Palestinian Women and the violence of Israel’s occupation
by Sonja Karkar
Women for Palestine (first published by Friends of Al Aqsa Journal vol 11, issue 1, Autumn 2008) since updated 8 March 2009
Women and survival
Women in any conflict bear the brunt of men’s decisions to go to war. They are expected to send their sons and daughters to fight for honour, cause and country and some have no choice but to raise their families in the midst of death and destruction. This is what Western feminists call the negative force of patriarchy, but for Palestinian women, the negative force is Israel’s military tyranny. In other words, Palestinian women lay the oppressive conditions under which they and their families live, right at the door of Israel’s occupation of their homeland.
In truth, occupation and oppression have affected the lives of both men and women. There is simply no liberty under occupation: it then becomes a question of survival, and for Palestinian women, there is nothing more important than the survival of their family and their people. That means when men are killed, imprisoned or exiled, the women must take on the male roles of their patriarchal society. It also means finding ways of resisting the occupation. But, while those acts of resistance have in a sense liberated women from the traditional societal norms, they are also sensitive to the daily humiliations endured by men, acts intended by Israel to weaken the structure of Palestinian society. For this reason, women are loath to pursue a feminist agenda for their own individual rights, especially if it puts in jeopardy the national cause, and that is what Western feminists find so hard to understand.
Feminism and family
Palestinian women have a long history of political activism, born out of a legacy of colonialism that has not been experienced by Western women. Their mother-role has been critically important in challenging the oppression under which they live because it strengthens community and connectedness as opposed to “Western feminist identification of motherhood as the ‘origin’ of women’s oppression.” [1] This Western attitude subscribes to a privileged white woman’s view of what feminism should be like and fails to take into account the experiences of Palestinian women forced to cope with circumstances out of their control, or their own view that motherhood enhances their status as women. In fact, it has been far more comfortable for Western women to focus on cultural oppression and what they perceive as “backwardness” in non-Western countries – evidenced by the almost lascivious interest in books recently written on the veil, domesticity, seclusion, subordination, clitoridectomy, honour killings - than political oppression from Western-approved colonial ventures and exploitation schemes. There is in particular a notable silence from Western feminists on the oppression suffered by Palestinian women as a consequence of Israel’s inhuman occupation, and as Chilla Bulbeck rightly notes,
“If we refuse to speak for others, we may refuse a powerful platform from which to support struggles against oppression . . .”[2]
More than likely, this silence is indicative of the prevailing political forces influencing even the women’s liberation movement which has until now shown itself unable to champion women’s issues in a truly global context.
Palestinian women, however, have been adept at creating a space for themselves within which they are free to speak out, take action, and help each other to stop the oppressive conditions of occupation from dividing their families and communities. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea has described this as “family feminism”[3] – a female perspective that unites rather than divides the genders, and which actually is better for everyone. This stance is most important for a society under extreme attack and where no one has rights – men, women or children. Palestinian families who have suffered most from the violence of occupation have particularly benefited from the social welfare projects that have been run by women to combat the worst excesses of Israel’s rule. Dr Talhami describes it thus:
“ . . . the objective of these women has always been physically the survival of other women and the survival of society, because ‘women’ indeed has meant ‘the family’ and what women stand for within the family.”[4]
The beginnings of political activism
Although Palestinian society was largely secular during the British Mandate years, women could see the benefits of abiding by a unifying Islamic culture that particularly defines the whole Arab world. There was a great feeling of solidarity between the educated and elite Christian and Muslim women against an encroaching foreign enemy, and together they organised petitions and demonstrations to stop mass Jewish immigration and British and Zionist policies aimed at pushing aside established Palestinian society to make way for a Jewish state.
The first Palestine Arab Women’s Congress held in Jerusalem, discussed ways of preventing what no other people would willing accept. It “issued a revolutionary declaration for women to leave aside their other duties and ‘support their men in this [national] cause.’”[5] Efforts became focused on increasing women’s literacy skills and running self-help programs, embroidery workshops and health clinics - meetings which provided women with the perfect training ground for political activism. Such concentrated centres of activity saw the beginnings of the Palestinian women’s movement.
