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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.
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.
.
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
3 July 2000
Cambridge
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 (? -check
all these footnotes)
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.
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