p.147.

31 See, for example, Thornhill, Teresa, Making Women Talk: The Interrogation of Palestinian Women Detainees by The Israeli General Security Services, London: Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, 1992.

32 Ibid.pp.4-5.

33 El Guindi. Fadwa, Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance, Oxford & New York: Berg, 1999, p. 174.

34 Hamami and Kuttab, “The Palestinian Women’s Movement”, op.cit.p.3.

35 Ozanne, “The shanty town fundamentalists”, op.cit.

36 Taraki, The Islamic resistance Movement in the Palestinian Uprising”, op.cit.p.175.

37 “The Challenge of Hamas”, monitored from the BBC World Service, 19 February 1993, quoted in AJME News (Beirut), February-March 1993.

38 “Charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) of Palestine”, Journal of Palestine Studies,  Volume XXII, No 4, Summer 1993, pp.127-9

39 Hammami, Rema, “Women, the Hijab and the Intifada”, Middle East report, May-August 1990, p.25.

40 Moghadam, Modernizing Women, op.cit.p.163.

41 Hammami “Women, the Hijab and the Intifada”, op.cit.p.25.

42 Ibid.p.25

43 Ibid.p.28.

44 Ibid.p.28

45 Ibid.p.28.

46 Ibid.p.28.

47 Afkhami, Muhnaz, and Friedl, Erika, “Introduction”, in Afkhamia and Friedl, editors, Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation: Implementing the Beijing Platform, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997,p.xiii.

48 Mayer, Ann Elizabeth, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics, Boulder and San Francisco:  Westview Press and London: Pinter Publishers, 1995,p.94.

49 Ibid.pp.3-4.

50 Sharoni,”Gendering and Peace”, op.cit.p.1062.

51 Ibid. p.1088.

52 Ibid, p.1088.

53 Ibid, p.1089

erene Husseini Shahid´s autobiography, Jerusalem Memories, was published in 2000.

Childhood:

I have written these pieces about my childhood and family life in Palestine for my children, and for the later generations that may never know about us, or our way of life. Keeping the memory of those long-ago days is important, I think, and the hope of better days to come for all of us can only be based on the true knowledge of the past.

I often go back to Jerusalem in my dreams. My inner journey is not always one of sadness and despair; sometimes the pure joy of being there fills me with a deep warmth. I close my eyes and dream in the privacy of my soul. I choose the company I wish to keep, the places I want to visit, and the people I want to see. Sometimes they are old, sometimes young; some of them have been dead for many years, some of them are still alive.

Often I visit my grandparents, both maternal and paternal, whom I loved so much and who loved and spoiled me and my siblings.

I have discovered that my happiest recollections are of places rather than of people. After all, people die and take away a part of us with them, while places live forever. So I close my eyes and go to Jericho in winter, Sharafat in summer, and Jerusalem in spring. It is always spring in Jerusalem for me.

Our house in Musrara was on top of the slope which led from the Russian compound to the center of the old city. We could hear the bells of the Russian church and the calls to prayer from the nearby minarets. I also loved to hear the footsteps of people casually going downhill in the street outside, beyond the iron gate of our house.

Like all houses in Jerusalem, ours was built of heavy stone. Two steps led down to the garden. In my dreams I seem to go back to that garden more than anywhere else in Jerusalem. In spring it was a carpet of green. The upper level swayed with pine trees, which spread aromatic breezes into the house.

Summers were spent in Sharafat (a village near Jerusalem). We were the only city family living in Sharafat, so I was eagerly received by the girls and boys of the village. They took me to their homes and I brought them to mine, and we played in the garden for hours on end. There was so much to discover and enjoy. Often the hakawati, the village story teller, sat with his rababi, playing the instrument as he told stories of bygone days.

Early each morning me and my friend Abed would run out to pick ripe figs in the soft light and sweet morning air. Then mother would call us to come and have a proper breakfast of zaatar (thyme) and olive oil with country bread, and an egg to make us grow stronger. Later we would join our other friends in the village for more fun and games. Climbing to the very top of the oak tree, I would stand on the highest, thickest branch and call at the top of my voice to Miriam, my friend: ”Hey, ya Miriam, hey!”

”Ounich!” she would answer, ”I’m coming!” in the village dialect.

