Ghada Hashem Talhami - Evolution of the Palestinian Feminist Movement (2006)

Ghada Hashem Talhami: First of all, I think you do know that Palestinian women have a lot of experience, historical experience in confronting the patriarch, confronting occupation, in confronting all kinds of negative contexts for their struggle. You might say that the feminism of the Palestinian women has really come in generations. It has developed over the years and each generation has contributed in its own way To the national struggle. We're not bashful, by the way, about saying that it has always been a nationalist kind of feminism. This isn't really a class feminism, it isn't really gender feminism. Some people wouldn't even call it feminism at all. According to Elizabeth Farnia, an expert on Iraqi women, she would say this is really a family kind of ideology, family-centered ideology. By that I mean there's definitely an understanding That feminism isn't about gender conflict. It's not about a conflict between men and women. It's about really a conflict between women and their oppressive conditions, whichever way you choose to define those oppressive conditions. And Palestinian women define their oppressive conditions as being first and foremost occupation, the occupation, the occupation, and foremost the occupation. This is really what they have lived under. We've all grown, of course, under the limelight of the American feminist movement. The American feminist movement sort of brought the subject to the forefront of the ideological debate in the U.S. We've all grown up knowing that this was part of the ferment of the 1960s in the United States. And indeed the American feminist movement has developed the notion that the entire world literally subscribes to its own analysis of what feminism should be like. I think a closer look at the Palestinian situation, at the South African situation until South Africa became independent proves otherwise. It really proves that third world feminism as such is a particularly different kind of feminism. I would like to remind you of the work of Cheryl Odom Johnson and the work of bell hooks, Afro-American feminists who decided quite a long time ago But there's something unusual about this American feminism. It's too white, too bourgeois, too middle class. It really doesn't sit well and doesn't apply to third world women. According to Cheryl Audem Johnson, old-fashioned Simone de Beauvoir kind of feminism, Betty Friedan kind of feminism would like you to believe that the struggle really is over the patriarchy. The evil is the patriarchy. So the struggle really is between men and women, okay? In other words, women have to really liberate themselves from the patriarchy and once they liberate themselves they can really move forward into liberation, their own human liberation, okay? bell hooks goes a step further and says indeed that American feminism is very much a middle-class gender feminism that is really white and that does not address issues of socioeconomic context or issues of occupation. Indeed, if the American feminist movement always has stressed electoral rights, political rights, education, the glass ceiling, sexual freedom, that is really irrelevant to Third World women. I think you'll agree with me. It's really terribly irrelevant to Third World women. What is more important for Third World women is the context of their oppression. It is not the patriarchy. The patriarchy does play a role, but the patriarchy itself, let's put it this way, the family system as such in Third World countries is really not so much a negative force in the lives of women. And indeed women have proven that they were able to maneuver and even to achieve a certain kind of space within the traditional patriarchy. The problem really is the context of occupation, of oppression, which by the way targets men and women in Third World societies. Okay? I'll remind you of a famous statement by Assam Abdelhadi. I don't know if you know who Assam Abdelhadi is. At one time she was the president of the General Union of Palestinian Women. She was attending a meeting in Yemen. And right next to her was Nawal Saadawi, the ultra-ultra feminist, Egyptian feminist, who is often described as a Western-style feminist that emphasizes individual rights over communal rights. And Assam Abdelhadi got up and pointed to Nawal Saadawi and told her, for us Palestinian women, the enemy is never the Palestinian male, it is the Israeli male. That really sums it up. For us really it is the Israeli male. I think it has been that way for a long, long time. Many of the Palestinian women have grown up trying to literally survive under different systems, under the British Mandate, under the Jordanian period, later on in the refugee camps in Lebanon and in Syria, and now of course in Palestine which as I'm sure you realize is not liberated. This is not a sovereign liberated entity. Even when we say the term entity, we tell you that it's not liberated. It doesn't even go by the name of a state. Okay? They've experienced many regimes. That's why they are really distinguished by the length of their experience. Throughout these experiences, we have seen more and more radical women. We have seen, first of all, a generation of old-fashioned bourgeois middle-class women who were relatives of the prominent figures in the Palestinian national movement before 1948. And the thrust of their activism has always been social welfare, social welfare projects for the families of the victims of the wars of the British period, later on of the war of 1948, the Nakba, later on of the '67 war. In other words, the objective of these women has always been physically the survival of other women, the survival of society because women indeed mean the family and what women stand for within the family. Later on when the PLO came into being in Lebanon, the Palestine National Council, our parliament in exile for many years, actually included special seats, special quota if you wish, for the General Union of Palestinian Women. So the General Union of Palestinian Women has always been an important cadre Of the Palestine Liberation Organization. I want to remind you also that the General Union of Palestinian Women is the 2nd oldest organization of Palestinians in the world. The oldest organization is the General Union of Palestinian Students, which originated in Egypt and the organization which Arafat led over the years and which he really used it to build his apparatus later on. The General Union of Palestinian Women began in Gaza.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: And actually was the second oldest organization of Palestinians. That is something to remember. That is, there's obviously a tremendous degree of consciousness of the nature of the nationalist struggle among women which has pushed them forward, catapulted them into a very important position. In their years under the umbrella of the Palestine National Council, their greatest complaint has always been lack of fiscal autonomy. Autonomy. They've always complained that the PLO organization itself never really allowed them maneuverability when it comes to their own money, to their own funding. Other than that, I think they were pleased with that kind of representation. But of course they didn't engage as fighters with very few exceptions. The few of course are a few women particularly among the radical factions of the Palestinians, the Palestine Front for the Liberation of Palestine, People like Leila Khaled and other people were really engaged in something what we call atypical female roles. But most of the other women were engaged in social work, again in the camps, sustaining the Palestine Red Crescent Society. Again charitable work. Again I remind you the issue is really for the Palestinians survival, survival, survival. How do you make those human beings survive years of horrible living conditions in Lebanon, the wars in Lebanon, Arab wars in various parts of the Arab world. That is really the whole thrust of it. The 1967 war created a new reality for us is that it really extended the occupation now to the West Bank and it made the entire Palestinian society confront the Israeli occupier head-on. What developed as a result of the 1967 occupation was really interesting. One of it was the work of younger college-educated women from the leftist factions of the Palestinian movement who became very anxious to prepare the poorer sections of Palestinian women to confront the economic hegemony of the occupier. Once the West Bank was occupied, the Israelis literally used it as a source of cheap labor and as a captive market. For Israeli goods. That's really what it was. And part of that cheap labor, let's not forget, was women. Women would be bussed every morning to their places of employment by the Israeli jobbers and would be brought back by bus the same evening because they would not be allowed to sleep overnight in Israel. Men too, by the way. But women in the West Bank who have never had an experience working under any conditions were now forced to take these kind of menial jobs in the Israeli sector, not even in the Palestinian sector. Now think about this, what happened to their children? What happened to their familial duties? So the task of the younger women was really to create a network which ended up being nursery schools no more, to create a network through which at least the kids will be taken care of while the women were away. That's one response.

