“Nation, Tradition, and Rights: The Indigenous Feminism of the Palestinian Women's Movement (1920...

Womens Suffrage in the British Empire Citizenship nation and race

Edited by Ian Christopher Fletcher Laura E Nym Mayhall and Philippa Levine

London and New York

9 Nation tradition and rights

The indigenous feminism of the Palestinian womens movement 1929-1948

Ellen Fleischmann

During the early twentieth century educated middle- and upper-class women in the Middle East became part of a global phenomenon in which women from all regions of the world became engaged in a multitude of reform social and ultimately political movements I Newly emerging womens movements in colonized societies such as those of the Middle East however often had markedly disparate goals aspirations and targets for change or reform than their Western counterparts Whereas suffrage became a major focus of Western feminists most Middle Eastern womens moveshyments rarely addressed the issue in their formative years 2

The reasons for these differences are perhaps overly obvious None of the countries of the Middle East had a truly sovereign existence as modern nation-states until the 1920s The Arab countries in particular were for all intents and purposes European colonial possessions until after the Second World War3 Nationalism was not an abstract issue to women in the Middle East their lives were directly transformed by both the social and political changes engendered by direct or indirect forms of colonial rule Furthermore many ordinary as well as politically active women were personally affected by the resultant violent conflicts which occurred in virtually every Middle Eastern country during national liberation struggles against European hegeshymony As one Palestinian woman poignantly expresses it the Palestinian woman who lived in the middle of this cyclone was not cut off from the course of affliction which ruined her society and tried to tear it apart4 The primacy of the national issue took on a particular urgency during the early years of many Middle Eastern womens movements dominating their policies and actions and leaving a permanent imprint on their evolution character and political assumptions for decades Starting in the 1920s however womens m0Sments redirected their endeavors and shifted their priorities with the attainment of national independence For the most part these movements focused on feminist demands in areas such as womens legal and political rights education and economic development This was not the case however with the Palestinian womens movement One obvious reason for this is the dubious Palestinian distinction of being one of the only Middle Eastern peoples still without a formal sovereign national existence I

Nation tradition and rights 139

The intractability of the struggle which continues to this day has had an inordinate impact on the history and development of the Palestinian womens movement resulting in an evolving complex correlation between feminism and nationalism the origins of which can be traced to the Mandate period5

This article will explore the distinct trajectory taken during the Mandate period by the Palestinian womens movement which as founded upon nd never departed from a singular devotion to the establishment of a sovereIgn nation state in British Mandate Palestine While women involved in other Middle Eastern womens movements began as early as the 1920s to realize that achievement of independent statehood did not necessarily translate into equal rights of citizenship with men Palestinian women adhered to the notion of a linear progression into nationhood which would naturally result in women earning their proper rights as citizens They did not articulate an explicitly feminist agenda Yet their utilization of often subtle indirect tactics that focused on manipulating traditional gender norms demonstrated implicit elements of an indigenous feminism which protested confronted and challenged the political and social contradictions of the British Mandate governments policies in Palestine

In order to understand early Palestinian indigenous feminism we need to address briefly the thorny relationship between nationalism and feminism National liberation and decolonization struggles once perceived as potential catalysts for progressive social and political change for women have falle out of favor in feminist academic scholarship and activist circles6 ThIS process has been the -result of several factors One is a disillusionmen wih the harsh political realities - not only for women - which have prevaIled In regimes that won national independence during struggles after 1945 Another is the evolution of feminist scholarship which has critically explored and deconstructed the once prevalent two-stage liberation theory -national liberation now and womens liberation later7 As Anne McClintock observes no nationalism in the world has granted women and men the

f h middot 8 same privileged access to the resources 0 t e nation-state The critical revision of this theory - particularly within recent Wet

ern

feminist scholarship has not always addressed the complicated polltcal

allegiances which women negotiate as a result of their possessing multIle identities that transcend gender Nor has it taken into accout specific historical and political contexts which prevail in Third World SOCIetIes The result has been the construction of a sometimes false dichotomy between

- - fi L - lst causes Western women s expreSSIOns of support or lemlnlst or natlona I 9 feminists have been slow to recognize nationalism as a feminist Issue Women in the Palestinian womens movement did not define theseles solely by gender but rather incorporated notions of their subordtnton along nationally defined lines analogous to other Third World women hvtng under colonial hegemonies Third World feminists have pointed out that

urnes Western feminists focus on gender as the pClme locus of oppreSSIOn ass that our consciousness of being women has nothing to do with race class

ehurr

140 Ellen Fleischmann

nation or sexuality just gender10 Frances Hasso perceptively notes that women have been caught in a double bind of being considered either dupes of men when they act on nationalist identities or authentic feminists when they deny their subaltern status along other axes besides gender II Issues of identity and history are crucial At different historical junctures women have been forced to face the question gender or nation which comes first Their answer usually depended upon which was the primary site of antagonism12 Historically women often had to make this seemingly mutually exclusive choice when the reality was as Chandra Talpade Mohanty points out that Third World women in particular have confronted intersecting multiple fluid structures of domination that have operated against similarly multiply constructed identities15

I am not arguing for restoring nationalism as a liberating force for women I do think however that a more nuanced look at the historical legacy of nationalism and its interaction with feminism is called for This revision of the revision so to speak is particularly necessary in the Palestinian case if we are to understand the womens movements indigenous feminism Instead of divesting it of its nationalist content one must constantly bring it to the fore