Little did Palestinian women know then that their activism would become absolutely critical when they - along with 90 percent of the Palestinian population - would be forcibly expelled from their homeland in 1948 by the new UN-sanctioned state of Israel. Almost overnight, Palestinian women found themselves on the run with their families in tow, as they became refugees in a world hostile to their plight. Palestinian society was virtually destroyed. The Palestinians had not been asked to negotiate the terms of their own destiny and it is most unlikely that they would have willingly accepted the decision to divide their land in favour of immigrant European Jews. But, there was little they could do to combat the heavily financed, emotionally-charged and organised campaign launched against them. Not even the surrounding Arab countries combined - fractured by their erstwhile colonial masters - were able to stop Israel’s military advances. Yet, despite their defeat, the Palestinians did not ever imagine that they would be prevented from returning to their homes and properties. It was, and has always been, the thought of returning home that has helped Palestinian women endure the catastrophe of their enforced exile.
The roots of violence
The 1948 waves of dispossession, displacement and expulsion truly shocked Palestinian society into a state of disbelief. Even more so that the world was allowing it to happen. Hundreds of thousands of women and children were left without a roof over their heads and were forced to make their homes in tents, until years later they were replaced by home makeshift hovels. There was nothing temporary about these arrangements: almost sixty years later, the Palestinians are still waiting to return to their homes.
The enormity of this mass human uprooting would be unimaginable for women in the West where the sanctity of home is protected by law. No such laws came to the aid of Palestinian women who saw their homes razed to the ground or taken over by Jewish immigrant families. It is still mind-boggling to think that any Jewish woman fresh from the horrific experiences of the Holocaust could have contemplated setting up home amongst the still-warm belongings of a Palestinian family. Even today, no such laws come to the aid of Palestinian women as they again have to watch bulldozers tear apart their houses and their private memories to make way for the Jewish settlers coming from abroad. In just the last eight years, more than 7,000 family homes, and also vast tracts of farming land, have been destroyed for Israel’s illegal housing developments high on the hills of Palestine. Palestinian women can see these brand new housing complexes rise up on the rubble of their own homes and stolen land while they must struggle to survive in pitiful circumstances below.
Three, even four generations of women have had to raise their children and provide for them single-handedly when husbands and fathers have been killed or imprisoned. Many more have had to care for physically and psychologically crippled and maimed family members while they themselves have been constantly subjected to punishing controls, abuses and deprivations. And, far too many pregnant women have been forced to give birth at military checkpoints, in the backs of cars or behind bushes leading to needless deaths when grave complications occur. For Palestinian women to be denied even the right to safe childbirth and motherhood shows the depths to which Israel’s perpetual war on the Palestinians has sunk, as Israel rushes to rid itself of the people whose very existence threatens its own. It moved Israeli journalist Gideon Levy to say, “These are disgusting times . . . when a Palestinian woman in labour no longer has a way to get to a place of sanctuary.”[6]
Grassroots resistance
By the time Israel had taken even more Palestinian land in the 1967 war and forced more Palestinians into exile - some tragically for a second time –women were firmly intent on protesting against Israel’s occupation and began taking part in peaceful marches and demonstrations. The 1970s saw women not only undertake the usual social and charity work in the refugee camps and give support to political prisoners and their families, but also begin to engage in political activities through the Women’s Committees Movement, an umbrella organisation for the women’s work committees, the original four of which were attached to the four major Palestinian political parties.[7] Their increased activism led to the mass political protest of 1984 when hundreds of Palestinian women and children broke through the Israeli checkpoints and barricades erected to stop Palestinians from moving between the West Bank and Jerusalem.[8]
As the savage Zionist colonial enterprise intensified and the oppressed Palestinians found their situation simply intolerable, all their frustrations erupted in the First Intifada of 1987 and women were at the forefront of many of the demonstrations. Oftentimes, they risked their own lives to save their children from arrest, beatings and gunfire and threw stones and staged boycotts and sit-ins to vehemently protest the indiscriminate attacks on their families. The Israeli military retaliated by beating and killing them and hundreds of women were imprisoned in Israeli jails where they suffered humiliating violations, and rape. Many more suffered miscarriages or died from tear gas canisters thrown into their homes as punishment by Israeli soldiers.[9] Despite the dangers of resistance fighting, women began to feel just how empowering political engagement could be, even though their experience of armed conflict was different from that undertaken by men.