The long summer days passed quickly. We children grew taller and became a little more self-conscious. The years passed, and eventually I learned that Miriam was engaged to be married. Village girls were married much earlier than girls in the town.

Years after these events, our lives were shattered when our lands and our houses were occupied and our people scattered round the world. Under the United Nations plan for the partition of Palestine, Sharafat remained Arab, and its inhabitants, feeling safe, stayed on their land.

Decades later, I was living with my husband in Beirut when one evening we heard on the radio: ”Sharafat, a small village west of Jerusalem, has been attacked. The house of Ali Mishaal, the mukhtar, has been blown up, killing him and his family.” (Ali Mishaal was Miriam’s father).

Later we learned more details. Miriam and her little daughter had been buried up to the waist in the rubble for a day before being rescued. They were taken to hospital, but died soon after.

I think of Miriam sometimes and my heart cries out, ”Hey ya Miriam, hey!”

We always spent our winter vacations in Jericho, where I developed a special relationship with the fields when they burst into colourful life after the first rains.

The mountains in the background changed colors with the morning sun, from soft pink at dawn to the yellow of the afternoon. The Dead Sea lay further in the distance, silent and blue.

One of my favourite walks was with my father to the Mount of Temptation. One early afternoon he said:” Lets go to the top today.” I jumped up immediately, and eagerly followed him.

After a long dangerous walk up the mountain, we stood at last at the gate of the monastery, and as I walked behind father, I felt a strange sensation enveloping me. I had suddenly become aware that this was the place I could see from my bedroom window in Jericho every night, a faint light at the top of the steep mountain, so high up it seemed almost to touch the sky.

Friendly men in dark robes moved about in this exotic space between heaven and earth. One of them recognized father and welcomed us in. It was difficult to remember that the space we were in was carved within a cave, within the very rock. The walls of the corridor leading into the monastery were naked rock, mellowed only by time. Icons hung on the rocky walls of this corridor, which led to a large chapel in which were exhibited the visible elements of piety and mysticism. The altar, the candles, the incense, and the Orthodox attire of these Russian monks were all familiar to me, along with the symbols of the other Palestinian churches.

I stood at a big window with iron bars. Looking through it I saw Jericho, crowded with houses and dotted with gardens of oranges, bananas, palms and flowering trees, surrounded by far away mountains, with the Dead Sea shining like a silver carpet under the sun stretching between the town and the mountains beyond.

The priest must have seen my amazement and said ”Wait till I take you to the peak where the Temptation of Christ took place.”

As he led us up, the church bells started ringing, the same bells I had been used to hearing everyday from a distance. Now, I thought, I am near the bells that echoed in the fields and wadis of Jericho and I am in the room whose light twinkled like a star in the night, far away in the distance, neighbors to the sky.

The next time I saw the Mount of Temptation, or ”Korontol” as we Arabs call it, was a half a century later. The Israeli army now occupies this strategic spot, which dominates the area around and beyond. I looked up at it from below, from the fields of Jericho, where our house still stands.

Life under the British Mandate:

My families political activities during the 1930s brought me, probably earlier than most girls, to political awareness. I remember especially the rude shock I experienced when the British arrested my father.

The modern, experimental Islamic high school to which I had been sent closed in 1930, and my parents had to find an alternative for me. By then I was ten and a half years old. I was sent to a boarding school in Jerusalem along with my younger brother and sister. We enrolled at the American Friends School in Ramallah.

We had teachers from Lebanon, the United States and Holland, as well as those from Palestine.

Ramallah was beautiful in all seasons. Grapevines covered the slopes and there were wild flowers in the valleys. But this easy happiness of my childhood days was to be rudely interrupted by the harsh realities of Palestine. The time I am describing was, after all, the mid-1930s, and the situation in Palestine was coming to a boil. Even in our protected school environment, we knew about the demonstrations and strikes and began to think about politics.

Father had become the leader of the Palestinian Arab Party in 1935 and was also responsible for a political newspaper called al Liwaa’. I asked for the paper to be delivered to my school, and after classes my friends and I would rush to the outside gate to collect it, pouring over it and passing it on from one group of ardent readers to another.