Speaker 2: OK.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: The other response was to teach them about economic bargaining, collective bargaining, how to bargain with the Israeli jobbers. Of course, these workers were never allowed into the Histadrut, were never really given any kind of benefits in the Israeli market like Israeli workers. Both Palestinian men and women were treated like migrant workers in our country here. That is, they will be paid by the hour. They had absolutely no benefits. of any kind and they would have to come back in the evening to face a myriad of duties within their own family. So this was quite a problem. On the other hand, we really eventually found our own leader, a famous Palestinian female leader who sort of I think responded to all these negative situations. And this was the famous Samiha Khalil, Umm Khalil.

Speaker 2: Umm Khalil.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: Who was indeed an institution in Palestine and eventually ran for the office of president against Chairman Arafat during the first Palestinian election. A formidable woman by any standard. If there was ever any woman for the Palestinians, this is really the leader for Palestinian women. What's unusual about Samiha Khalil? Samiha Khalil was a middle-aged woman when she became well known. She had a high school education. She was a teacher. No more. She was a housewife and a mother for much of her life. She was a schoolteacher in her early years and then eventually settled down to creating a terribly extensive institution in Ramallah which provided training and employment opportunities for disadvantaged women with one purpose only and that is to make them independent of the Israeli economic sector because to her The loss of dignity that women face daily on a daily basis demanded a different kind of response. Now Samiha Khalil by all accounts was a very conservative woman. Samiha Khalil would not fit I think your profile of a typical feminist leader. For one thing she was a pronatalist. She always advocated large families. She always pushed women to have large families in order to sustain the revolution. She was a religious woman, very much so, in her own right. Politically she was not that much on the right, but I think in her personal beliefs she was a good Muslim, a good Muslim woman. She would appeal to the business community in Nablus and Ramallah and in Jerusalem to provide funding for the weddings of orphaned young girls so that they will have an appropriate wedding because this was important for her to maintain the dignity of those women. The dignity of these families. One of her greatest contributions was to make these women acquire new skills, skills as dressmakers, as beauticians, as people who prepared preserved food. And then she became, in a sense, her institutions became the marketing agencies of these products. All of it, the intention of which was to wean them away from The Israeli economic sector. Umm Khalil, by the way, also became a member of the leadership committee, the underground leadership committee of the West Bank before the return of the PLO to the West Bank after Oslo. So for many years before the First Intifada, Umm Khalil was the only woman in a secret committee of about maybe 5, 10 men that really determined the nature of the struggle in Palestine against the Israelis. I think that's an achievement that has not really been very much focused upon. By the way, there are biographies of Umm Khalil. I have run across a biography of her published by a Canadian. So there are some people who really have been aware of this unbelievable woman who indeed faced jail, went to jail, was forbidden from crossing the bridge going over to Jordan to visit her children, her grown children. She had—

