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Salient. Victoria University Students' Newspaper. Volume 39, Number 23. September 20, 1976

Women in Palestine

page 12

Women in Palestine

(WNS/Asian Student News)—Palestine lies at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded by Syria and Lebanon to the North, by Jordan to the East, and the Egyptian Siani Peninsular at the South. It is the junction of the Asian, African and European continents. Most of the Palestinian Arabs do not live in Palestine as their homeland is occupied and declared as the Zionist state - Israel. This occurred in May, 1948

1,665,000 Palestinians are forced by the Zionist occupation to live as exiled refugees in surrounding Arab countries, or in some Western countries. Approximately this many again live under Israeli occupation and are "privileged" enough to work as third class citizens with few legal or human rights. The Israeli occupation is guaranteed by US imperialism's gigantic gifts of money and arms, while the Soviet Union has underwritten the occupation by recognising Israel's "existence".

Fighters in own right

Palestinian women, while at different times have limited themselves to performing "charitable" tasks for their people, have now been forced generally, through the intense political struggle in their homeland, to throw off the chains of their traditional, sexist conditons, and have emerged as fighters in their own right demanding not only national independence and the return of Palestinians to Palestime, but the complete liberation of the Palestinian Arab woman.

Women could never be onlookers. From 1919, when men were imprisoned, hundreds of homes destroyed, and hundreds of children orphaned, when the Palestinians were fighting for self-determination and the right to live in their own homes, and struggling to stop the imposition of the "Jewish state"....women were forced to organise.

From 1919 to 1948, Palestinian women were divided in their activity by their different class stands. The middle classes and bourgeois women were involved in petitioning, organising demonstrations, and joining delegations. The illiterate village women were taking part in the armed struggle in the countryside, to defend their homes and land against the Zionists settler invasions. In the 1936 revolt especially, women played an important part, if only because the vast majority of men peasant guerrillas were in gaol or forced into exile.

The organised women's movement did not reach out from the city to the peasant women. But in 1965, the General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW) was formed. Every woman who believed in "the revolutionary armed struggle as the only means of liberating Palestine" - was eligible for membership. The aim of the Union is to organise women and put them into service for the revolution. It also aims at putting into practice the programs that help push forward women's struggle for liberation on a social and economic basis.

The Palestinians, because they have no home, because they are refugees, meant that the Palestinian Women's Union suffered a "refugee" problem. Whatever has happened to the Palestinian people has happened to the Women's Union. In 1966, the GUPW was banned in Jordan, so the General Secretariat had to move on to Cairo. It re-opened in Jordan again in 1969, only to be closed down again during the ruthless Jordanian attacks on Palestinians in 1970

Raising political awareness

The GUPW recognises that the way to liberation is through a people's war, and that for this, a wide mass base is essential. So the GUPW took the initiative starting new activities, such as civil defence and opening training camps. Before this the Union had been involved in political and social fields, campaigning against illiteracy, opening schools, conducting first aid and health programs. Recognised as being most important were the programs directed at raising the political awareness of women, and the preservation of Palestinian culture. The Zionists and imperialists frantically hope that the Palestinians will "disappear" as a people. This would mean the salvation of the plunderers. The GUPW recognises this, and that is why their energies are centred on preserving Palestinian self-respect and determination to fight and win. These efforts are directed mainly towards the refugee camps and within the occupied territory.

The GUPW held its second conference nine years after its first, due to the political situation and the enormity of the tasks confronting the Union. This second conference was in Lebanon in 1974.

The political report of the Union stressed the commitment of it to the aims of the Palestinian Revolution: "...the liberation of all Palestinian national soil, through popular armed struggle and the establishment of a democratic society as part of a democratic unified Arab society...." The Union considers "...the Palestinian Revolution as part of the world liberation movement, whose enemies are world imperialism, headed by the United States, Zionism, and Arab reaction....."

Women's leading role

Women, equally with men, have been the victims of the repression flowing from the imperialists' actions. Many women joined the ranks of the GUPW and the Popular Front (PFLP) and other guerilla groups, after the campaign of arrests and terror in Jordan in 1966. Palestinian women fighters distinguished themselves in the resistance to the Jordanian offensive in 1970. Women led the huge demonstrations against occupation in Jerusalem in 1968. The call to strike against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, which resulted in school students and teachers striking in 1967, was issued by the Palestinian women.