The emergence of the Palestinian womens movement

The Palestinian Arab14 womens movement emerged shortly after a male-led Palestinian nationalist movement that had already taken root and intensified within the first ten y ears of British rule in Palestine The British effectively took control of Palestine in December 1917 during World War I and established a military government although the official League of Nations Mandate in Palestine did not formally begin until 1922 Palestinian Arabs completely rejected the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 which announced British support for the establishment of a national home for the Jews Throughout the Mandate period the relationship between Palestinian political elites and the British followed a rocky uneven trajectory The national movement led by these elites focused most of its energies at first on attempting to win British and international diplomatic support for the establishment of a sovereign state with a parliamentary -style government The movement resorted to outright violent struggle however during the 1936-9 General Strike and Revolt a major armed uprising that targeted the British and completely disrupted the country After the British severely repressed the Revah with force the national leadership was divided by factionalism exiled coopted or imprisoned Ultimately it was unable to rally the peasant majority of the Palestinian people in the 1940s This ineffectualshyness contributed to the defeat of the Palestinians in 1948 by the highly organized and better-armed Zionists

During the Mandate period Palestinian women lived under patriarchal cultural and social norms which however varied according to class religion


and status Women of the peasantry and urban poor lived and worked under fewer restraints while women of the middle and upper classes - particularly single women - were closely monitored and supervised by their families Many women in these classes still veiled and maintained sex segregation The majority of Palestinians were and are Muslim although Christian Palestinians have comprised a significant minority disproportionate to their actual numbers in the leadership of the national movement Adherence to tradition varied widely however as many constraints began to erode under the impact of modern education and other transformations of colonial rule There was a growing cautious and perhaps limited desire in Palestinian society for the development of female education and the loosening of some of the stricter social restrictions on women The Mandate government itself played a role in these transformations despite its attempts not to interfere with the daily life of the people hallowed as it was by both religion and custom15 Middle-class women began to work outside the home as the demand for female teachers and social service workers in health and governshyment bureaucracies provided increased opportunities for educated women One of the more respectable arenas in which women of these classes could work meet and mobilize was through involvement in womens associations

Palestinian women had begun to establish womens associations (primarily charitable) in the early part of the twentieth century but the first major event which signaled the launching of an organized political womens movement was the convening of a national congress attended by more than 200 women in Jerusalem in October 1929 At this gathering the women elected an Arab Womens Executive Committee which was directed to establish affiliates of the national Arab Womens Association (AWA) in every city and town The congress was part of a nation-wide response to an atmosphere of escalating political crisis in the wake of the Wailing Wall incidents which had resulted in the deaths of 116 Arabs and 133 Jews The rioting broke out in August 1929 over possession of the western wall of the Haram aI-Sharif (the compound housing the Dome of the Rock and AI-Aqsa Mosque built upon the site of the ancient Jewish temple) and spread throughout the country Around 1300 people mostly Arabs were arrested and ultimately three death sentences were upheld The men (all Arabs) were hanged in June 1930 These death sentences aroused powerful responses among the Arab population A Commission of Inquiry was appointed to investigate the causes of the riot and means by which to avoid a recurrence

The 1930s were a definitive period in the history of the Palestinian national struggle The nationalist movement became more militant as perceptions heightened that Zionism was totally dependent upon British imperialism which had become the principal enemy of the Arabs16 Thus the womens movement was born during a period of radicalization which ultimately culminated in the Revolt

At the 1929 congress the women emphasized that they were working alongside the men a continually reiterated phrase but they nevertheless set


about building their own separate womens movement which developed its own distinct character tactics energies and independence 17 The women sometimes jealously guarded this autonomy When the newly formed Nablus chapter of the AWA convened its first meeting for example men intervened attempting to take control of the funds The women decided to ensure their independence by never allow[ing men to join but only accept[ing their useful suggestions and valuable advice as they would accept the same from the ladies18 From the start the goals of the movement were explicitly politicaL At the congress the delegates pledged to support all resolutions decisions and demands of the leaders of the national movement and make the congress the foundation of the womens movement in Palestine19 From then until the disruption of Palestinian society through war and dispersal in 1948 politically active women established local womens associations demonstrated on the streets with - but also just as frequently without men (and often in large numbers) protested via a relentless barrage of memoranda and telegrams to the British government and others accosted government officials in private meetings and interviews delivered speeches in public and published articles and protests on the Palestinian cause in the press financially materially and emotionally supported prisoners and their families participated in regional Middle Eastern and international womens conferences and raised funds for and financed arms purchases during the Revolt Some Arab women also smuggled hid and bore arms fighting alongside men albeit in small numbers Most of these women however were not part of the organized movement but peasant women acting directly in defense against the attacks directed toward theif villages Indeed the organized womens movement was dominated by urban upper- and middle-class women whereas peasant and poorer urban women engaged in spontaneous sometimes unorganized activity20

In the 1940s the womens movement became more institutionalized coordinated and formalized The great force with which the Revolt had been PUt down by the British effectively exhausted the general Palestinian population and decimated its leadership through imprisonment and exile Furthermore the onset of World War II initiated a period of political quiescence The womens movement shifted its orientation toward social welfare and development The Jerusalem branch of the AWA established a medical clinic in 1946 and around the same time also instituted a womens literary and sports club which had its own playing field and tennis court Other local organizations founded schools for girls in this period After World War II as the situation in Palestine once again became tense and the nakba (catastrophe of 1948) approached the womens movement revived protest activities used in the 1930s But ultimately it too was overshywhelmed by events After the 1948 war the women who had led the moveshyment found themselves scattered in exile outside of Palestine or living in its truncated separated remnants under Israeli Jordanian or Egyptian rule Women who had been involved in the movement during the Mandate either