While women’s involvement had a widespread impact, it was not without sacrifices. Women found themselves having to juggle their political activities with the day-to-day running of family life, which was made even harder as fathers, husbands, brothers and sons were arrested in droves by the Israeli military. Volunteers then began village subcommittees in the rural areas, in order to create networks such as the nursery schools. Children were cared for whilst their mothers worked in menial jobs in Israel to support their families. These were long and tedious days – waiting endlessly at checkpoints to cross into Israel and to get back home again. The luckier ones were bussed in and out. Nevertheless, there was a camaraderie amongst them that helped cement their common struggle and gave them courage to support any political action for the national cause, even if they could not organise it themselves.
One woman stood out – Samiha Khalil otherwise known as Um Khalil (Mother of Khalil). She was a school teacher who in middle-age decided to establish a training and employment centre In’ash al-‘Usra for disadvantaged women so that they could acquire skills in trades like dressmaking, foodpreservation, and hairdressing. She wanted them to work in Palestine, not Israel because she did not want Palestinian women depending on Israeli products and services. She even encouraged women to work at home on embroidery pieces which the Centre then sold on their behalf. In what for many women were desperate circumstances, Um Khalil’s initiatives helped women maintain their dignity and resist yet another of Israel’s measures to subjugate the people.
There were others like her: strong women who refused Israeli and foreign incentives rather than betray the cause. They were not prepared to compromise as long as their human rights were not respected. Their most enterprising campaign was the boycott initiative against Israeli products that they hoped would force the Israeli military to re-open the schools it had shut down. It meant that the women had to provide alternative local products that would help sustain Palestinian families - and they did. They also taught the children in underground community-run schools in the interim. It was this kind of grassroots activism that really empowered the women involved - probably more than if they had been in the higher level leadership positions that were open only to a very few. These services made the women indispensable to their communities “when conditions were creating new and pressing needs”[10] and there were few objections to their political involvement. It was all part of the national struggle and these women inspired others to follow their lead.
The endless peace process
The Oslo Accords changed this vital grassroots activism. Suddenly, the struggle for liberty became diluted as agreements were made to begin normalising Palestinian society through a self-rule government while still living under occupation. It was a bizarre notion because none of the final status issues – Jerusalem, borders, water issues, settlements, refugees - that were essential for a just solution, were resolved. Yet, there were enough Palestinians, buoyed by this manufactured hope for better times, who were willing to replace the grassroots struggle for liberty with foreign-backed NGOs whose work was focused on humanitarian issues. Much of the work that had been done by the women’s committees was now taken over by the well-funded NGOs with independent and salaried staff and they certainly had no brief to educate Palestinian women to resist the occupation.
Despite the changes, there was no let up in Israel’s suffocating occupation and many women were once again struggling to survive in the mind-numbing and deadly living conditions of curfews, military incursions, movement restrictions, systematic land razing and confiscation and home demolitions. Women who had succeeded in developing local products to stop Palestinians buying Israeli-produced goods, were suddenly plunged into extreme poverty by the mass-produced and cheaper products coming from the new factories set up under Oslo by wealthy Palestinians. The women now found themselves struggling to survive with no time to build the networks that had been so successful during the First Intifada.