Tarek Masrani: 4 children.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: sons who lived in Amman. The Israelis would never let her. The Israeli governor of Ramallah would summon her to his home. When he would summon her to his home, she would say, let him come down to my home and see me. I'm not going. Let him come down. Indeed, a formidable woman. I always considered her to be my idol. I met her only once. She was allowed only to leave the country once. I met her in Chicago. Very much down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth woman. She was a very Who I think knew where the priorities were. She really understood where the priorities were. It was fantastic, fantastic. There are other women you should hear about which are also— who are also very important. You know, today we hear a great deal about President Bush's democracy initiative, right? He would like to sell democracy to the Arabs. He would like to promote democracy in the Arab world. Unfortunately for him and for us, this is the wrong message for the wrong people And it's the wrong time for the message. A lot of the people who matter in these countries, the thinkers and writers and intellectuals, have said before he exports democracy, we would like him to think about our human rights, what's happening to Palestinians, how are they being treated, what can he do about it. This is more important than exporting democracy. But let's take him at his word. Let's take him at his word. Let's say really there is a genuine interest On the part of the United States government in teaching the Arabs about democracy, pushing the issue of women, right? You know, we saw Laura Bush after the invasion of Afghanistan speak on behalf of women and against the Taliban's treatment of women. Fine. What do we find here? This was an interesting case for the Palestinians. By the way, they've already experienced this during the Israeli occupation. During the Israeli occupation, we had only one election. Right. One municipal election which took place in 1974. And the Israelis expected that this election would bring forward a batch of friendly mayors who would work with the Israelis. This is the time when the Israelis were developing the village leagues. The village leagues were their own version of soft collaborators who would work with them to make governing the West Bank manageable. When they started to prepare for the elections of 1974, They decided to do something for women. The Israelis decided that we have now something to do for women. We're going to give women voting rights for the first time in their history because they never voted during the Jordanian regime. So now we're going to give them voting rights. A lot of propaganda was really focused on this point. Would you like to believe that the women rejected this right offhand with a resounding message that we will not accept any gift from the hand of the occupier. We will achieve that on our own. Would you like to know who led this campaign? You will be surprised. Rawanda Tawil, okay? Rawanda Tawil, Soha Arafat's mother, well-known journalist, well-known activist, who I think when the time comes to write her biography, we should remember this stand for her. This is really an important stand. It taught us something. It ought to be something that we ought to mention to this administration in the United States that this is not the way to advance democracy. Democracy cannot occur in the context of occupation, in the context of lack of human rights. And don't ever think that women will betray their cause in the interest of gender rights. They will not. They will certainly stick with their own people more than anything else. That's the way it has been. And I think that's the way it really will continue.