Nation tradition and rights l43

became caught up in family and communal survival or preoccupied with coping with the humanitarian and social problems caused by massive dislocation and disruption The nakba effectively terminated this first phase in the history in the Palestinian womens movement

Feminism and nationalism

To a great extent the women involved in the movement during the Mandate period were primarily activists not theorists Very few of them directly wrote about or articulated a specific political agenda for their movement per se This could be attributable to the movements inception during a period of crisis which never entirely abated The women were constantly having to respond to the current situation - a Palestinian mnemonic signifier of the eternally shifting events on the ground in the national struggle 21 What little survives in the way of speeches resolutions and other pronouncements enables us to document and reconstruct a rich repertoire of oppositional rhetoric and practices

The major exception to this general lacuna of sources is Matiel Mogannams The Arab Woman and the Palestine Problem ( 1937) In this work Mogannam distinguishes herself as one of the few in the movement to address feminist issues explicitly Her discussion of the Arab woman begins (interestingly as she was Christian) with her extolling the role played by Islam in enabling Arab women to attain legal rights social status and a role in history From the rise of Islam she traces an uneven yet linear progression culminating in the emergence of womens movements in the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries Her feminism is derivative from the role played by the state - be it the Islamic state under the genius of the Great Prophet or the newly formed states of Egypt and Turkey whose reform[s of the social order she mentions with admiration22

Mogannam does not advocate any particular reforms in the staus of Palestinian women nor does she articulate specific feminist demands In the book Rather her concern is to present a faithful picture of the Arab woman and to explain the true facts of the Arab case in Paletine23 Her fithful picture consists primarily of an attempt to dispel the llluslOn WhiCh has found its way into the minds of many people that the

Arab woman IS

an ornament of the imaginary Harem of old This artlculatlOn alternates h d shed between an almost fierce pride in how the Arab woman as IsmgU1

herself in history and by long experience as a born mother a faithful WIfe and a loyal patriot to her people and country and a defensiveness for her

passive attitude In her analysis of Arab womens movements Mogann M l d h h seems to contradIct demonsrates senS1tlvlty to us 1 tra twn lC has her earber praIse of Islam commentmg that the Chnstlan woman

kept herself within the limits beyond which her Moslem sister could not

well go She quotes a feminist leader speaking in 1931 If until now the

Arab woman of Palestine had preferred to work unobserved it is because she

i14tHtrt

144 Ellen F leisch1Tl4nn

felt that the time was not yet ripe for her to emerge from her home But events of late have prompted her to step forward 24 The innovation of this book lies in her detailed focus on women and womens issues (only in the first part) unusual for a time during which almost every Palestinian lived and breathed nationalism from the very air

Mogannams feminism reflects what Lila Abu-Lughod calls the entangleshyment - that is the cultural hybridity that resulted from colonial encounters - which characterized feminism in the Middle East 25 Mogannams seemshyingly contradictory statements about limits passivity patriotism and Arab womens historical role demonstrate simultaneously her strong panshy-Arab loyalty mixed with her very Western statist orientation Together these Illustrate the processes of entanglement which Abu-Lughod perceptively notes

llows for a conceptualization of feminism that rejects the binary

Opposltlon between East and West that makes feminism a singularly Western ideology 26

It is difficult to assess the influence of Mogannams writings Her book ritten in English explicitly addressed a Western audience and was pubshylIshed dUrIng a tIme of upheaval and intense diplomatic and political negotiations Furthermore her historical role in the movement is rather ambivalently assessed and remembered27 Mogannam became caught up eary on in the intense activity which resulted from the 1929 congress at whICh she was elected to the Arab Womens Executive Throughout the 1930s she is frequently cited in the press and British government docushyments was often one of a delegation that met with the High Commissioner and also wrote for the press She remained active in the Jerusalem area until around 1939 after which she moved to Ramallah and became president of th

e amallah Womens Union But she may have been an exceptional figure

wlthm the movement As a Christian she was a member of a minority and she was also a supporter of the Nashashibi faction which constituted the major opposition to the dominant Husayni faction in the Palestinian national movement28 Although her writing reveals strong positive support of Arabo-Islamic culture she personally and self-consciously embraced and attempted to embody a Westernized concept of a modern cultured woman - something which strikes a somewhat dissonant note when one looks closely at her fellow leaders in the movement 29 She was clearly a key figure in the womens movement however and her book is an important historical document as it constitutes one of the only written sources from within the movement that deals directly with feminist issues

One of the first resolutions and subsequent by-laws publicized during the founding of the movement in 1929 included a clause that stated one of its aims was to undertake a womens awakening and elevate the status of Arab women in Palestine3o The movements work toward this goal however was unprogrammatic and variable usually consisting of charity toward poorer women Their nationalist work was far more explicitly political both in content and activity In their frequent meetings with British government


