 Photo: Bill Hackwell |
In a 2002 article, bourgeois feminist Andrea Dworkin ignorantly describes Palestinian women’s participation in the resistance movement against Israeli occupation. She describes “suicide bombings” as a reaction to the rape and sexual violence they endure in a “woman-hating society.” Dworkin asks, “How does one rise up in a land where women are lower than the animals?”
A more accurate description of women’s participation in the Palestinian people’s resistance to colonial occupation came from Leila Khaled. “There are no suicide bombers, they are freedom fighters,” she told a British university crowd in 2002. “We are glorifying life because we want peace, but when we are always the targets of the Israelis, I don’t think we are going to meet them with flowers. We continue our struggle by all means, including armed struggle.” (telegraph.co.uk, May 12, 2002)
Khaled is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In 1970 she brought the world’s attention to the Palestinian struggle as she joined her comrades in the PFLP by taking over five airplanes to demand the release of Palestinian political prisoners.
The truth is that Palestinian women have been participating in all forms of resistance, including armed resistance, for as long as the Palestinian people have fought for national liberation. More importantly, the struggle of Palestinian women is the history of all Palestinian people’s struggle.
HISTORY OF RESISTANCE TO OCCUPATION
Palestinian women’s resistance to occupation took on many forms in the early days of the British Mandate and as a huge influx of Zionist settlers began to occupy Palestinian lands. In 1929, the first Palestine Arab Women’s Congress was held in Jerusalem, drawing over 300 delegates from around the country. These women left the traditional confines of home and fields to demand freedom for Palestinian political prisoners, an end to arms purchases by the Zionists, and independence for Palestine. That congress issued a revolutionary declaration for women to leave aside their other duties and “support their men in this [national] cause.”
In the 1930s, a militant women’s group called Zahrat Al-Okhowan was formed to fight the British occupation of Palestine.
In 1936, in reaction to Zionist settlers displacing Palestinians, the workers of Palestine—men and women alike—carried out a six-month general strike. All normal life stopped. The 1936 general strike was the longest strike in Middle East history.
In 1948, after the partition of Palestine by the United Nations and the creation of Israel, more than 800,000 Palestinians—nearly 90 percent of the Palestinian population—were forcibly expelled from their homeland. Palestinian activist and feminist Reem Alnuweiri described the impact of this expulsion on women:
“[The] Palestinian woman also became a refugee and her critical mission was keeping the Palestinian national identity intact. She had to heal the pains, re-unify the dispersed family, secure food on the table with her partner, and above all, keep the memory. … Palestinians raised by refugee families, who never saw Palestine, have a very clear picture of it, just from the memories of their mothers and grandmothers, and the transcendence through generations continues.”
During and after the 1967 war, Israel forcibly expanded its borders to annex the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. This war gave new energy to the Palestinian people. There was a growing realization that achieving national liberation must be carried out by those living under occupation: by Palestinians themselves.
Palestinian women came out in force for sit-ins and peaceful marches to raise awareness about the injustice of the Israeli occupation. Popular Relief Committees were set up to support the Palestinian prisoners and their families. By the late 1970s, all the major Palestinian political factions had women’s committees. Those were in addition to the many charities set up to empower and educate women to resist occupation.
By the late 1960s, Palestinian guerrilla organizations were formed within Gaza, the West Bank and the refugee camps in Jordon and Lebanon. Palestinians trained to carry out numerous attacks against Israeli military targets and to organize and provide for the people’s basic needs, including self-sustaining sources of food for the refugee camps. These guerrilla schools provided military training for young girls. All the main resistance organizations recognized that Palestinian women were one of the deepest resources for the revolution. This further affirmed that the liberation of women was fundamental to the liberation of Palestine.
As women continued to fight and demonstrate, the struggle within the Palestinian home between men and women and the traditional heritage of old Palestine also continued. Women had to argue with their families to be allowed to go alone to political meetings, to take military training or to stand guard duty. Palestinian culture, like many others around the world at this time, taught that women couldn’t work outside the home and still retain their honor. Slowly, through women’s continued participation in the struggle, the concept of honor expanded to include women’s contribution to the movement as well as their own growth and development in the interest of national liberation.
WOMEN CENTRAL TO THE INTIFADA
A high point of Palestinian women’s involvement occurred during the First Intifada, or Uprising, that began in 1987. Women played prominent roles in leading demonstrations, setting up popular relief committees, and most notably in initiating and sustaining boycott campaigns against Israeli products in Gaza and the West Bank. This boycott initiative was incredibly hard to mobilize due to the lack of indigenous Palestinian industry. In order to convince Palestinian families to boycott Israeli products, it was necessary to provide them with alternative sources of income and products by establishing their own local industries such as cheese making, bread baking, and community gardens.
The boycott campaign was in addition to street activism directly confronting the occupying Israeli forces. When an Israeli soldier arrested a child, Palestinian women would pour into the streets demanding the child’s release—all claimed the child as their own. With dozens of women demanding the return of their “own child,” soldiers often felt pressured to release the child they had in custody.
