Between land and honor: Palestinian women’s resistance strategies

Abstract

The Palestinian women’s movement emerged early in the 20th century and from its beginnings it was associated with the national liberation movement. Its nationalistic rhetoric made the protection of women’s honor the ultimate milestone of the national trauma: the loss of the homeland. Taking the land-honor dyad as a starting point, this paper addresses the unique situation of Palestinian women. While Arab women in neighboring countries freed themselves from the European colonial yoke, in Palestine they suffered the tragedy of losing their land to the Jewish national project. We will introduce the main historical, social, and political characteristics that shaped women’s participation in each case: in the trenches, in the refugee camps, under military occupation, in prisons, in exile, as well as the strategies that they developed over time. This paper presents an overview of the Palestinian women’s movement from an historical perspective, ranging from women’s associations to the armed wing of the most relevant political movements, from their experience as political prisoners to the work committees in the Occupied Territories.