officials the women leaders were assertive and often aggressive protesting

the current situation (which usually referred to government abrogations of

rights such as political detention without trial diplomatic developments or

Zionist actions) Their primary demand was the establishment of a national

and independent governmentH This demand was constantly reiterated at

meetings in the press and in written communications with the government

throughout the almost two decades of organized activities during the

Mandate Their vision of the status and prospects of Arab women was firmly

embedded in their conception of the role the nation-state This view was

not premised upon an overt reconceptualization or critique of gender roles

nor did it usually locate sources of oppression internally Rather the women

perceived both the means and end result of social change as reform the

achievement of which was intimately linked to the sttuggle for and building

of the nation-state W hen nationhood was achieved reform would follow

since it was the states responsibility to reform the social order as happened

in Turkey The only barrier to necessary changes in Palestine was the nations

dependent status According to Mogannam

These womens movements which swept most of the Moslem or

Arab countries with anything like an independent form of government

did not have a corresponding effect in countries under British or French

mandate The reason is simple such measures of reform can only be

introduced by National Governments or by persons deriving their

authority from the people3 2

Further on she opines that the Mandatory government could not enact legisshylation to raise the minimum legal age of marriage for a girl (to fourteen) because it did not have a legislative council elected by the people [which could introduce any such reformatory measure without making itself liable to or risking any criticism or attack33 This analysis does not take into account the fact that the very people most apt to resist changes or reforms were the men most likely to be elected to such a body The womens moveshyment based its gender agenda which was implicit rather than explicit - on an idealistic belief that social change is naturally and seamlessly effected through the legislation of a representative government This belie was grounded on the assumption that rights somehow would utomatlclly flow from membership in the citizenry of a nation-state In theu conception rights had a narrow political connotation linked to suffrage and nationhood

This idea of womens rights was embedded in a constitutional or legalshyistic notion of citizenship that could only be conferred by a national government and that did not address internal structures and sources of inequities in their society What was lacking in the womens notions of rights democracy and citizenship was the realization that historically disenfranchised groups such as women actually had to fight for these rIghts

146 Ellen F leirchmann

Mere establishment of a sovereign state did not automatically bestow rights on women the notion of citizenship focuses on the way the state acts upon the individual and does not address the problem of the way in which the state itself forms its political projecr 34

Instead of demanding womens rights Palestinian Arab women emphashysized their concern for all Palestinian Arabs rights As they put it how could they demand rights for women when men did not have any This rhetorical question articulated by the former president of the Tulkarm Arab Womens Union Wadia Khartabil elides the fact that Arab men did in fact have suffrage rights during the Mandate period albeit on a limited lcal no national leveP5 National rights ranked highest on the womens political scale They often explicitly differentiated themselves from feminists who in their view were dealing with a partial and less important issue W hen asked about whether there had been attempts by Palestinian women to form a more feminist group one woman responded that such influences came from a more Egyptian influence from the ourside

Im not saying the Palestinian women were not interested in the improveshyment in the status of women as women (she continued All Im saying is that the women of Palestine had a more important role to play as they saw it and they felt that [they should concentrate on the political The people in Egypt like Huda (Sharawi]36 and the others were happily sitting in Cairo and at that time they didnt have an issue that was very important like the Palestine issue 37

One can see in these comments that Palestinian women had a particular concept of the political which divested feminism of its political content and instead relegated it to the domain of the social 38 Any activity or work related to womens concerns was considered a social problem to be solved through social work or reform of some institutions and opening up some avenues for advancement - uncontroversial ones like education to women There was little or no discussion of challenging or opening up to women internal gendered power structures which determined social formations such as the family or political structures such as political parties or the national movement itself Furthermore for many Palestinians there is no distinction between political and national This was illustrated for me when while interviewing an older leader about the Arab Ladies Association of Jerusalem I asked tr her organization did nationalist work as well as social work Her response was National work - what do you mean In politics you mean39 Politics in this connotation did not signify internal Palestinian politics but struggle against the colonial power40 It is not so surprising therefore that throughout this period of sustained and intense activity Palestinian women never demanded female suffrage 41 The only women who raised the issue of female suffrage were Jewish women who held their own separate suffrage meetings early on during the Mandate 42

Nation tradition and rightr 147

Politically and to a great extent socially Arab and Jewish women had minimal contact and obviously very different concerns The paths of their political work barely intersected - not even in conflict4l In international arenas often it was the Jewish women who attended as Palestinian women For their part Arab women spoke only on behalf of Arab womanhood rarely if ever referring to their Jewish counterparts Jewish women focused on mobilizing among and for themselves 10 ther suffrage demands Their suffrage organization was named the Palestine

Jewish Womens Equal Rights Association for example 44 They considered female suffrage within a local ethnic context rather than as universal female suffrage possibly because they had to organize within two distinct spheres within the Zionist movements representative national institutions and within the local context of the British Mandate government45

In mobilizing for the latter - gaining suffrage in municipal elections -Jewish women did at least briefly mention Arab women albeit in a patronizing manner In 1934 the General Council of the Jewish Women Workers of Palestine protested the Municipal Corporations Ordinance which provided that except in the case of Tel Aviv only males could elect officials in municipal elections Although the High Commissioner was empowered to vary the qualifications of municipal voters this legal limitation continued through the end of the Mandate Women could not vote in municipal elections with the exception of Jewish women in the Tel Aviv and Petah Tikva municipalities In local councils Jewish women had the right to vote but not Arab women 46

The General Council of the Jewish Women Workers couched its protest on behalf of twenty thousand Jewish working women The Council comshymented that although there were a great number of ignorant and illiterate Arab women in Palestine it was obvious that the voting restrictions were placed by the law upon women solely because they are women since illiterate Arab men were allowed to vote Instead of contributing to the uplifting of the Arab women from their pitiful medieval status by giving them civic rights the protest continues the Government reduces the position of the Jewish women who have been always enjoying [sic full equality in the Jewish Community and who have proven their social maturity They conclude by calling upon the women of the country and especially the Jewish women to join us in our protest against this ordinance 47