 Photo: Bill Hackwell |
OSLO ACCORD SETBACKS
In 1993, Israel and the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization signed the Oslo peace accords. The Oslo Accords included an interim agreement whereby Israel would withdraw their forces from parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians would replace the Israeli forces with a Palestinian “self-rule government.” This new Palestinian Authority was given administrative governing duties over highly segmented portions of the West Bank and Gaza, resembling South African-style Bantustans under the Apartheid regime.
The agreement left “final status issues” to be decided at a future date. These issues included the artificial borders between a future Palestinian state and Israel, the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled in 1948, and the elimination of rapidly increasing Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The Oslo Accords provided no relief for Palestinians who continued to live under Israeli occupation. However, it gave Israel the ability to acquire and control Palestinian lands both militarily and financially.
The Oslo Accords promoted the false notion that Palestinians had the ability to function as an independent society while living under occupation. Oslo was negotiated and signed by wealthy Palestinians in the Diaspora who wanted a home for their wealth. In return, they agreed to an Apartheid-like solution with hope for more in the future.
Following the Accords, class divisions and a disparity in income began to emerge. Suicides, drug use, rape and extreme poverty for women grew. More and more of the small businesses that had developed during the Intifada to sustain the society went out of business, pushed aside by new Palestinian-owned mass production and cheaper prices.
A qualitative change took place in the participation of Palestinian women in the national liberation movement. A sector of the women’s movement, well funded by international non-governmental organizations, promoted the view that it was time for this compromise peace. These NGOs, with independent and salaried staff, began to flood Palestinian society. They had no links to the grassroots, popular committees that had functioned to provide for the needs of the Palestinians while fighting the occupation. Most NGOs had a strictly humanitarian focus, with no recognition that the Palestinian people were still living under the cruel conditions of Israeli occupation.
By 1994, one year after the Oslo Accords were signed, there were 800 NGOs in the territories—one for every 3,500 people. They were receiving over $200 million, with explicit conditions imposed by their donors calculated to exclude the sort of activism that had been a hallmark of the 1980s. The United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, “donated” millions of dollars to NGOs in the West Bank and Gaza, aiming to influence Palestinian society.
These well-funded NGOs made no link between feminist and national aspirations of Palestinian women. As a result, the Palestinian women’s movement became increasingly depoliticized and segmented. The women’s movement was divided between those women’s groups who continued to work through the NGOs and the anti-occupation segment of the women’s movement. Those that felt national liberation and women’s liberation should go hand in hand remained in the streets. These women insisted that the root cause of their oppression was linked to their occupation. This segment of the women’s movement is the one that still provides for the needs of Palestinian women during the current crisis of the second Intifada, which began on Sept. 28, 2000.
The current Intifada is a response to brutal living conditions imposed on Palestinians by the Sharon government in Israel at the direction of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Repressive tactics including daily and deadly incursions by the Israeli troops into West Bank and Gaza towns and villages, continuing military checkpoints restricting movement to work, and the ongoing and illegal demolition of homes and agricultural properties, are but a few of the measures used against the Palestinian people.
UNITY AND THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT
The Palestinian resistance movement has endured for decades. It has fully developed into a movement involving all sectors of Palestinian society: men, women, and students of all religions. Its unambiguous goal is to achieve peace through unity. The Palestinian resistance movement respects the needs of all Palestinians.
After decades of resistance to occupation and oppression, progressive Palestinians know that any struggle for national liberation has no room for sexism or discrimination based on religion or color. We find our strength in our collective resistance, in all forms possible to maintain our own survival as a people.
Palestinians’ defiance of the brutal measures imposed by Israeli occupation has created an unprecedented and unbreakable national unity. The people of Palestine—whether in the West Bank or Gaza, whether living within the 1948 borders or living as refugees around the world waiting to go home—will eventually prevail. After a long and difficult struggle, filled with suffering but always filled with hope, the perseverance, determination, and the collective strength of the Palestinian people will lead them back to a Free Palestine.
Sources
Reem Alnuweiri, “Palestinian Woman Struggle for Social and National Liberation.” Speech at Towards Our Liberation Conference Against Imperialist War and Plunder, Vancouver, Canada, Nov. 3, 2002.
Naila Daniel, “Palestinian Women in the Intifada.” Peace Magazine Archive, vol. 13, no. 4.
Thalif Deen, “Rights: Palestinian Women Hard Hit by Israeli Occupation” (2004).
Andrea Dworkin, “The Women Suicide Bombers.” Feminista, vol. 5 no. 1, 2002.
Hanadi Loubani and Jennifer Plyler, “Occupation, Patriarchy, and the Palestinian Women’s Movement.” Association for Women’s Rights in Development, Nov. 10, 2003.
“Frequently Asked Questions About the Apartheid Wall.” www.stopthewall.org .
“Our Roots Are Still Alive: The Story of the Palestinian People.” People’s Press, San Francisco (1977).
“Palestinian Civil Society Under Siege (2): From Resistance To Empowerment.” OTR Palestine, vol. 15, issue 2, June 1, 2001.
“Palestinian Women Mobilizing to Resist Israel’s Apartheid Wall.” House Report no. 43, International Women’s Peace Service, Sept. 17, 2003.