Desperate resistance
A feeling of failure permeated Palestinian society as it became apparent that Israel had again succeeded in suppressing Palestinian initiatives with dire consequences for ordinary families. More desperate means of resisting were inevitable because no people want to be annihilated, driven out or subjugated: their right to resist is enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The Second Intifada erupted in 2000 and while the means were often desperate and not always palatable, Israel’s air bombardments and armoured tank assaults against a largely unarmed people have never been the stuff of heroic campaigns - especially not when pitched against the stones of resistance from the hands of children. Suicide bombings escalated Israel’s military responses and painted an ugly picture of Palestinian resistance. As a consequence, honourable grief was denied Palestinian women: the world turned their martyrs into terrorists and their children into nameless statistics in a grossly unequal war.
After more than six decades of oppression, the psychological strain on the women cannot be overstated. They stare at death and violence every day: soldiers firing at youths, planes dropping bombs on cars and residential buildings, husbands roughed up in front of them and then handcuffed, blindfolded and taken away, children caught in cross-fire or deliberately shot. The daily humiliation of waiting endlessly at checkpoints, interrogations, body searches, watching their olive and fruit trees being uprooted, their homes demolished, their land razed, having their identity cards revoked. Worse still is knowing that their legal existence is barely recognised, that their national aspirations are considered unworthy of respect and that in the eyes of the world they are seen as morally diminished. No wonder Palestinian women have put their people’s liberation from Israel’s escalating oppression before any demands for equal rights in their own society.
The way of faith
The success of the Islamic Hamas party in the January 2006 democratic elections shocked not only the power players of the Middle East – Israel and the US – but also the main secular Fatah party long-used to running and negotiating Palestinian affairs. So many Palestinians had become disillusioned with the lack of progress since Oslo and the intolerable conditions that were worsening by the day that many were ready to try alternative ideas to ending Israel’s iron rule. There was no doubt that Hamas had already shown itself capable of providing sympathetic social reform amongst the disadvantaged and this brought Hamas much support during the elections. Women struggling to survive and who needed all the support they could get, found its programs a godsend, even if other less needy groups did not.
Turning to God is not unusual in any society stricken by violence, oppression and hopelessness, and although Palestinian politics had been traditionally secular, Palestinian women seemed prepared to accept an Islamic agenda if it would improve their lot. That it might bring a much more conservative attitude to their role in society was something they were prepared to tolerate in the interests of their people’s liberation. However, Hamas never had a chance to show if its policies would positively reorient the Palestinian struggle for liberation or repress Palestinian society even more. The deliberately hyped-up and false worldview of extreme fundamentalist Islam threatening democracy and Christian liberalism was creating terrible divisions within Palestinian society itself, and again, women found themselves the victims of an enemy without – Israel - and an enemy within - the warring factions of Palestinian politics.
Interestingly, six women from the Hamas party were elected to parliament and one of them - Huda Naeem – told The Guardian that "Women are closer to the problems of the society. They are the ones who feel the unemployment. They are the ones who have to look after the children when their husbands are in prison. They feel well treated by Hamas institutions. Now these women are looking to us, the women in parliament, to change other things."[11]
One of those “other things” said Professor Jameela Shanti - another elected member of parliament - is discrimination.
“We are going to show that women are not secondary, they are equal to men. Discrimination is not from Islam, it is from tradition.”[12]
This was hardly the image of submissiveness and meekness that the West has been trying so hard to portray in women showing outward adherence to the Islamic faith.