Maria Steffen: Thank you.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: Since the Palestine National Authority established its government over in the West Bank and Gaza, we haven't seen really great improvement in the status of women. And that is something we all regret. But of course we have seen also worsening conditions as a result of the continuing oppression of the Palestine National Authority itself. That is, we make a big mistake in assuming that the Palestine National Authority was free to achieve whatever it wanted to achieve. It was still struggling, stretched to the limit. Be that as it may, remember today when you look at the statistics you'll find out that only 13% of the positions in the PNA are actually taken up by women. That's very, very low. That is really very low. One cabinet post was usually for women. A Minister of Social Welfare would usually be quite often um jihad, Again, a venerable female icon of the years of struggle, the years of struggle in Lebanon. This is the widow of Abu Jihad, the second in command to Arafat had he lived the assassination attempt on him in Tunisia. And she indeed was again one of the formidable women in Palestinian history, a woman who handled all the accounts for the martyrs and their families and their children over the years. She has been in essence a minister of social welfare before establishing this government in Palestine. So she's been doing that a long time ago. So I don't think any male would argue that Umm Jihad really deserves to be in a cabinet position. But I think that's tokenism. We cannot say anything else. That's really tokenism. We need to do more. We need to expand the participation of women more. Today we see that the Jerusalem file is held by a woman. A Christian woman, I might add, which is also very interesting. So there's been, you know, there's been some slight inching improvements. But when we come to the Second Intifada, I think the picture becomes dismal because with the Second Intifada, what you have to look at really is the worsening human situation of all Palestinians and it's very difficult to simply segregate how this situation impacts women from how it impacts the family. We have to really look at the way in which the Second Intifada and the accompanying deterioration of living conditions of Palestinians affected the Palestinian family before we can talk about how it affected Palestinian women. They really go together. You can't separate the two. Indeed, one of the insights of Cheryl Odom Johnson, this Afro-American feminist, is that what the continuing struggle does for women living under oppression is that it heightens their perception of the oppression and it makes them desirous of assuming male roles because the males will be killed, will be in jail. That's the situation Palestinians always face in large numbers or will be exiled. This is the situation for Palestinians. Quite a few of them have become by force involuntary female heads of households. Whereas by definition the patriarchy says heads of households are always males, but actually the women have assumed these roles. So because of this heightened consciousness of oppression, women become politically oriented, politically interested, and they will struggle to achieve political rights, but they will do it in the context of the national struggle. They cannot separate from the national struggle. Okay? When you think about today, 25,000 Palestinians have become homeless in Gaza as a result of home demolitions. This is a figure provided by Peter Hansen, the chair or the director, the former director of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which deals with refugees. When you think of 10,000 people who have become homeless in Rafah, again as a result of home demolitions, these are just simple figures. When you think about 65 women within the last intifada who have given birth at the checkpoints because of inability to reach a hospital or a clinic, okay? When you think about 11% of the households who live below $2 a day or $3 a day being headed by females, think about how bad the experience of women is in the Middle East. The dropout rate for students, female students today in the West Bank and Gaza is actually close to 45% because of worsening security situation, because of the worsening economic situation. By the way, the question of education and the availability of educational opportunities for men or women in the Arab world has always been a matter of resources. When the resources were available, our families always taught the women sometimes before the men. When there were no resources, the men would actually take precedence. Certainly people who come from a well-to-do background like myself never had to face the problem of not going to school or not going to university. But certainly girls that I went to school with who came from refugee camps had to drop out of school to help their families because if there is any money available to the family, it was going to go to the male. This is the kind of situation you live in when you live under occupation. And under horrendous situations. Okay? Within the last elections that just have taken place, as you know, many of us are surprised by the outcome as much as you have been surprised, as much as Hamas has been surprised by the outcome. Be that as it may, you have to realize 17 women, as some are told, were actually elected to the Palestine National Council, 17 out of a council of 132. That's a lot. That's not bad, okay? However, I am a little bit upset at the fact that the organizations or the political parties that are more on the left, that are more enlightened, that are more progressive, have yet to adopt a specific program about the rights of women. For instance, the program of something called Badil, the Alternative List, which included the popular— the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine plus Hezbollah, another leftist group. This organization had very specific ideas in its own platform about Jerusalem. It actually called for ending Jewish settlements in Jerusalem, ending the isolation of Jerusalem, meaning the isolation of Jerusalem from the rest of the Arab areas. It had very specific ideas about the wall. It called for making the wall a priority for any future Palestinian government. It has specific sophisticated ideas about making the executive branch of government accountable to the legislative branch of government. These were specific demands voiced in specific political language. When it comes to the women's issue, you will be very disappointed. All it said is we pledge to work for achieving equality for women and making sure that they participate more and more in political decision-making. And that all codes, all codes will be actually more inclined to introduce reforms. What does that mean? Sharia? Any other codes? This is really very vague language. This is unacceptable. Very vague language. I think we're missing the boat in a way. In other words, radical situations call for radical solutions. And I think at a time when the human crisis of the Palestinians is intensifying today, such a degree, it behooves us, it behooves us to bring women to the forefront. Maybe if nothing else but to prove to the outside world that actually we think highly of our women and we think highly of the achievement of our women and their contribution to the struggle. That doesn't mean, by the way, that we will take our directive from the American feminist movement or the international feminist movement, okay, because I can show you— Yes. Instances where the American feminist movement has been woefully short of appreciating or understanding the nature of third world women's struggle. I'll give you 2 examples. One of the slogans raised by Ms. Magazine all the time, okay, is sisterhood is global. Sisterhood is global. Well, that could be taken in 2 senses. First of all, that the patriarchy which everybody cries about really applies to the struggle of Palestinian women, American women, and everybody else We've just proved that this is not the case. This is not the case. Sisterhood is global also means that they should sympathize with the suffering of other women around the world. They do not. There is absolutely no instance of now the women's organization in the United States ever taking a stand, making a statement on behalf of the suffering of Palestinian women. I don't think we expect them to take a position on the general situation of the Palestinians. But I think women to women, if indeed they believe in sisterhood is global, should prompt them to make a statement or to take a position calling for better human relations of this suffering sector, suffering sector of the Palestinian community. I'll give you another example, okay? There's a woman called Robin Morgan. You probably know about her. She used to be an editor of Ms. Magazine. She was one of the great names Of now, of the organization of women in the United States. Robin Morgan wrote a sensational book years ago called Demon Lover, Demon Lover. Demon Lover is actually the result of her interviews of many women in Gaza. She actually went to Gaza, she went to the refugee camps in Lebanon. She wanted to know, something bugged her about those women, she wanted to know why those women have large families. How come they don't understand that you can't have large families and be liberated? Okay. Well, in Beirut the answer was when she would ask very poor families, a family that could hardly feed 2 children, and look they had 10 children. Robin Morgan would be very upset and she will ask the women and they will say to her, one more for the revolution. In other words, they understand very well most of those children will die and if they're lucky one of them will survive for the revolution and I'm going to give one more for the revolution. She absolutely refused to believe That revolutionary conditions call on women's natalist functions in all societies, not only among Palestinians. By the way, in Israel, a woman who has more than 3 or 4 children is given special consideration. In some situations, women are encouraged to have more and more children because of the demographic question. But she refused to see that among Palestinians. That's how little she really was able to understand that this situation demands more children. It demands what we say commonly among Palestinians, we're going to fight with our own children. They're going to have to fight because the struggle of the Palestinians is generational. It's not going to be over tomorrow. It's going to take a long time. And the women understand this more than the men. Before I stop, I want to address another issue which I'm sure is one on your mind. Every time I speak about this, people ask me about it. Have Israeli women extended a hand to Palestinian women over the years. After all, there are some very decent Israeli feminists. Some of them we meet in the United States in certain gatherings. Some of them, people like Women in Black, have been opposed to their own government's policy after the occupation of Lebanon, have been very strong in their desire to contact Palestinian women. And there's been some contacts. There have been some contacts, I think, on elite level, what I like to call elite contacts. That is women in universities talking to each other, women in the upper echelon of the feminist organizations in the West Bank and Gaza speaking to Israeli women. What's the outcome? Nothing.