It is instructive to compare Jewish and Palestinian womens feminist strategies The efforts of Jewish women - either as workers or as bourgeois suffragists - were premised upon the underlying notion of building a new transplanted society and state Palestinian women faced a very different contradictory situation all of their efforts were directed towards preserving an existing in situ culture and nation under attack Yet simultaneously their very efforts to do so constituted an indirect sometimes subtle deconstruction of the patriarchal institutions that formed the very pillars of that culture and nation

I

148 Ellm Fleischmann

At its core Palestinian nationalism was atavistic and inherently conservative in the literal meaning of the word The very existence of womens dynamic activism defied the definitional foundations of Palestinian nationalism

Although Palestinian women did not demand female suffrage or even changes in womens status they challenged existing patriarchal norms through a kind of subversion that recognized the power of gender norms and constituted in its own way indigenous feminism One of the major expressions of this feminism involved womens manipulations of the meanshying of tradition and rather creatively and innovatively linking it to rights In all of its dealings with Arab women (particularly those of the middle and upper classes) the British government was extremely cautious and wary of its potential vulnerability to accusations of transgressions against tradition which it associated with religion and women who became a kind of metonym for religion One military report for example takes pains to mention that British troops had the very strictest instructions to respect both mosques and women 48 During the 1930s the British wrote secret police reports and internal despatches detailing the careful treatment Arab women were to receive in demonstrations and later in body searches during the Revolt49

The women were cognizant of British sensitivity to upsetting the religious cultural and social status quo in Palestine and of how they as Arab women were viewed by the government They exploited this sensitivity at every turn In a kind of mnemonic refrain they repeatedly excoriated the governshyment at every opportunity for its violations against their womanly sanctity and contempt for the traditions and religion of this country inconsistent with chivalry and honor5o The leaders of the womens movement constantly drew attention to the supposed novelty of Muslim ladies appearing in public despite the fact that they themselves not only frequently appeared in public but also took part in militant demonstrations - something which the police noted bitterly In 1933 during nationalist demonstrations held in the major cities of Palestine a number of Arabs were killed by police In the demonstrations in Jerusalem and Jaffa women did all they could to urge the male members of the demonstration to defy Police orders assaulted and screamed at the police and kicked at the gate of government offices Matiel Mogannam delivered an inflammatory speech from a balcony excit[ing the crowd and heightening the considerable tension in the air51

Using the line about Muslim ladies over and over again to berate the government the womcp could shift responsibility from themselves onto officials for forcing them to engage in protest activities that sometimes turned violent After demonstrations in Nablus in 1933 the womens delegation which met with the governor of the city opened their meeting with the statement

It is not the custom of Nablus women to leave their houses and interfere in the sphere of politics and it is not part of the Islamic social


tradition for them to surpass men and interfere in their affairs but the incidents in Nablus and the tribulation that has fallen upon them due to the governments behavior and policies have made the Nablus women leave their houses and depart from their sacred tradition to join their voices to the voices of the men Muslim women are not allowed to have interviews with men but they were forced to that to protest the behavior of the police and the governments policy 52

But the real innovation in womens tactical manipulation of tradition was the way they extended it to encompass a notion of rights During the strike women protested the behavior of British soldiers who entered Arab homes stating that this violated the traditional rights of Arab women to live in dignity and away from the mixing with men53 By implying that tradition conferred upon them special rights the women were able to convert the ostensibly repressive practice of sexual segregation into a right which

made British abrogations of this practice seem heinous Why did the women make this discursive and political move and what did

it mean There are several possible answers to this question One the women

meant to inflict damage by using a weapon they knew they could wield and

also in an area in which the British government was vulnerable They linked

the violations against tradition with violations against the Arabs civil rights

protesting for example collective punishment political detentions and the

brutal treatment of the population by the military and police Acutely aware of

Britains public self-image as the defender of weak nations against

aggression they attempted to shame the government by appealing to its sense

of honor and democratic justice which was and still remains the

fundamental British generous character54 They knew that part of the pretext

for colonial rule was the ostensible civilizing mission of the British Mandate

government Publicly highlighting the contradictions between the

governments image and its behavior they believed wld

ontribte

to

undermining the very legitimacy and moral authonty Bntlsh JustIce -

which provided the justification for British colonial power in Palestine But could the women have been using tradition in another subrslv

way Within their nationalist discursive manipulation of sacred tralt1ons I

also lay an acceptable safe way to undermine and challenge nte patriarchal norms through the back door so to speak Afsaneh Nalma I

makes an interesting link between how certain seemingly conservative

discourses on women were actually both disciplinary and emancipatory at the same time explaining why women often embraced ostensibly repesslve

ideas transforming them in the process and converting them fr thelr wn

liberatory purposes55 Palestinian women were proving to Palest1ma society

_ especially male society - that they were capable of earning telr ture civic rights and preparing the way for an even more active role 10 national life Because most of these elite women were more closely bound to ad

associated with tradition they chose to utilize it as a tool which in reality

dw 7


and ironically empowered them to behave radically in the name of its defense Paradoxically in doing so they in fact opened the door to its ultimate demise This was truly subversive

Conclusion

What was the elusive nature of Palestinian indigenous feminism Part of the problem in answering this question necessarily involves turning to the feminist part of the nationalism-feminism equation Feminism as many have pointed Olit is not a static singular ideology Historically feminism has taken many different forms that would probably be unrecognizable as such to contemporary especially Western feminists The challenge is to understand variegated feminisms in their own specific historical and cultural contexts 56 Palestinian women at this historical juncture developed modes of opposition to their major antagonist - the British colonial governshyment that demonstrated sharp awareness of the gendered discourse on tradition in their society and the potentially subversive power of distorting it for specific political purposes They were careful to make themselves appear non-threatening to the continuity of domestic social and cultural norms however de-linking these from their conception of what was political At a 1944 Arab womens conference in Cairo the president of the Palestinian Womens Union Zlikha Shihabi stated that women in Palestine will not demand more rights than what is allowed under Islamic law and the holy Quran Demanding political rights for women is before its time57