Indomitable courage
Only months after Hamas was elected and Israel had begun the worst of its terror attacks on Gaza, Palestinian women demonstrated their extraordinary courage by breaking the siege of Beit Hanoun. Some 30 freedom fighters had taken refuge in a mosque after trying to defend the town of 28,000 residents from invading Israeli tanks and troops. All water and electricity had been cut off, and despite the rising death toll, no ambulances were allowed in to attend to the injured and dying. The Israeli army had imposed a curfew and had begun taking away all males over 15 years of age, stripping them to their underwear, blindfolding them and then handcuffing them. A harrowing account of the siege is given by Jameela Shanti as she explains “It is not easy as a mother, sister or wife to watch those you love disappear before your eyes. Perhaps that was what helped me, and 1,500 other women, to overcome our fear and defy the Israeli curfew . . . we faced the most powerful army in our region unarmed . . . we had nothing, except each other and our yearning for freedom . . . The soldiers of Israel’s so-called defence force did not hesitate to open fire on unarmed women. The sight of my close friends Ibtissam Yusuf Abu Nada and Rajaa Ouda taking their last breaths, bathed in blood, will live with me forever.”[13]
It was a Ghandi-esque gesture that so many peace movements talk about and constantly urge the Palestinians to adopt. But, there were no international cries of outrage and horror, no media stories of valour and sacrifice, no galvanizing of world support for the women of Gaza. The silence was palpable. No one in their right mind could condone these tyrannical actions: only Israel seemed to have carte blanche to perpetrate such dreadful outrages without fear of condemnation.
Today, the killing in Gaza goes on – the recent 22-day merciless bombardment that killed more than 1300 Palestinians and left thousands more terribly wounded was pure malevolence coming on top of the crippling sanctions that deny the Palestinians any contact with the outside world. Enough human rights organizations have reported on the impending humanitarian disaster to give credence to the desperate cries for fuel, water, medicine, electricity and food and it is in such impossible conditions that Palestinian women are having to raise their families with no surety of a better future than one coming from their belief in a merciful God. As Jameela Shanti points out “Nothing undermines the West’s claims to defend freedom and democracy more than what is happening in Palestine.”[14] A violent world
In any study of violence against Palestinian women, the focus must fall on Israel. The occupation taints everything because the society it imprisons cannot develop freely as it should. Neither can the society of the occupiers. Just like in a prison, the system damages the inmates as well as those administering it. An article in The Guardian’s Comment is Free reported that domestic violence against women in Israel had risen by almost 300 percent between 2000 and 2005 and almost half of the women were killed “by partners who were soldiers, security guards or policemen.”[15]
Domestic violence against Palestinian women has also risen in the Occupied Palestinian Territories although there are no reliable statistics. An in-depth report by Amnesty international[16] examined the intensity of the violence that consumes their lives, and while it detailed increased incidents of domestic violence, such as sexual abuse, rape and “honour” killings and the failure of the Palestinian Authority to stop these crimes, by far the greater emphasis was on the violence of Israel’s occupation. That violence has been documented over and over again, and despite that, “Israel has consistently disregarded its obligations.”[17]
Israel’s ruthless US-backed colonialist enterprise is the negative force of political patriarchy in action. Its incarceration of Palestinians in their own land is the worst kind of oppression because neither men nor women nor children are free. It has institutionalised apartheid with a wall, citizenship laws, zoning regulations, and land seizures. Ethnic cleansing and transfer are openly spoken about. A slow genocide is happening in Gaza – they have no clean water, no electricity, no fuel, no medicines, and barely enough food rations and Israel is raining down mortar shells on them with daily reports of deaths and injuries. But, there is no global women’s movement speaking out against this kind of militarised violence that terrorises Palestinian women and their families.
A challenge to feminists
While there may be the temptation by Western women to view the Palestinian women’s struggle through critical feminist lens because they have allowed the national cause to override their “rights” as women, they should bear in mind that “national identities are as salient for women as they are for men.”[18] And all the more so because their very existence as a people was even negated by the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir who said “there was no such thing as Palestinians . . . they did not exist”. It was a statement that insultingly ignored the very real presence of a Palestinian population even as it suffered under the crushing stamp of the Israeli jackboot.