Dave Pollack: Why?

Ghada Hashem Talhami: Because we are so stuck in the context of our national question and they are so stuck in the context of their Zionism that we could never find common ground. There is no common ground. This is pathetic. We actually tried to do that. What their objective was all the time when they seek those contacts is somehow to soften the women's, the Palestinian women's response to Israeli society. Well, we can't do that. We cannot. We cannot see them as liberators. We cannot see them as women engaged in the same struggle as we are unless they really separate from their own society. And we cannot separate from our own society. We cannot disengage from our own society. Neither can they disengage from their own society. There is no common ground, absolutely. That's another thing that is really part of the experience of Palestinian women. Palestinian women are very experienced. They have accumulated tremendous political experience over the years. This is why I am not scared there's a Hamas government tomorrow in Palestine.

Nancy Nye: Why?

Ghada Hashem Talhami: Because I think we know how to deal with everything. We know how to deal with the patriarchy. We know how to deal with the occupation. We knew how to deal with the Jordanian regime. We knew how to deal with the Lebanese Phalangists. This is a very experienced feminist community and I think it will survive and I think it will win and I think it will survive always as part and parcel of the Palestinian national struggle. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We'll take questions now, please.

Speaker 2: Hi, George.

Dave Pollack: Thank you.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: You taped it. Really, seriously, I'm just wondering, are there any women, Palestinian women in Israeli jails? I thought I heard something like that but I really don't have any information. Maybe you can enlighten us. Yeah, we think there are 10,000 Palestinian prisoners today of whom 100 are women and at least 350 are children. We define children anything below age 16. Some of these 100 women have given birth in Israeli jails. We're not allowed to give birth outside of Israeli jails. Quite often they are jailed with hardened Israeli female prisoners and they are really the recipient of great abuse. Yeah, they've experienced jail over the years. They have not been treated any separately than the males. Of course they have not been involved in militant struggle as much as the males. We understand that. But many of them have been Involved in political organizations over the years. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Sahar Al-Nouri and I'm from American University. And my question is about the women's movement and the nationalist movement. I understand what you're saying about the two of them being intertwined currently, but we've seen in the past in Algeria, even in the U.S. in different times, that as women push for a nationalist movement, once that's achieved, oftentimes women don't get the rights that they need or that was also part of their agenda. How do you recommend Palestinian women address this?

Ghada Hashem Talhami: Your question is well taken and we hear it all the time. There's always the experience of Algerian women. Algerian women struggled in the ranks of the FLN. Eventually, of course, when they settled down to creating a state, they ended up being pushed back in the kitchen. We always say our situation is going to be different. Not every national struggle is the same. I think what happened for the Algerian women is that they did not create organizations before independence. They struggled individually even though they had great figures like Jamila Bouhairad and Jamila Boubacha and many famous women. They did not create organizations as such. They lacked the institutional structure to pursue their aims after independence. So when independence came, when Boumédiène came who defined himself as an Islamic socialist, he was really dead set on resolving The economic issues of Algeria on the backs of women. There's a famous incident whereby he was invited to address a women's gathering during International Women's Day, like today, and he said to the women, he said, we have an employment crisis in the country. We don't have enough jobs. And he said, do you expect me to employ the women and not to employ the men? I'm not going to do that. I'm going to give first preference to men. So we understand that very well. What I think— I tried to convey is the length and depth of the historical experience of Palestinian women. This is a remarkable experience. And really the kind of regimes that Palestinian women have experienced, living in Lebanon, experiencing the Jordanian Civil War, experiencing living under Jordanians, living under Israelis, living under the PLO, now living under Hamas, that really tells you that I think they are very experienced and very aware of what could be a negative factor in their own lives. And they do have the institutions. They do have the institutional capacity. And I dare say that there isn't a single progressive Palestinian male who would say that he is not in favor of the inclusion of Palestinian women. The problem with Hamas is that its social program so far has been very vague. I think deliberately so it's been vague. And I think when push comes to shove, when they do form a government, And they do make their policy known. They will find us in great opposition if they have no intention of promoting the cause of females. But again, I stress the depth and length of the Palestinian historical experience. It's really been remarkable. By the way, we hear this from Tunisian women who are really women who benefited from what we call state feminism because feminist rights have been handed down to them by Bourguiba. So we hear this all the time from them. They always say, be careful about governments, you know, Organize yourselves, don't wait for liberation. But I'm afraid we really can't do that. We are really stuck in a certain period of time and in a certain context. Yes?