Nationalism however exerted a releasing effect58 on Palestinian women allowing them indirectly and even cautiously to work for the elevation of women As an enlightened and free citizen and loyal patriot to her people and her country59 the Palestinian woman was by her very example and activity in her own way a feminist This feminism was inextricably linked to the establishment of a nation-state The womens movement targeted the colonial government the embodiment and usurper of (their) state which in their view should have been the agent of change Thus their unrelenting participation in the work of establishing an independent nation-state was part of their underlying indigenous feminism Without an independent state reform was impossible This singleminded focus however left a rather ambiguous legacy to subsequent generations of Palestinian women who continue to contend with the contradictions between their nationalist and feminist aspirations

Notes

1 For a history of Middle Eastern womens movements see E1 Fleischmann The Other Awakening The Emergence of Womens Movements in the Modern Middle East c 1900- 1940 in M 1 Meriwether and) Tucker (eds) A Social History of Women and the Family in the Middle East Boulder Westview Press 1999 forthcoming

Nation tradition and rights 15 1

2 For simplicity and clarity I include only the Mashriq (Arab East) Iran and Turkey when referring to Middle Eastern womens movements

3 In the post-World War I Middle East only Turkey achieved effectve

independence during the 1920s Egypt was indirectly ruled by

the Brltlsh through various mechanisms such as protectorates and treaties ut11 the 19505 while the other Arab countries were placed under League of Natlon mandates Syria and Lebanon under the French and Iraq Transjordan and Palestine under the British Iran while never formally ruled by Europeans was nonetheless politically dominated by the British until the end of World War II

4 W Khartabil Memoirs of Wadia Khartabil Seeking Hope and the NatIon SIxty Years From the Struggle of a Woman on Behalf of Palestine (Arabic) Beirut Bisan al-nashr 1995 p 10

5 For a history of the movement during the Mandate period see E1 Fleischmann The Nation and Its New Women Feminism Nationalism Colonialism and the Palestinian Womens Movement 1920- 1948 PhD dissertation George-toWn University 1996

6 FS Hasso The Womens Front Nationalism Feminism and ModernIty In Palestine Gender and Society 1998 vol 12 no 4 pp 44 1-65

7 R Giacanan and M Odeh Palestinian Womens Movement in the IsraelishyOccupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in N Toubia (ed) Women of tbe Arab World London Zed Books 1988 p 6 1

8 A MClintock No Longer in a Future Heaven Women and Nationalism in South Africa Transition 199 1 vol 5 1 pp lOS

9 A McClintock Imperial Leather New York Routledge 1995 p 356

10 CT Mohanty Cartographies of Struggle Third World Women and the Polmcs of Feminism in CT Mohanty A Russo and 1 Torres (eds) Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism Bloomington Indiana University Press 199 1 p 12

1 1 Hasso The Womens Front p 442 12 Fleischmann The Other Awakening 13 Mohanry Cartographies p 13 14 During this particular period of time use of the word Palestinian to denote

only Palestinian Arabs is somewhat problematic considering that Jews In Palestine sometimes referred to themselves as Palestinian However by and large it was the Arabs who demonstrated an attachment to the concept of Palestine whereas the Jews identified more with the Hebrew term Eretz Israel the land of Israel a biblical term I will sometimes use Arab or Palestinian Arab to ensure clarity

15 R H Eisenman Islamic Law in Palestine and Israel A History of tbe Survival of Tanzimat and Shari a in the British Mandate and the Jewish State Leiden EJ Brill 1978 p 76

16 Y Porath T he Palestinian Arab National Movement From RIots to RebellIon London Frank Cass 1977 p 127 A Lesch Arab Potitics in Palestine 1917-1939 Ithaca Cornell University Press 1979 p 105

17 The Golden Jubilee of the Arab Womens Union of Jerusalem 1980 (Arabic) Arab Womens Union of Jerusalem 1983 p 23

18 AI-sir J al-mustaqjfl (Arabic newspaper) Nov 24 1929 19 Sir John Chancellor to Lord Passfield Colonial Secretary cr 3 1 1929 Papers

of Sir John Robert Chancellor Rhodes House Bodletan LIbrary Oxford MtrJ al-sharq (Arabic newspaper) Ocr 28 1929


20 Information on peasant womens resistance activities is very scarce For more on womens role during the Revolt see T Sweden burg Menwries 0 Revolt the 1936-1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press 1995 pp 171-85 and Fleischmann The Nation and Its New Women pp 204-26

21 Al-dif- (Arabic newspaper) Apr 30 1936 During the Mandate women frequently held meetings to look into the current situation [al-hja al-h_diral This phrase was used without any specific reference to the particular situation It assumed the reader was knowledgeable about what was happening on any given day either in Palestine itself or on the international diplomatic front

22 M Mogannam The Arab Woman and the Palestine Problem London Herbert Joseph Limited 1937 pp 49 50-1

23 Ibid p 11 24 Ibid pp 13 67 68 56 25 L Abu-Lughod Introduction Feminist Longings and Postcolonial Condishy

tions in L Abu-Lughod (ed) Remaking Women Feminism and Modernity in the Middle Princeton Princeton University Press 1998 p 16