Today, the only thing that has changed is that conditions are much worse than anyone could ever have imagined. Not only has Israel’s political, military and economic domination of the Occupied Territories intensified, it has increased its illegal land acquisitions as well, leaving some four million Palestinian people with barely enough room in which to survive. In that contracting violent space, the only hope for Palestinians is to remain steadfastly determined to preserve the foundations of their culture and identity against their enemy. Palestinian women have shown only too well how that can be done. The national struggle for liberty is their right and their duty and there is time enough for social reform when the occupation ends and statehood is achieved.
In the meantime, Western feminists could show the genuineness of their championing of women’s rights and liberation by a global sisterhood campaign of boycotts, protests, sit-ins, petitions and demonstrations to protest Israel’s violence against Palestinian women. It could really make a difference to their lives already in extreme jeopardy.
Dead-end legal processes
In a 2006 resolution adopted by the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC),[19] Israel was unanimously affirmed as the major obstacle to Palestinian women advancing and having any quality of life because of the dire humanitarian situation in which they live and the crisis they face. Concern for the women’s situation was even noted by the two countries voting against the resolution: the United States and Australia. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence on the ground, they still claimed the resolution presented “unbalanced and inaccurate facts about the Palestinian women” and politicised humanitarian concerns in a way that was unhelpful”. They, therefore, rejected the resolution.
Such deliberate neglect to act makes a mockery of the 2000 UN Security Council Resolution 1325 which recognises the impact of war on women and women’s contributions to conflict resolution and peacemaking.[20] Australian peace activist Felicity Hill[21] saw through the resolution’s adoption, but seven years later, women are still suffering heinous violations in conflict zones all over the world and Felicity Hill was moved to say at the 2007 anniversary that “we should no longer focus on women and peace, but on men and war.”
Peacemaking without justice
The truth of the matter is that for all the peace talks, peacemaking and peace dialogues, nothing has changed for Palestinian women or men that might suggest a breakthrough from Israel’s intransigence. These talks just go through the motions while Israel continues its oppressive colonialist policies and the world wallows in its craven silence. Sama Aweidah-Liftawi, director of the Women’s Studies Centre was well aware back in 1999 that “negotiations do not necessarily equal peace”[22] particularly if there is no bona fide interest in making substantive changes to the status quo and Israel has already made it very clear that it will not budge on final status issues.
Clearly, peace on its own is no magical panacea to the conflict: it needs justice. A Palestinian peace activist Hanan Awad defined peace “ . . . as a tool for justice”[23] and justice is oftentimes the missing ingredient that makes dialogue between some Palestinian and Israeli women so difficult. The nuances of language often create their own barriers as happened at a conflict-resolution seminar in 1999, when Gila Svirsky explained that Israeli women in her organisation Bat Shalom believed that the Palestinians “deserved a state of their own.”[24] She was corrected by Sumaya Farhat-Naser, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Women: “not deserve, we have a right to a state of our own.” [25]
This prima facie entitlement to their land permeates the discourse of Palestinian women peacemakers much as it does the collective discourse of Palestinian nationalism and most women equate their role as peacemaker with the aim of achieving political and national rights. They are, therefore, reticent to engage in dialogue with Israeli women without Israel first ending its oppressive policies and practices. According to Nahla Abdo, Israeli women “hold a different moral orientation, based primarily on care rather than on justice.”[25] For Palestinian women, who are still part of an ongoing painful narrative, forgiveness and tolerance can only come once their rights are respected and they can emerge from any peace agreement with dignity as equals.
Palestinian women peacemakers have shown that they are “more concerned with survival issues overall”[26] as their activities are concentrated on the grassroots community processes rather than the state-centric security solutions that have dominated all the peace talks so far. A better option would be the pursuit of individual security through the disbanding of Israel’s occupation and the oppression that it has wrought on Palestinian society. Women are very well placed to do just that if they are prepared to speak up against all forms of violence and oppression and also if they are willing to vigorously question the obstructions that prevent genuine peacemaking between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators and their US interlocutor.