Dave Pollack: Yeah, hi, my name is Dave Pollack. I'm from the State Department. Thank you for an interesting presentation. I want to pursue the last point that you made about Hamas and its— what you called its deliberately vague social policy. Is there any record that we can look at from, let's say, the Hamas control of local governments in the West Bank or in Gaza in the past year or so, or from writings or statements of Hamas leaders, or any other way that we can make an educated guess about what kind of policies a Hamas government would pursue on women's rights and women's issues?

Ghada Hashem Talhami: Well, I think They will definitely push for more opportunities for women's education. All sectors of the Palestinian community are very much determined to pursue educational goals. Hamas women, Islamic women, have been attending the Islamic University in Gaza in large numbers. There is going to be no segregation of women or no deprivation of educational rights. You have to realize, of course, that Hamas grew up in Gaza, developed in Gaza.

Speaker 2: Right.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: The situation in Gaza was always unique. In Gaza, by the way, we never saw females engaged in feminist activities of resistance in the past. I mean, even before the current period. That is because in Gaza itself, the situation was men went out to work in large numbers in the Israeli sector and came back home and the women stayed home. There is absolutely no evidence of large-scale female— Gaza female employment In the Israeli sector. So we don't see in essence the emergence of issues such as women's working rights. We don't see women working in the Gaza situation. Gaza is really different. I think if Hamas ever comes to the point of denying women employment based on dress, on a dress code like had happened in Iran, they will be resisted. I think there'll be a lot of resistance to them. But I'm at least— pleased by the fact that there are Islamic women in large number who attend universities and who do reach Islamic universities. And I am pleased by the fact that they ran some of their women in the current elections and they won, actually, which I think is gratifying.

Speaker 7: I'm an Egyptian reporter. How would you describe the situation of the Palestinian women inside the Green Line, which is like Israel proper, vis-à-vis their sisters in the occupied territories? Because, like, one quick remark that I used to hear from my Palestinian friends is that they're actually— that their situation is much worse than the situation of women in the occupied territories, since, okay, there is a revolution happening, or an intifada, in Gaza and the West Bank, and women play a role, while inside the Green Line, where it's, like, relatively politically stagnant, men there face, like, you know, I mean, the oppression of the Israeli state on a daily basis, and there is nothing they can do about it.

Dave Pollack: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 7: So they go back home and they let it out on their women. So I don't know if that remark is true or not. So I was just wondering.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: I think it's true. No, I think it's very true. For women, Israeli Arab women, the 1 million or so Israeli Arabs, obviously they haven't been subjected to the same situation, the same conditions of West Bank and Gaza women to develop political consciousness. We don't see female organizations on a large scale among the Israeli Arabs. Occasionally there's one or two women that You hear about, but really nothing so remarkable. But the whole situation of the Arab-Israeli community, I think, is in a sense more depressed when it comes to developing a consciousness, a political consciousness. Let me put it to you this way. The Israeli Arab community has determined a long time ago that their struggle is going to be over citizenship, not over independence. I mean, I think they understand that very well. And subsequently, their ultimate objective is equality with Israelis.