26 Ibid my emphasis 27 EL Fleischmann Selective Memory Gender

Women Leaders in the British Mandate Period vol 47 pp 141-58

and Nationalism Palestinian Workshop Journal 1999

28 During the Mandate period the Palestinian national movement was fractured into a number of factions aligned with prominent Jerusalem notable families The two major divisions were the Nashashibis generally considered more conciliatory towards the British and the Husaynis who were led by the President of the Supreme Muslim Council Hajj Amin al-Husayni also the head of the Higher Arab Committee which directed the movement during the 1930s Palestinian nationalist history has judged the Nashashibis harshly Their historical legacy is tainted by perceptions of their being collaborators with the British

29 For example she describes her idea of a cultured women in a press interview All English women think Arab women are uncultured They believe they speak only Arabic that all wear veils and rush away at the sight of a man How I wish J could take English women around to see my cultured Arab friends How surprised they would be - European clothes silk stockings high heeled shoes permanently waved hair manicured hands Palestine Post Dec 7 1936

30 Mirj al-sharq Oct 28 1929 Mogannam The Arab Woman p 55 (Some of what follows has been adapted from my dissertation The Nation and Its New Women pp 229-34)

31 Letter from Zlikha Shihabi president of the Arab Womens Union to the High Commissioner (hereafter HC) Aug 28 1938 Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA) S25 22793

32 Mogannam The Arab Woman p 53 33 Ibid p 54 34 F Anthias and N Yuval-Davis Introduction in N Yuval-Davis and F

Anthias (eds) Woman-Nation-State New York St Martins Press 1989 p 6 Emphasis in original

35 Wadia Khartabil interviewed by Julie Peteet and Rosemary Sayigh Beirut 1981


36 Huda Sharawi was a renowned Egyptian feminist who was widely respected and admired throughout the Middle East (among male heads of state as well as within feminist and in the international feminist movement She was one of the founders of the Egyptian Feminist Union in 1923 and considered the leader of pan-Arab feminism until her death in 1947 For a detailed history of the Egyptian feminist movement see M Badran Feminists Islam and Nation Princeton Princeton University Press 1995

37 Emphasis mine Interview with Matiel Mughannam and her daughter Laila whose words these are conducted by Julie Peteet and Rosemary Sayigh Washington DC August 10 1985 I thank them for providing me with a transcript of this interview

38 Again this conceptual dichotomy continued into the contemporary period In 1994 Maryam Zaqout a Palestinian feminist in Gaza commented that Palestinian women have concentrated on the political struggle and not on womens issues because they defined the main problem as the occupation not social problems That was a mistake [she confessed Weve realized that social and political freedom are one they go together Joel Greenberg Women in Gaza See Gains New York Times July 17 1994

39 Samah Nusseibeh interviewed by the author Jerusalem Nov 23 1993 40 This connotation continued into the contemporary period W hen I lived in the

West Bank in the 1980s politics in any given discussion primarily referred to the national struggle The exceptions to this could only be found in leftist not mainstream - discourse

41 Interestingly there are a few tantalizing but glancing references in documents and the press to Arab women voting in some local elections The Arabic press reported that women voted in elections for mukhtars (heads of villages) in the villages of Brir and Hammama in 1940 In one case the men accepted it and the womens candidate won FiaIt_nJan 251940 and July 17 1940

42 W hen British suffragist Millicent Garrett Fawcett visited Palestine in 1921-2 she attended a suffrage meeting and called on the Jewish women to make clear in all their demands for social and political equality that they were not asking them for Jewish women alone but for women of all races of Palestine who were fitted to benefit by them The High Commissioners wife Lady Samuel afterward said she liked what [Fawcett had said and that it needed saying M G Fawcett Six Weeks in Palestine vol I London Womens Printing Society 1921-22 p 71

43 The only exception I found illustrates this lack of communication and coshyoperation In 1936 a heated exchange took place in the press between the Arab Womens Association in Nablus and the Womens Zionist Organization of Palestine over the fire bombing of a baby home established by Jewish women in Jerusalem The women did not even attempt to communicate in each others languages the Jewish women wrote in English in a Zionist-owned newspaper while the Arab women responded in the major Arabic newspaper Palestine Post July 10 1936 Fiast_n July 14 1936

44 Emphasis mine See Ruth Abrams contribution in this book 45 See S Fogiel-Bijaoui On the Way to Equality The Struggle for Womens

Suffrage in the Jewish Yishuv 1917-1926 in DS Bernstein (ed) Pioneers and Homemakers Women in Pre-State Israel Albany Syracuse University Press 1992 pp

l


46 Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 37 1 17883 E342 1 A Protest of the Jewish Women Workers of Palestine Against the New Municipal Ordinance which Deprives the Women of Palestine of their Civic Rights May 1934 Despatch from the HC co the Secretary of State for the Colonies Israel State Archives (hereafter ISA) RG 2 ESW1 1747 Nov 27 1947

47 Ibid 48 Military Lessons of the Arab Rebellion in Palestine 1936 General Staff

Headquarters The British Forces Palestine and Transjordan February 1938 War Office 282 6

49 During the 1933 Jaffa demonstrations (see below note 5 1) police were ordered to get women and children away before action and on no account strike them unless their own lives were endangered Police Dispositions for Friday 27 October 1933 Secret Despatch 399s JM Faraday Papers Middle East Centre St Antonys College Oxford

50 Letter to the HC from Arab Ladies of Jerusalem Feb 5 1938 FO 37 1 2 1875 5 1 Inspector-General of Police to Chief Secretary Oct 14 1933 Colonial Office