One afternoon I came out of class later than the others. I looked for my friends, but when I found them their eyes seemed to avoid mine. I asked about the newspaper. There was a moment of hesitation; then one of them said they had not seen it that day. I was surprised, but not for long, because I saw one of my friends holding the paper behind her back. I rushed to take it from her, but she ran away and I ran after her, while all my other friends ran around the campus. Finally I caught up with her, snatched the newspaper from her hand and rushed to hide in a nearby lavatory.

The girls waited outside for a long time until I came out, trembling with shock and drenched in tears. My father had been arrested! For us, the word ”arrest” was synonymous with shame and guilt. We thought that only criminals were arrested. My father arrested? In prison? Not until days later did we discover that arrest was not only for criminals, and that Arab resistance in Palestine was being punished by the British. For us school girls, this was our political awakening and our childhood gave way to early maturity.

The days were bright, the nights were warm, and life was sweet when we were children in our home in Jerusalem. Our house was our world. Though we went away to school, we would come back to the house with such happiness. The small garden surrounding it was full of flowers. Three steps led up from the garden to the verandah, where we would stretch lazily in the long chairs under the perfume of the jasmine bushes that crept up its walls.

I remember this particular summer, when life seemed to be taking a new turn and our garden was no longer a magical, childish place.

Having been awakened to it at school, I had gradually become more and more aware of the situation in the country and became very interested in the political news. There would be a demonstration one day, a strike the next; I read of arrests, political meetings, and violence. Sometimes I read the names of some members of our family, and often my father’s.

The six-month strike of 1936 was about to begin. Arab Palestine, under British Mandate, was experiencing the pressure of large-scale Jewish immigration. Feeling that their very existence was being threatened, the leading Arab organizations declared a general strike, challenging not only the rapidly increasing Jewish presence, but also the Balfour Declaration and British authority in Palestine. The whole country responded to the call for the strike, and there followed demonstrations, clashes with the police, fiery speeches in mosques and churches. All this filled every home in Palestine with apprehension and anxiety.

Mother was involved in the women’s movement and took part in the many women’s demonstrations as they marched through the streets to the British High Commissioner’s headquarters to protest Jewish immigration.

Hassan, our only brother, was about nine or ten years of age. He was the darling of the guards in the garden: it had become too dangerous for Father not to have personal protection. Hassan joined the boys of the neighborhood in bringing the circulation of traffic to a standstill. The only cars which continued moving about were those driven by British soldiers around the city. The boys did their bit for the revolution by spreading the small nails which they carried in their pockets around the streets, causing the puncture of the tires of any vehicle that might be passing.

In Jerusalem, as demonstrations and confrontations continued, and armed struggle led to greater and greater numbers of casualties, the British government, in the brutal wisdom of its mandate, declared an emergency law. Any home found to contain arms, even so much as a knife a few inches long was to be blown up and the entire village punished.

The fires of the revolution spread fast throughout the cities and countryside. British rule grew crueler by the day. Many houses were blown up and many villages destroyed.

One story especially circulated throughout Palestine- the story of Aysha. Aysha was from a small village near al Bireh, not far from Jerusalem. Her son had gone of with some of the village men to join the demonstrations. One day, a confrontation took place between the British army and the Palestinian fighters not far from Aysha’s village. She heard from her neighbours that the British had suffered casualties and that a Palestinian had been killed. As had become customary, British soldiers brought the body to the nearest village to be identified. This enabled them to single out the house to be destroyed and the village to be tormented.

Now they came near to her village. Everyone was forced out of their homes and brought, one by one, to pass by the body of the young man, to look at it, to study the face and identify it. Aysha, standing in the long line, looked around, her heart crying out for the mother who was to see her son lying dead on the ground.

What mother was to suffer? What village to be destroyed?

At last her turn came. She looked down and saw her son, Abed, lying dead before her. The tremors which shook her body alerted the soldiers. She swayed and staggered, then let go, sinking down beside her boy.

” You bitch!” they cried, ”so he is your son!”

” My son?” she moaned. ”Who said he is my son? He is every mother’s son. I weep for his wasted youth. I weep for his mother! For every mother! That is why I am weeping!”

She had slipped out of their hands. She had saved the village from destruction. She went home and buried her grief in silence, while the British took her son’s body and buried it alone, far away from her.

