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In the spring and summer
of 1988, graffiti appeared everywhere in Gaza, calling for return to
modesty in dress and for women to wear the veil .
Conservative attire, whether for religious reasons or
just conforming to tradition, was already prevalent in Gaza, but now
it would be mandated for political reasons. Hamas had decided women
and adolescent girls must not appear in public without their heads
and necks covered.
This religious fundamentalist call was couched with
nationalist rhetoric, telling women to veil and wear less colorful
clothes to honor the martyrs of the Intifada.
Hamas initiative found resonance in the mood of the
city , where every neighborhood had seen death and injury. Social
activities in Gaza had become more subdued as the human toll
mounted, family outings by the sea disappeared, and marriage and
birth celebrations were muted, as was the color of clothes .How
intently community supported Hamas difficult to know.
According to a public opinion poll in 1994, support for Hamas
amounted to about 14 percent and, for Islamic Jihad, around 5
percent while the nationalist parties, especially Fateh, mustered a
majority of the support..
In any case, the veil
was enforced without regard to religious affiliation ( in Gaza,
Christians are a very small minority) . There were reports of boys
and young men verbally and physically harassing any defiant young
women, who were hit with tomatoes, eggs, and stones.
In at least one case, an unveiled women committees
activist was hit with liquid acid. Also, some women projects were
attacked and fire that did little damage- was started at Abasan
Biscuit.
In their turn, the women committees offered no
organized protest, and what little individual resistance there was
came mainly from a few in the Palestinian Women Committees . The
well- know activist Itimad Mohanna, for example, was steadfast in
her opposition to the veil and was reported as saying, “I shall not
wear it even if I become martyr of the veil.” (I saw Mohanna in 1990
at her newly established women’s research center-then located at
Gaza’s Y.M.C.A.- and she was still unveiled.)
The leadership of the Palestinian Women’s Committees,
however, was of two minds about how to respond to the fundamentalist
threat. Head of the union, Nassar, was unenthusiastic about battling
Hamas because it would derail energies from the primary questions of
the occupation. Kuttab, who supervised the group’s development
projects, felt strongly that forced veiling could be the beginning
of forcing women out of the public sphere. The Charter of Hamas said
as much, when it declared that the woman’s most important role was
that of “taking care of the home and raising children of ethical
character and understanding that co comes from Islam…”
The idea that Hamas used the veil as a symbol of its
power vis-à-vis the PLO escaped none in the women’s leadership in
the Occupied Territories. But they all knew that fighting Hamas was
a sensitive national question because it might fracture further an
already fragile Palestinian consensus. Hamas’s demand for the veil
happened during the months surrounding the 19th National
Council meeting in 1988. This was the session in which the PLO went
on record in support of a Palestinian state in the Occupied
Territories-in effect, giving up the liberation of all of Palestine.
None of the PLO factions wanted a fight with Hamas now that
Palestinian National Movement was approaching a critical juncture
with the Intifada and the peace process.
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