A short story based on works by Eileen\u00a0Kuttab, Amal Amireh, Daniel Hirsch, Nahla Abdo, Islah Jad and Virginia\u00a0Quirke.<\/p>\n
Palestinian women struggle to be heard, both inside and outside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n
The significant discrepancy between how they are perceived outside and what they can actually do at\u00a0home means that women who could be serious counterparts in ending the occupation, remain\u00a0invisible where they are needed most. Like women in so many war zones, they cannot break through\u00a0the patriarchal attitudes of either national or international political parties, groups or central media\u00a0networks. Yet, they continue to express creativity, pragmatism, suggestions, political aims and sheer\u00a0hopefulness when they discuss their aims and work. This short story is an attempt to honour\u00a0Palestinian women in Gaza, the West Bank and in diaspora.<\/p>\n
According to Eileen Kuttab, the women’s movement provided the backbone of the resistance in 1987, the\u00a0first Intifada, after a decade of mobilization and democratization through its continuous work with\u00a0women in villages and refugee camps. They acted as the local authority together with other mass-based organizations. A new platform was formed that combined national, cultural, social and\u00a0economics; all including women’s issues. Women’s rights included the right to work, to be educated,\u00a0to struggle and to be represented equally in political decision-making. They created an alternative\u00a0space for popular education to replace regular schools, which were closed by the occupation forces\u00a0for a long time during the first Intifada. These groups also boycotted Israeli products in an effort to\u00a0enhance national identity. Kuttab pinpoints that all these activities were crucial for the continuity of\u00a0the Intifada and the empowerment of women.<\/p>\n
The Oslo Agreement created an optimism among Palestinian people and a new mode of thinking that\u00a0assumed liberation and independence. This new mindset however caused a split within the national\u00a0movement, which had been unified against the occupation. The focus was now more on\u00a0international affairs and less on national issues. Consequently, the mass-based organizations\u00a0weakened and the informal grass-roots network collapsed, whilst the elite leadership was not\u00a0accountable to any constituency. Their legitimation was symbolically representing the Palestine\u00a0people. Thus, the hegemony of the Palestinian Authority (PA) was growing. Only the Islamist\u00a0opposition succeeded in maintaining a popular base through the elections of 2003 and the victory of\u00a0Hamas in 2006.<\/p>\n
According to Kuttab a fragmented, liberal movement led to compromise on national issues, coopting\u00a0neoliberal paradigms and losing their organic structural ties with the national movement and the\u00a0grassroots. The emergence of feminist NGOs during the early 1990s led to a growing number of\u00a0specialized and professional feminist NGOs dedicating themselves to intervening in national and\u00a0international policy processes. Thus, the NGOs started to play a prominent role in transforming the\u00a0local women`s agenda, mostly due to the split between Fatah and Hamas. NGOs receive funds from\u00a0bilateral and multilateral agencies. Kuttab identifies that the neoliberal paradigms are headed by the\u00a0International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, and international institutions like UN\u00a0organizations and donor organizations, which have unified and general programs at all levels.<\/p>\n
Women’s rights of the NGOs are according to Kuttab mostly understood as human rights. Thus,\u00a0avoiding religion, culture, settlements, borders, unemployment, poverty, the ‘Apartheid Wall’, the blockade of Gaza and the fight against occupation and for freedom.<\/p>\n
Thus, we are dealing with different models of Muslim women, like different models of women in\u00a0other religions. Because of the occupation, which includes raiding and assaulting homes, families,\u00a0schools, national libraries and museums, destroying civilization, heritage, culture, money and hope,\u00a0we have to – although reluctant to many – accept that Palestinians themselves have to decide their\u00a0cause, whether it is violent or non-violent.<\/p>\n
Ideal models of Palestinian women are often based on laws, customs and religious practices. What can\u00a0be said about the gendered laws and their practices?<\/p>\n