Living in exile in Beirut, Lebanon:

One autumn day in 1936, I was sitting by myself on the porch of our house in Jerusalem. Time seemed to be standing still, despite the tension in the city and the growing confrontation with the mandate government. Father was down in Jericho, working on the banana gardens down there while trying to keep the British authorities confused as to his whereabouts. Mother, constantly worried, was indoors.

It was almost twilight when I heard footsteps scuffling over the wall near the entrance door. Then a tall man in a cloak came up the three steps and asked to see my father, Jamal Husseini. I said that he was not home. The man looked hard at me and said in a clear, deliberate tone: ”listen carefully. Tell him, if you can, that he must not be at home tonight.”

The stranger left as hurriedly as he came, and I rushed in to tell mother what had happened.

Just as darkness fell, father walked in. We gave him the stranger’s message, but he did not want to heed it. He had had enough of hiding and would not go away for any reason. Mother was frantic, and they had an argument. Eventually he gave in, and went through the door to the backyard, jumping over the fence to the neighbors’.

Very early the next morning there was a knock on the door. I rushed from my bedroom and watched as mother opened it to face a group of British soldiers. The senior officer said politely that they had an order to arrest Mr. Jamal Husseini. Mother said he was not at home. Unconvinced, they searched the house. The search ended and the officer announced that his men would remain in the garden to watch the house. Looking out the window, we could see that the garden was swarming with soldiers.

Mother had decided that I was to play an active role in the continuing drama. We had to inform father as soon as possible not to come back home. I was to dress quickly, carry my schoolbooks and pretend that I was going to school. Then I was to do the rounds of my uncles and aunts, find him, and inform him of the morning’s events.

As I approached the very first house on my list, my aunt Nuzha rushed out to tell me that father was at the house of Aunt Amina. I rushed over there, and when I arrived, the door opened almost before I had knocked. I had the feeling that not only the house but the entire neighborhood had eyes watching from behind the curtains.

I entered the house and was led to a bedroom where I saw father sitting on the edge of the bed. It had clearly not been slept in, and he seemed exhausted. He looked at me tenderly and said that as soon as he could, he would get in touch with us. As I hugged him and said goodbye, he asked me especially to look after my mother.

That was the last I saw of him for some time. We heard later that day over the radio that other political elders had been taken to a ship waiting at sea and had gone into exile in the Seychelles Islands. We did not know what had happened to father, only that he had disappeared.

We left Jerusalem very soon after father disappeared. The understanding between us had been that, should we ever be divided and separated from Jerusalem, we should meet in Beirut.

It was an early autumn morning when we started our six-hour drive to Beirut. Mother sat in the front seat of our car, near the driver. She was quiet and seemed distant, dazed by the turn of events. I had seen her brush a tear away, but knew that, being a true woman of Jerusalem, she would not allow herself to show any more outward signs of the deep pain she was experiencing.

At last, in mid-afternoon, we arrived in Beirut and drove straight to the Hotel Bassoul. Though we were young and excited by our new surroundings, each one of us felt the seriousness of our situation. We did not ask mother questions about our future, nor did we discuss the matter with each other. What images passed between the blackness of the night and our dreams remained locked in each of our hearts.

Although we did not understand this at the time, a new way of life began for all of us the very day after our arrival in Beirut form Jerusalem. It is only looking back at it from the distance of the decades that have passed since then that it becomes so clear that we had crossed the fateful border between life at home and exile. At that time, we saw our journey only as a temporary inconvenience that would certainly pass, and there was no question in our minds that eventually we would be restored to Jerusalem.

The Palestinian struggle against injustice had been embraced by the entire Arab world, and so it was quite natural that when the time came for us to leave, we would go to another Arab country. Beirut was the closest Arab capital to Jerusalem, and being there among so many other Palestinians who came at around the same time, made the whole trip less terrible than it might have been.

As time passed and it became more and more clear that we were not to go home soon, all those Palestinians who had come to Beirut and had taken rooms in hotels, began to look for more permanent, less expensive accommodations.

Mother, who suffered from rheumatism, decided to take advantage of Beirut’s excellent medical services. It was, in fact, at the American University Hospital during this time that I first met my husband to-be, Dr. Munib Shahid. He had come to Beirut with his family from Haifa.

