Women of the Promised Land

By Silja J.A. Talvi, LiP Magazine. Posted November 14, 2002.

"A climate of fear and an obsession with reprisal now grip our two peoples. We women refuse to be paralyzed or polarized by such fear."
--Statement from The Jerusalem Center for Women and Bat Shalom, April 15, 2002

"We cannot afford to waste any more time, or any more lives. We need to think of a new approach. We as women want to bring a new understanding to the situation in the Middle East."
--Palestinian feminist Maha Abu-Dayyeh Shamas, in a speech before the UN Security Council, May 7, 2002

"Where are you men of Ramallah?!"

Such were the cries of Palestinian women who took to the streets, en masse, in the nascent stages of the first Intifada.

Today, the televised battles between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians have largely been framed as an ongoing battle of angry men locked in a deadly and senseless spiral of armed conflict.

But in the beginning, it was women who were the first to take to the streets. All throughout the West Bank, they demonstrated loudly and non-violently for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, the members of Palestinian women's and neighborhood committees devoted their lives to building a comprehensive and concrete resistance movement -- effectively carrying the Palestinian revolution to a point where the world sat up and was forced to take notice. By March 1988, in fact, there were an average of 115 women's marches in the Occupied Territories per week, many of them in protest over miscarriages suffered from tear gas, as well as in grief over the injuries and deaths of children, parents, friends, and husbands.

The demonstrations themselves thrust Palestinian women into a new role in their society, sparking debate over difficult gender issues including "honor killings," bride prices, spousal abuse, occupational status, and equal payment, as well as the physical safety of women who rejected the rules and constraints of Islamic shari'a dress, including the wearing of the hijab.

Yet then, as now, the televised images broadcast into homes across the world were of rock-throwing Palestinian boys and men, engaged in David and Goliath-styled skirmishes with the heavily armed young male soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Lesser known -- and rarely reported on -- has been the remarkable extent to which Palestinian and Israeli women have worked together and organized for a peaceful end to the 35-year occupation.

Away from the public spotlight, Palestinian and Israeli female dissidents and journalists have endured torture in Israeli prisons, while dedicated Orthodox Jewish women have objected loudly, on religious principles, to the Occupation. Feminist Jewish lesbians have joined the likes of the internationally-recognized Women in Black in organizing protests and vigils. Palestinian and Israeli women academics have written declarations, essays, articles and books about their opposition to the Israeli government's brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and have issued stinging criticisms of the Palestinian Authority's summary executions, jailings and squelching of dissenting viewpoints.

More so than any other Palestinian woman, the high-profile negotiating skills of the articulate and analytical Hanan Ashrawi defied gender lines and societal expectations. Replying to a 1992 question about how it felt to be the only woman in the Palestinian and Israeli negotiating teams, Ashrawi told a Ms. interviewer the following:

"It is a tremendous responsibility, a great challenge. It is also a great victory for women in general, and in particular for Arab and Palestinian women. Because this didn't come out of a vacuum but as a result of a long history of women's struggle in the Occupied Territories, Palestine. I came buttressed by a clear feminist vision and agenda and a new definition of value ... My role legitimizes women's struggles; I can speak out on behalf of all the women whose voices have not been heard. This is collective work, not tokenism."

Pushed Out of the Spotlight

In 2002, the feminist peace movement continues to try to advance a shared vision similar to Ashrawi's, but women's voices now barely register in the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict except in the roles of vitriolic settlers, terrorized mothers, shellshocked refugees, and bloodied, frantic shoppers rushing to get away from a suicide bombing.

"Those of us who remain committed to the joint work and have sustainable relationships are continuing to meet when possible, but the closures and curfews mean that scheduling is improvisational and crazy-making," explains Terry Greenblatt, the director of one of Israel's more prominent feminist peace organizations, Bat Shalom.

Bat Shalom and the Palestinian women's peace organization, The Jerusalem Center for Women, comprise what's known as The Jerusalem Link -- a group that works together toward "a real peace -- not merely a treaty of mutual deterrence, but a culture of peace and cooperation between our peoples."

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