Nahla Abdo states that Palestinian social relations are based on three sets of law: First, the formal ‘state’ or civil laws; second, the un-written customary laws; and last, the religious shari’a , governing\u00a0personal status (marriage, divorce, inheritance etc). Concerning the civil\/formal laws, Palestinians\u00a0are still subject to a combination of Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Egyptian and Israeli laws, as well as extralegal complications imposed on the PA after the Oslo Agreement. Palestinians of both sexes\u00a0share many legal restrictions, but a number of restrictions apply only to women. A Palestine citizen\u00a0within the PA jurisdiction is defined as someone whose ‘father’ must be an Arab Palestinian living in\u00a0the West Bank or the Gaza Strip and holding an Israeli identification card. Thus, the laws themselves\u00a0are both racist and discriminatory, because Palestine people need an Israeli identification card in\u00a0order to identify themselves via their ‘father’. Palestinian Muslim women, but not men, must\u00a0according to Daniel Hirsch, get a male relative’s consent to marry. A female journalist in the Gaza\u00a0Strip told me that in towns the fathers agree on marriage as soon as they meet the young couple and\u00a0see for themselves that it is a good relationship. Normally it is no problem.<\/p>\n
Women, but not men,\u00a0must relieve their spouses of all financial commitment to obtain divorce. These laws violate the\u00a0Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the leading global\u00a0convention on women`s rights that the Palestinian president has ratified. Because of the Israeli\u00a0occupation and system of colonial and racist oppression alot of the old-fashioned laws are fixed and\u00a0difficult to change. Customary laws tend to predominate over written laws. Given the hegemony of\u00a0Islam in Palestine and elsewhere in the Arab world, sharli’a laws govern, according to Abdo, most\u00a0aspects of women’s lives. Hamas gendered ideology, like that of the secularist parties, remains\u00a0according to Isah Jad contradictory, and doors to women`s equality are only partly open.<\/p>\n
These are,\u00a0however, still the conditions for women in most of the world.<\/p>\n
The PA has according to Daniel Hirsch amended many discriminatory laws,\u00a0drafted gender-sensitive legislation and created agencies that promote women’s rights. More girls\u00a0enrol in school, and graduate, than ever before. Women are venturing outside the home, having\u00a0decent private-sector jobs and gaining seats on local political councils. Women’s organizations in the West\u00a0Bank, in Gaza and throughout the diaspora document human rights abuses and propose reforms. They celebrate\u00a0women’s day, like women in many other countries. The western stereotype picture of Palestinian women in Gaza, as only housewives, is incorrect. Some are educated mothers, other are single, some are active in local\u00a0politics and searching for jobs, some take care of their children as and when their husband is in and out of\u00a0Israeli prison. Israeli racist and colonial customs create everyday barriers for men and women in Gaza\u00a0who want to start and continue with small businesses to earn money to avoid relying on charity.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Israeli Occupation Forces denies the citizens of Gaza their right to travel outside the tiny Strip, steal their electricity, money, soil and even destroying their chances for a healthy swim in the\u00a0Mediterranean by denying them clean\u00a0water.<\/p>\n
Finishing off this short story, I will include a narrative which symbolizes the heroic mindset of\u00a0Palestinian women under occupation, from a story of Virginia Quirke, quoted from Amal Amireh,\u00a0(2012, p438):<\/p>\n
Israeli soldiers chased a group of young Palestinian rock-throwing men and finally caught up with one\u00a0of them. As the Israeli soldiers were dragging him towards their jeep to arrest him, a young woman\u00a0with a baby in her arms rushed up, screaming in anger, at the young Palestinian man. “There you are!\u00a0I told you not to come here! I told you there would be trouble! Now what do you expect me to do if\u00a0you are arrested? How will I eat? How will I feed our baby? I’m tired of your irresponsibility! Here,\u00a0you take the baby and try to feed her!”<\/p>\n
And shoving the baby into the arms of the dumbfounded\u00a0young man, she fled. The soldiers, as shocked as the young man, suddenly had a baby to deal with. In\u00a0a state of bewilderment, the soldiers shoved the young man back into the street, jumped into their\u00a0jeep and sped away. The man was left holding the baby. Finally, the mother reappeared from behind\u00a0a nearby building where she had been hiding, went up to the grateful young man, whom she had\u00a0never seen before, took the baby from his arms, and went home.<\/p>\n
Written by: Gerd von der Lippe, WBG\r\nPhoto by: 'Impotence'\/@Patricia Bobillo Rodr\u00edguez<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"