It was some weeks before father joined us in Beirut. That was when we found out how he had managed to elude the British authorities. He had joined a family of veiled women and their father, who had hired a car to drive them out of the country. The women sat in the back seat wearing their millayas and covering my father, who lay on the floor of the car hidden beneath the flowing folds of their millayas.

By the time my father came, it had become clear that our stay was going to be a long one. As that realization dawned, my parents moved us to a smaller, less expensive hotel. Later, we moved to a pension. It was not until our second year in exile that they took the fateful step of renting an apartment.

At first we did not have the means to furnish our flat properly. At night we slept on mattresses laid out on the floor, and during the day we sat on kitchen chairs. Later, our situation improved, when some of our income from Palestine was forwarded to us. Eventually Beirut was to become our home.

I enrolled in the AUB (the American University of Beirut). I was very strict with myself, perhaps, looking back at it, too strict. I was haunted by the unhappy events in Palestine. How could I go to the cinema when people were being killed in Palestine? How could I go on a picnic when young men of my age, including many of my cousins, had to terminate their education and join the resistance? All work and no play may have made me seem dull, but at least I concentrated on my studies.

In my freshman and sophomore years I met girls of many nationalities, including Palestinian Jews. The presence of the Jewish girls forced us to confront difficult situation: how were we to behave towards one another? In the end, our youth and the traditional practice of our people overcame political ideologies, and the Jewish girls became part of our lives, like everyone else.

The news from Palestine became more serious by the day, and events there more and more dangerous. More and more Palestinian families wanted by the British mandate came to live in Beirut and some in Damascus. When the Second World War began however, it seemed that our cause became a minor issue to the world. The Palestinian revolt and the quest for Palestinian rights was drowned out by the larger turmoil.

For us Palestinians however, the struggle continued, as it does to this day.

In 1939, my family, along with several other Palestinian political families, moved to Baghdad. The British were gaining ground in the area, and there was fear that they would come to Lebanon.

When exiled Palestinians first went to Iraq in 1939, the Iraqi authorities were very cooperative. Unfortunately, this friendly Iraqi attitude did not last long: eventually the British took over Iraq, and the Palestinian exiles there became once again a target for them.

1948:

I was married to Dr Munib Shahib and living in Beirut when mother returned to Jerusalem in 1946. We had a few years of almost normal life. My husband and I visited Jerusalem with our first daughter and invited my parents to stay with us in Lebanon.

In 1948 the Palestine war took place and most of the country was occupied by the new Jewish entity, Israel. That part of Jerusalem in which our home lay had fallen to the Israelis. My family, along with hundreds of other Palestinians, became refugees. The world looked on, accepting the fact.

Beirut was now flooded with several hundred thousand Palestinian refugees. The poorest took shelter in refugee camps and shacks, living from hand to mouth on food dispensed by charity.

For my family, as for all Palestinians, this was a time of immense stress and reflection. What now? How long would this exile last? How would we survive? What should we do?

RETURN TO JERICHO: 1972

Mother went to live with her brother, uncle Musa, in Jericho. Because he had remained in Jericho, since 1967 under Israeli occupation, he had the right, under the law of ”family reunion” (jam al shaml) to ask that his sister be allowed to join him in his home.

Some time later, by virtue of that same law of family reunion, my brothers, sisters, and I, were also allowed to come to Jericho to join our mother, whose health was failing. And so it was that twenty-five years after we left I came back to it, back to our winter home in Jericho.

As I stepped down from the car and entered the gate, my heart pounded. Th same feeling of anguish and despair surged in me as when I had crossed the Allenby Bridge earlier that day. Would I let this experience shatter me? I remembered what the boy carrying my suitcase over the crossing had said when he saw my emotion that morning: ”Lady,” he said, ”you must not show them your weakness.” Hearing that from a young boy who worked for his living in the shade of the occupation, I pulled myself together.

And so that morning in Jericho, I raised my head high and walked towards the house on a narrow elevated path that separated the orchard from the building, as the scent of the orange blossoms wafted from the trees. I removed my eyeglasses, which had misted up with my emotions, and found myself in the shade of the rubber tree on the path to the house. How it had grown!