Palestinian women take part in the military operations carried out in the heart of the occupied territory. The number of Palestinian women in Zionist gaols currently is over 360. Many brave women have suffered humiliation, rape and torture under the Israeli occupationists" gaolings. Included in the list of martyrs who have died in Zionist interrogation centres, rather than yeild, are many women. Lengthy prison terms are dished out to many women, for their militancy and political activism.

Soldier holding a rifle

The way in which many women have faced and endured torture and even death has been a contributing factor in the changing of attitudes of the men in the Palestinian resistance, steeped as many still are in age-old prejudices and traditions.

Backward Traditions

"Our liberation must arm itself with revolutionary ideology, which alone permits us to systematically attack all the reactionary traditional beliefs. Tradition often plays a negative role, in opposition to the process of liberation. The specific objective of the woman, equality with men, must be among the objectives of the revolution, practically and ideologically."

During a political debate regarding the involvement of women in military action, one woman painfully expressed what it meant to be a Palestinian woman when she called on her sisters.....

"....look sisters, Palestine beckons us to redeem her, and here we are squabbling among ourselves about parents and families.....I think we should overcome this kind of adolescence and act as grown-up women, not as appendages to our men, or maids to our parents...!"

Avoiding issues

When Palestinian men have been challenged over their sexist and oppressive attitudes towards women, the answer has often been....."alright, we may be Marxists, but we are still part of this society" or "yes, but we've had harems for so many years, and have dominated women for that long, we can't just change overnight". Some tend to avoid the issue.

Leila Khaled described in her autobiography, My People Shall Live, how she had to sneak away from her parents' home in the night, still in her pyjamas, to attend a meeting. She was "blasted" by the men present for "violating" Arab decorum, and "polite, womanly behaviour". They wanted to pass a motion of censure or expel her! Even though this was 1959, it does show how deeply the traditions are implanted in the Palestinian people.

Palestinian women have often had to remind their male comrades that when the Zionists kicked them out of Palestine, they didn't distinguish between men and women; women constituted over half of the people, and they, too, were in exile. Men have often agreed to the theory of equality with women, but actual practice of this acceptance was much more difficult.

The slogan of Palestinian women is "the mobilization of a woman's capabilities and the intensification of her fight are fundamental supports to the national liberation and human liberation." Palestinian women are no longer engaged even temporarily, in performing nice, charitable tasks. There is no place now for organisations such as the Society of Arab Women, which was formed in 1910 to further girls' education, or for the Union of Arab Palestinian Women, which was founded in 1950 as a charitable society.

The GUPW was formed as a mass political party. The Palestinian women within it show an extremely high level of political awareness and activity. The Union has always maintained a firm stand on its independence and its alliance with the armed struggle. Palestinian women are united as never before, due to the work of the Union. This unity is crucial because the people are dispersed throughout many Arab countries as a result of the occupation. Branches of the Union have been established in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Kuwait.

The Union has been banned in Jordan. As reactionary Arab leaders are threatened even more by the liberation struggle, women's struggle will intensify. Palestinian women are organising on a very practical level, taking concrete steps to ease the burdens of the married women, who are handicapped by rearing large numbers of children at an early age. The Palestinian people are tied to institutions, over which they have no control. The young Palestinian woman is shackled with the status of refugee even more than the men.

Women still struggling

Involvement in the Palestinian Revolution has meant for the Palestinian woman a process of shaking off years of tradition; however, they are still only in the middle of this process.

Leila Khaled, a well-known militant from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), explains the particular stage she sees the Palestinian woman as being at, at this point of time......

"Just as the Palestinian man has revolted against the colonialists and their repression, social and economic subjugation, so too has the woman. In addition, the woman is in revolt against her social status, which hitherto has tied her hands, and against her traditional role; traditions and customs, together with the economic structure, which compels her to be totally dependent on men, make it very difficult for the woman to decide to join the revolution, and even more difficult to act, once that decision is made.

"This does not mean we have solved the problem of women's liberation. In reality, what we have achieved is more than what our adversaries had expected, but less than what we ourselves hoped to ahcieve. Much time and effort is requried for this kind of struggle. Liberation will no doubt be achieved when there is a real change in the ownership of the mans of production. This will then liberate women economically and make it possible for her to gain total liberation, that makes more sense, and produces bigger and better results.