There is still no sign of that happening and so it is not surprising that peace talks post-Annapolis have come to nothing. Instead, Israel is ramping up its military control. This brings to mind a comment made by a former battalion surgeon in the Vietnam War – now a well-known authority on spiritual healing – about “the incredible seduction of war for males”[28] which explains in a nutshell just why peace is so difficult to achieve in our patriarchal societies. It is no wonder that a militarised society like Israel becomes “dependent on or controlled by the military and its values, beliefs and presumptions.”[29] And it is no wonder that Palestinian women see Israel’s military occupation as the prime cause of all the violence shattering their lives and their society.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Chilla Bulbeck, Re-orienting Western Feminisms: Diversity in a Postcolonial World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, p. 270
[2] Ibid. p. 209
[3] Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, In Search of Islamic Feminism: One Woman’s Global Journey, Doubleday, New York, 10 November 1998, p. 422
[4] Ghada Hashem Talhami at a Palestine Center briefing in Washington DC on 8 March 2006 entitled “The Evolution of the Palestinian Feminist Movement”.
[5] Lucy Nusseibah, “Palestinian Women and Non-violence”, 14 January 2002
[6] Gideon Levy, “The War against the Unborn”, Ha’aretz, 20 January 2002
[7] The four main political factions were: Fatah; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; and the Palestinian People’s Party
[8] Amal Kawar, Daughters of Palestine: Leading Women of the Palestinian National Movement, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1996, p.99.
[9] Al-Haq, “A Nation Under Siege”. Al-Haq Annual Report on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, 1989, Ramallah, West Bank, 1990, pp. 509-511.
[10] R. Giacaman and P. Johnson, “Palestinian Women: Building Barricades and Breaking Barriers”, in Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin (eds) Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation, South End Press and MERIP, Boston, 1989
[11] Chris McGreal, “Women MPs vow to change face of Hamas” The Guardian, 18 February 2006
[12] Ibid.
[13] Jameela Shanti, “We women of Beit Hanoun overcame our fear”, The Guardian, 10 November 2006. http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1942942,00.html
[14] Ibid.
[15 ]Arthur Nelsen, “A Soul-Searching Mission”, The Guardian: Comment is Free, 19 October 2006. commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/arthur_neslen/2006/10/arthur_neslen_1.html
[16] Amnesty International, “Conflict, Occupation and Patriarchy: Women Carry the Burden”, March, 2005
[17] Ibid.
[18] Frances S Hasso, “The ‘Women’s Front’: Nationalism, Feminism, and Modernity in Palestine.” Gender and Society 12, no. 4, 1998, p. 442
[19] ECOSOC/6234 of 25 July 2006
[20] United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 of 31 October 2000 (S/RES/1325)
[21] Felicity Hill is the Director of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in New York
[22] Aweidah-Liftawi interview with Nahla Abdo, 24 July 1999, referred to in Chapter 3: Palestinian Women and Peacemaking, Nahla Abdo and Roit Lentin (eds) Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation, Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2002, p. 324
[23] Hanan Awad, interview with Nahla Abdo, 19 July 1999, ibid.
[24] Nahla Abdo and Roit Lentin (eds) Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation, Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2002, Chapter 3, p. 324
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Pinto, 9 November 1999
[28] ABC National Radio, Host Michael Toms interviews guest Dr Larry Dossey on “Obvious Healing” for the New Dimensions program, 24 March 2006
[29] Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, “Police Reactions to Violence against Palestinian Women in Israel”, Femmes & Mondialisation, 12 June 2005
posted by Interactive Muslimah Association (IMAN) @ 6:51 PG
5 Feb 2010 -
IIUM will be organising a talk on kalimah Allah on Feb 5. Muslimin and muslimat are invited to join the program.
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From the President's Desk
I woke up before fajr this morning with a thought over Faridah's mail. In my previous two mails, I had explained to some details why I strongly believe not to get into a tango with people whose mission is to revise Islam for their own specific purposes, humiliate our 'ulama' and discredit mainstream Muslims....
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