As I walked a few more steps, I looked up and saw the house. I was overcome by a profound sense of loneliness and despondency. Our home in Jericho. The same dark green shutters, the same slanting red roof, wooden balcony, jasmine pergola, and the orange trees beyond. Only the mud walls were peeling. Walking by my side was the old gardener and caretaker, his shoulders bent, his body shaking, a long way from the man I had known years ago.

The old man slowly opened the door to the main house, and I stepped inside. I stood for a moment, absolutely silent and still. It only took a few moments of stillness before the memories came surging forth, and the empty house was filled again with voices, people, bustling activities. They all come back: Mother, Father, Grandmother and all the others, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends. They all rose to life again and filled the house from the depth of my memory in perfect clarity.

My grandmother, Im Musa, came first. After all, this house was built for her by her husband at the turn of the century. Family and friends loved to come to visit her and spend the day in the warmth of the sun and enjoy her renowned cooking. Happiness welled in my heart at the thought of these memories.

In the rush of all the memories, my mother suddenly appeared in front of me, young and strong.

Hours after I had first re-entered the house, after I had wandered around and relived the past in so many images, my heart was full of happiness. Then the silence about me awoke me to reality, and to the fact that I was the only visitor here. Again, I went from one room to another, paused in the library with its shelves of books rescued from our Jerusalem house many years earlier, read the titles of the books, walked round the garden, and touched the leaves of the orange trees.

Gradually my happiness ebbed away, and it was time to leave. I closed the door with the keys I so cherished, walked out of the garden, and went through the iron gate. I left behind in the house the generations of those I had loved, and was comforted only by the spirit of the boy on the bridge.

After a few days in Jericho, settling in and reliving the past, our thoughts turned to Jerusalem.

In Jericho, we had not much noticed the Israeli occupation. We stayed in the same old house, saw our aunts and cousins who were staying there for the winter, and the few non-Arabs we saw in the streets gave the impression that tourism was flourishing as it had before 1948.

But in Jerusalem, things were different. Since 1967 the entire city had been occupied by the Israelis.

My cousin Najwa drove us (my Mother and her four daughters) up to Jerusalem. She drove us around the city, passing familiar sites along the way. None of us mentioned going to look at our own house in Musrara.

But at last mother asked Najwa to drive us to our old home. we four sisters, sitting in the back of the car, objected. ”It isn’t the right moment; let us not go now; we’ll go later,” we all said, as though in one voice. Spontaneously, without having discussed the matter, we had each felt that we could not bear to see our home, which was no longer ours, again. We knew it was occupied by an Israeli family. but mother, with the authority of her eighty years, insisted on her wish to go, and Najwa obediently drove us to our old home.

In our hearts we had each eagerly searched for it from the distance of Bab el Amoud. Now as the car drew up outside the front door, none of us could move. Each of us tried to hide our tears, and our deep, silent grief. Looking up from our former home, apparently unchanged, with the same balcony, the same old tree, the same bedroom windows looking up to the Virgin and Child in the Dominican compound against the blue sky, I felt the years of separation, and they set me trembling.

Mother, the only one of us undaunted, got out of the car. Leaning on her cane, she walked up the three steps leading up to the main door and, with her stick, knocked on the door three times. The door opened and a middle-aged Jewish woman appeared. From the car we heard mother say politely but firmly ”may I have your permission to see the inside of my house?”

”Your house?” the woman gasped. ”But we bought it!” Mother said: ”I did not sell it.”

The woman spoke with an Iraqi accent. Realizing what this sudden confrontation meant, she said ”Damn them. We had our house in Iraq. We didn’t have to come and face a situation like this.”

As the woman led the way into the house, mother looked back for us, but none of us had the heart to follow her. The door closed behind them, and while we sat and waited for mother to return, not one of us uttered a single word.

Finally the door opened again, and mother and the Jewish woman emerged. Talking together as though theirs was the most normal kind of communication in the world, they walked slowly around the house, mother following in the footsteps of the other woman. Finally we heard mother thanking her. She turned and very slowly descended the three steps down to the street. She stepped into the car, and Najwa drove us away. None of us said a word. The charge of emotion in the car was enough to blow it up.

At last one of us asked mother what they had talked about, and she recounted parts of the conversation.

She had asked the woman if her family was alone in the house. ”Alone!” the woman laughed sarcastically. ”There’s a different family living in each room.”