Nancy Nye: Right.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: This is a long struggle. As you know, they're deprived of military service. They're deprived of funding for their villages and schools at the same level of Israeli towns. You know the picture very well. For the West Bankers and Gaza, it's a completely different struggle. It's a kind of struggle for the West Bankers that is really a classical women's struggle in revolutionary situations. It's like Nicaragua. It's like Cuban women. It's also— it cries for—

Kisi Zarbali: Right.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: Nursery schools, group effort, group effort outside of the limits of government. Indeed, women's organizations in the West Bank, more than in Gaza, in the West Bank have been in the forefront of civil society. Civil society is basically women's organizations in the West Bank. And it's been said before that if there's any hope for Palestinian democracy, it's really through women's organizations and through independent educational institutions. These are the best civil society organizations for the West Bank. You don't see that very much in Gaza. You don't see that absolutely among the Israeli Arabs. Whether this is a worse situation or not, I mean, the Israeli Arabs could also argue that at least they have minimal social benefits, as you know, free health and maybe access to education, minimal. But again, their land is always threatened by Israeli seizures. This is why they have a celebration of something called Land Day every year. It's a completely different struggle, a completely different struggle. This is the tragedy of the Palestinian people, if I may diverge. The tragedy of the Palestinian people is that we have been segmented into different sectors. What is really appropriate for the women of Gaza is different for women of the West Bank, is different for women in the refugee camps of Syria and Lebanon. There are just too many Palestinian communities. There is no one single Palestinian community. There is no one single Palestinian standard. That is what's so difficult to deal with.

Kisi Zarbali: Hi, I'm Kisi Zarbali and I'm from the Middle East Institute. You touched on this in your answer which you just gave just now, but I was wondering, for international organizations, international NGOs like Women for Women International and the International Research Center for Women, are you optimistic about these organizations that work to increase public awareness for women worldwide, or do you feel that it needs to be, that it needs to be more from organizations like Karama, which if I'm not mistaken work within the occupied territories, like Karama and other organizations from within Palestine to increase public awareness?

Ghada Hashem Talhami: We have 2 different kinds of NGOs, okay, civil society organizations. We have domestic civil society organizations, most of them women, who have been very empowering of women's activities, particularly in an economic sense. They have actually provided new skills for poor women in order to make them in a way economically independent within their own families. There have also been a large number of externally funded NGOs, civil society in the West Bank. Those kind of civil societies, I think their role isn't quite appreciated as much. First of all, they have a high overhead. And they spend a lot of money on staff, you know, on salary, rather than really on the projects that count. But you have to realize that the whole concept of civil society emerged in order to define what can be done in a situation where a group of democratically minded people occupy the space between government and between people. That is not exactly the situation under occupation. The situation under occupation is that really You don't have maneuverability. You don't have that space so much between the government and between the public because the government is the enemy's government and your own government is in shambles. I mean, what government are we talking about in the West Bank when the Israeli soldier can actually go into any refugee camp in Nablus, shoot anybody on the streets of Nablus, go into Ramallah anytime? There's no sovereignty to speak of. I think we kind of inflate the significance of civil society. After all, it was really In a way more appropriate for Western societies, not for our society. Again, please always remember this is a unique situation and I think it's going to stay that way for a long time. Women obviously will benefit from acts of genuine charity, nonpolitical genuine charity, and we have seen them accepting of this. But I think you need more. You need to give them new skills as Umm Khalil used to do, this woman who had the great big institution in Ramallah. You need to make them also politically aware so that they won't be incorporated in the Israeli economic sector under very unfavorable conditions, which is really what has been their history. The history of women in the West Bank when they worked in Israel has been to be really the weakest members of the labor force. After all, when the Israelis pick up men, Palestinian men, and make them work within Israel— as you know, Sharon used to send his own trucks to pick up men on the streets of Gaza to work in his own farms— those men at least can fend for themselves. They know how to bargain. Those women absolutely have no experience. So in other words, the civil society that you and I know in the West may have to be different in the West Bank, may have to be more politically oriented in order to create the desired result. You know, civil society is a very convenient concept and there's a lot of them, there's a lot of civil society in the West Bank. Civil society, for instance, let me digress a little bit, has done a great deal for women in Bangladesh. Why? Because civil society there has been UN organizations. OK, we don't see that kind of UN involvement in the West Bank. We see UN involvement as a provider of direct charity to the Palestinians. I think this is our greatest complaint against UNRWA. UNRWA, United Nations Relief and Works Agency, over the years has been very anxious to maintain simply the physical survival of Palestinians. But not necessarily to address their political needs or even their sophisticated humanitarian needs. So again, what civil society are we talking about and can we really apply our definition of civil society in Western societies to the West Bank or not?

Nancy Nye: I'm Nancy Nye. I work with American Near East Refugee Aid and many, many years ago was the principal of the Friends Girls School in Ramallah, which I would proudly say was accused of being a hotbed of feminism in the 1980s.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: I attended that school.

Maria Steffen: Yes.

Speaker 2: Well, 2 of you.

Nancy Nye: Yes, so we're very proud of that. I wanted to go back to— you made a statement about 45% of girls being school dropouts at this point.

Speaker 2: Yes, they are.

Nancy Nye: Could you expand on that? What's your definition of dropout? At what age? And can you talk about that as compared to a few years ago? My assumption is that that's a dramatic increase. And could you just embellish a little bit about the reasons for this phenomenon?

