On March 8, 2003, which is recognized as
International Women's Day, several Palestinian women's organizations
released a public statement, in which they declared: "Looking
towards the eighth of March, we, Palestinian women, stand defiantly
over the graves of our innocent martyrs and children, challenging
the violations of human rights practiced against our people daily."
Later the statement goes on to say: "[W]e raise our voices
loudly, as one people, demanding from international society to
provide international protection for our people, living, dying and
existing under occupation. We demand a halt to all forms of war
crimes and violations of our human rights which we face daily. We
call upon our civil society partners to build a feminist agenda as
an integral part of their programs for the sake of a just society in
which all are equal without discrimination or abuse."
The statement is a fitting illustration of the
dual battle that Palestinian women wage against the obstacles of
occupation and the challenges of patriarchy. Any women's movement
that has had to contend with patriarchal as well as imperialist
forces has had to wage a similar battle, fought on two fronts. This
paper will outline the history of the Palestinian women's movement,
highlight the issues that differentiate it from other global women's
movements, and discuss the future of Palestinian women's rights.
History
In the United States, the first wave of the
feminist movement arose decades after independence from Britain had
been sought and gained. The ground-breaking summit on women's rights
was held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, and women finally
achieved suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the 19th Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution. In the West Bank and Gaza, however, feminism
and nationalism have always had a concurrent and parallel history.
The history of colonial occupation and dominance
in the Palestinian territories has always marked its physical,
political, and cultural landscapes. While the 500-year reign of the
Ottomans in Palestine had produced a flowering of literature, music,
and culture in general, corruption and brutality had marked the last
years of Ottoman rule. During this time, Palestinians endured mass
oppression: rates of literacy among men and women remained quite
low, and most Palestinians lived an agrarian life, tilling the soil
on their farms to sustain their living. It is not unusual to hear
stories of Palestinian men who were kidnapped by Ottoman armies to
fight in battles. (Indeed, I have heard from my own family that my
paternal grandfather was so kidnapped, and after the war's end, he
walked and hitchhiked his way from Syria back to his village in the
West Bank.)
After the First World War, when Palestine came
under the control of the British Empire, life did not significantly
improve. However, Palestinians became more urbanized as cities like
Ramallah and Nablus began to crystallize into mass centers of trade
and commerce. Newspapers such as Filastin, Mirat al-Sharq, and the
Palestine Bulletin circulated, keeping Palestinians from Haifa on
the coast to Jenin in the north to Jericho (a-Riha) near the Dead
Sea connected and informed.
Almost immediately, however, pockets of Jews began
arriving in Palestine from Western Europe, establishing small
colonies and towns. In 1896, Theodor Herzl had written his famous
book, Der Judenstaat, or The Jewish State, arguing that a national
homeland for the Jewish people was essential to their survival. As a
result, the Zionist movement spread quickly through Europe, its fire
no doubt fanned by the fact that Jews had long been the victims of
anti-Semitic practices that made life unbearable for many. The Jews
who left Europe to settle in Palestine were initially befriended by
the native Palestinians; this is not surprising, since communities
of Sephardic Jews (also known as "Arab Jews," because they speak
Arabic and are identified ethnically as Arabs) had always existed in
Palestine. Furthermore, the medical and agricultural skills and
knowledge that these Jewish immigrants brought with them from Europe
often proved useful and intriguing to the community in general.
Problems arose, however, when the influx of Jews
from Europe increased exponentially. In 1914, 6 percent of the
population had been Jewish and the rest Arab; by 1939, as a result
of the increasing horror of the Holocaust in Europe, the Jewish
population had risen to 30 percent. Furthermore, by this time, the
purpose of the increasing numbers of immigrating Jews had become
clear to most Palestinians, even to villagers and those living in
rural areas: despite confusing British claims to the contrary,
Palestine was to become the new Jewish homeland. The threat was
understood immediately, and Palestinians began mobilizing to resist
it.
Until this time, most rural Palestinian women had
shared the same lot as the men: living a rudimentary, simple
lifestyle, they shared farming duties with their families and
husbands, while also caring for their children and managing a
household. Politically passive and uninvolved, this group of women
had more immediate concerns: preserving their livelihoods and that
of their families under crippling poverty. Middle- and upper-class
women, however, had already begun to organize, also in parallel
stride with men of their socioeconomic class. In 1903, a Palestinian
women's organization was founded in Acre, on the current Israeli
coast--one of the first known women's organizations in the
Palestinian territories.
Palestinian women: fighting two
battles *