The woman had asked mother who had built the house. When mother said her father had done so, the woman had wondered if it had been intended to serve as a school. Mother told her that it had been built for his own family.

As mother continued her account of her morning’s visit, my deeply emotional state settled into a calm admiration for mother’s courage.

Her attitude became for us a model of courage and made the remainder of our return home a little bit easier to bear. Sometimes with one or all of my sisters, sometimes alone, I set out to explore the city I have loved so much, from which I had been separated for so long. At every turn we were confronted by the Israeli military occupation, and at every turn we were confronted also by our memories. Our emotions were so intense that we hardly spoke to one another. Had we tried to talk, our emotions would have certainly overflowed, and silence was our best defense. We also felt that we had no time to waste, that we had to soak up the precious memories and store them, and that emotional talk would have distracted us.

Fragments of life in Palestine become precious treasures many years later. One day recently, about to throw away an old suitcase which had been around the world with me, I checked to see if I had forgotten anything in its folds. Sure enough, from the corner of one of the torn pockets, I pulled out an envelope, frayed with the passing of time. I opened it and found inside an old, faded photograph of a family group. In the small figure at the center I immediately recognized myself as a child of two. Surrounding me in the picture sat my grandmother Zuleikha, her mother Asma, and my mother Nimati.

I was delighted to find the photo, but a little shock ran through me when I thought how it had remained hidden and undiscovered over the decades, and how the suitcase itself had crossed so many borders, and how the whole thing had ended up here at last, in my hands, in my house so many years later.

I sat and looked at the picture, and as I did so, I was engulfed by memories surging up from a forgotten well deep in my unconscious mind. As I stared at it, I allowed myself to enjoy the warmth and the sadness, as the memories washed over me.

Of the four generations of women sitting for the photograph that afternoon, I think my mother’s generation suffered the most. She had had to live in exile in several Arab cities with five children to look after, usually on her own, because her husband was either exiled or attending a conference abroad. She often had to wait for money, which came only after long periods of anxiety; she lived in societies that, knowingly or not, deliberately or not, did not take her into account. Nor was she alone in this plight: every Palestinian was an extra number, a burden on the society in which he or she lived in exile.

It is true that her children went on with their lives and education, and yet she never had the peace of mind to enjoy her everyday life with them, as previous generations had done.

I remember a tear that seemed always to sparkle in her green eyes, and I believe that she never forgave the world for being so cruel.

Finally, I looked at myself in that old photograph. I was born in September 1920, almost a century after my great grandmother, and in the picture I sit close to her. As I scrutinized my image as a small child, I could not help thinking about my life and theirs. After allowing myself to float away on a sea of memories, I asked myself: what does it mean to be looking at four generations of Palestinian women?

For my grandmother, Jerusalem, with its small winding alleys, was the world. she rarely moved from its walls. Yet she must have been the queen of her house, in her own city and in her own country. To her there was no shadow of doubt where she belonged and what spot of earth belonged to her. She lived and died part of a whole that represents the security that every human being needs.

Her daughter, who had almost the same degree of security even while being more open to the world, suffered greatly only during the last two decades of her life, after events in Palestine sent her into exile. She passed away in the heat of the desert on her way from Baghdad to Jerusalem. Today, she lies in a lonely grave in a Baghdad cemetery.

But for some knowledge of the Koran, both my great grandmother and grandmother were illiterate. Mother, on the other hand, spoke four languages. I earned a university degree and traveled around the world. yet it seems to me that the time of great grandmother Asma was better than mine: she never had to be a refugee, looking for a country to accept her, begging for a passport, and longing for an unambiguous identity.

Where am I now in my twilight years? How can I ever know what their life was really like? Don’t we all take our grandparents for granted, not realizing that time flies and that the time to ask questions and probe the past goes, never to return? It seems to me that the changes which took place between the time when great grandmother was born in the early nineteenth century and my time, a century later, were perhaps unprecedented in history.

I could not bear to look at the old family picture for very long that morning when I first found it. The past is heavy sometimes. But I often go back to it, and remember.

Serene Husseini Shahid was born in Jerusalem in 1920. With her family she lived in exile in Lebanon. She married Dr. Munib Shahid in 1944