(hereafter CO) 733 2395 Pt II HC co Cunliffe-Lister Palestine Gazette Supplement Report 0 the CommiJSioner Feb 7 1934 CO 733 3468 Disturbances at Jaffa on October 27th and Events Leading up co and Following it (unsigned government report) CO 733 2395 Palestine Gazette

52 Fiasl_n Nov 8 1933 53 Ironically this statement comes from the pen of Matiel Mogannam a Christian

in an article entitled The Traditional Rights of Arab Women FilasCn July 1 1 1936

54 Letter co the Officer Administering the Government from the Arab Womens Committee Nov 17 1937 CZA 22800 RG S25 Faiza Abd ai-Majid a female columnist in Fiasl_n Dec 2 1 1944

55 Afsaneh Najmabadi Crafting an Educated Housewife in Iran in L AbushyLughod (ed) Remaking Women p 1 13-15

56 For a fuller discussion of this challenge see Fleischmann The Other Awakening

57 Fiast_n reporting on an interview with Agence Presse Franaise Dec 13

58 R Woodsmall Moslem Women Enter a New World New York Round Table Press 1936 p 363

59 Matiel Mogannam quoted in Fiastin-English Oct 26 1929 and in Women of the Arab World by GP Dickson Arab World Review (vol I Sep 1947) in CO 733 4821

9 Nation tradition and rights

The indigenous feminism of the Palestinian womens movement 1929-1948

Ellen Fleischmann

During the early twentieth century educated middle- and upper-class women in the Middle East became part of a global phenomenon in which women from all regions of the world became engaged in a multitude of reform social and ultimately political movements I Newly emerging womens movements in colonized societies such as those of the Middle East however often had markedly disparate goals aspirations and targets for change or reform than their Western counterparts Whereas suffrage became a major focus of Western feminists most Middle Eastern womens moveshyments rarely addressed the issue in their formative years 2

The reasons for these differences are perhaps overly obvious None of the countries of the Middle East had a truly sovereign existence as modern nation-states until the 1920s The Arab countries in particular were for all intents and purposes European colonial possessions until after the Second World War3 Nationalism was not an abstract issue to women in the Middle East their lives were directly transformed by both the social and political changes engendered by direct or indirect forms of colonial rule Furthermore many ordinary as well as politically active women were personally affected by the resultant violent conflicts which occurred in virtually every Middle Eastern country during national liberation struggles against European hegeshymony As one Palestinian woman poignantly expresses it the Palestinian woman who lived in the middle of this cyclone was not cut off from the course of affliction which ruined her society and tried to tear it apart4 The primacy of the national issue took on a particular urgency during the early years of many Middle Eastern womens movements dominating their policies and actions and leaving a permanent imprint on their evolution character and political assumptions for decades Starting in the 1920s however womens m0Sments redirected their endeavors and shifted their priorities with the attainment of national independence For the most part these movements focused on feminist demands in areas such as womens legal and political rights education and economic development This was not the case however with the Palestinian womens movement One obvious reason for this is the dubious Palestinian distinction of being one of the only Middle Eastern peoples still without a formal sovereign national existence I


The intractability of the struggle which continues to this day has had an inordinate impact on the history and development of the Palestinian womens movement resulting in an evolving complex correlation between feminism and nationalism the origins of which can be traced to the Mandate period5

This article will explore the distinct trajectory taken during the Mandate period by the Palestinian womens movement which as founded upon nd never departed from a singular devotion to the establishment of a sovereIgn nation state in British Mandate Palestine While women involved in other Middle Eastern womens movements began as early as the 1920s to realize that achievement of independent statehood did not necessarily translate into equal rights of citizenship with men Palestinian women adhered to the notion of a linear progression into nationhood which would naturally result in women earning their proper rights as citizens They did not articulate an explicitly feminist agenda Yet their utilization of often subtle indirect tactics that focused on manipulating traditional gender norms demonstrated implicit elements of an indigenous feminism which protested confronted and challenged the political and social contradictions of the British Mandate governments policies in Palestine

In order to understand early Palestinian indigenous feminism we need to address briefly the thorny relationship between nationalism and feminism National liberation and decolonization struggles once perceived as potential catalysts for progressive social and political change for women have falle out of favor in feminist academic scholarship and activist circles6 ThIS process has been the -result of several factors One is a disillusionmen wih the harsh political realities - not only for women - which have prevaIled In regimes that won national independence during struggles after 1945 Another is the evolution of feminist scholarship which has critically explored and deconstructed the once prevalent two-stage liberation theory -national liberation now and womens liberation later7 As Anne McClintock observes no nationalism in the world has granted women and men the

f h middot 8 same privileged access to the resources 0 t e nation-state The critical revision of this theory - particularly within recent Wet

ern

feminist scholarship has not always addressed the complicated polltcal

allegiances which women negotiate as a result of their possessing multIle identities that transcend gender Nor has it taken into accout specific historical and political contexts which prevail in Third World SOCIetIes The result has been the construction of a sometimes false dichotomy between

- - fi L - lst causes Western women s expreSSIOns of support or lemlnlst or natlona I 9 feminists have been slow to recognize nationalism as a feminist Issue Women in the Palestinian womens movement did not define theseles solely by gender but rather incorporated notions of their subordtnton along nationally defined lines analogous to other Third World women hvtng under colonial hegemonies Third World feminists have pointed out that

urnes Western feminists focus on gender as the pClme locus of oppreSSIOn ass that our consciousness of being women has nothing to do with race class

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“Nation, Tradition, and Rights: The Indigenous Feminism of the Palestinian Women's Movement (1920...

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