Ghada Hashem Talhami: Well, first of all, we've seen the Israelis exercise collective punishment when it comes to education during the First Intifada and the Second Intifada. That is, the Israelis would close schools completely, which means nobody could go to school, boys or girls. Again, that's why we keep saying the issues pertaining to women are not necessarily women's issues. They're also pertaining to Palestinian boys.

Kisi Zarbali: OK.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: As you know, during the First Intifada, the teaching staff have actually become guerrilla teaching staffs, teaching in their own homes. In the Second Intifada, other conditions arose, one of which of course is the rise of the Islamic approach to liberation, which is very anxious to protect their own female children. It's a human desire not to have their female students be subjected to intimidation and abuse at the checkpoints. And number 2, the security situation has certainly worsened. When you think that today there are 704 Checkpoints in the West Bank. Now I'm not talking about even the wall. I'm just talking about checkpoints. 704 checkpoints. Students, including females, have double of the time just reaching school. They may not even reach school in the morning. So this worsening security situation makes families give up. And number 3, we have to address the issue of poverty. 67% of Palestinians live below the poverty line. 67%. Who has enough money to go to school? If the girls would drop out, they probably would drop out after elementary school. And by the way, because we had no government, we had a semblance of order under the PLO when Arafat was around, under the PNA. Now we really don't have a semblance of a government. We haven't had compulsory educational laws like we did during the mandate period and during the Jordanian period where girls and boys were supposed to stay in school until the end of the elementary.

Nancy Nye: Yes.

Speaker 2: We don't have that.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: We don't have a government. But I stress the worsening security situation which really makes it very difficult to allow girls, people who we really protect in our community very much, to go and face Israeli soldiers on a daily basis just simply to get from their home to their school and from their school to their home. It's getting worse. It's not getting any better.

Tarek Masrani: Hi, my name is Tarek Masrani. I work for Maha Abu Daeshamas at the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling. And I thank you very much for coming out here. I wanted to take a— well, I wanted to address some of the issues that we at the Women's Center in Aram dealt with a lot, which was family violence and honor crimes and things of that nature, which although they're exacerbated by the pressures of the occupation, do seem to have an organic component to them, an agency, if you will. And I'd like you to speak about that as a social problem within Palestinian society.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: It is a social problem within Palestinian society. We have seen an honor crime committed in Ramallah recently, which was shocking. We haven't seen such a thing for years in the West Bank and Gaza, so this is really new. The worsening economic situation in particular leads to a lot of frustration. That's one reason. We cannot blame it on the culture and I don't blame it on religion either. I am a Muslim and in my family violence is violence. Violence are grounds for divorce before any court. Any Islamic court would grant a woman divorce if there is violence. We also mediate differences between wives and husbands. There's a tradition of mediation which is mandated by Islam. Islam demands that the family get in there and really separate the couple together. From what I know, there have been a lot of domestic violence in Gaza, more than anywhere else. And this has been really attributed to the kind of harsh living conditions which the Gaza male workers have lived when they go every day into the Israeli work sector and they work as busboys, as dishwashers, as gas station attendees. And they come back at the end of the day, and if the woman says, today we're having this kind of a dish rather than that kind of a dish, The man explodes and he may actually resort to violence. That is a very typically human condition. Again, we should treat it and I think social agencies treat it and I think now from what I read there's a greater awareness on the part of most families that it is not a shame to go to the police when there is such a situation, that actually we should encourage that. I am heartened by the fact that those of us who understand the religion properly, Muslim or Christian. We have, of course, a large Christian community also. That this was never condoned by the religious tradition or by the cultural tradition. This issue arose in Jordan, as you remember, a few years ago. It was discussed in parliament. The royal family came up against it. Queen Rania would be marching in the street to raise awareness against it. And it turned out to be that it's really something of a Bedouin tradition. Bedouin traditions are not necessarily Islamic traditions. They're really primitive Bedouin traditions which have been exploited by some Islamic parliamentarians in Jordan. So what I'm— I don't think it's going to be a serious problem.

Maria Steffen: My name is Maria Steffen. I'm from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and I also just completed my dissertation on the role of civilian-based resistance in 3 self-determination struggles and the First Intifada was one of my cases. And I guess my question to you is about Whether you would say there is a Palestinian feminist perspective on a strategy for ending the occupation, not necessarily enduring the occupation, or you were discussing, you know, having more children to be able to continue the occupation, because arguably that's not so strategic to just have children.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: Mm-hmm.

Maria Steffen: Is there a feminist perspective on how to put pressure on the You know, respective stakeholders, those who are benefiting from the occupation, to actually bring it to an end.

Kisi Zarbali: Mm-hmm.

Maria Steffen: And then a follow-up question, and it had to do with your rightful critique on, say, NOW and Western feminism. And you mentioned that NOW has never taken a public statement on women and Palestinian women. But have they ever been requested to do so? Or have any of these women from NOW or from Ms. Magazine ever been invited to say take a checkpoint tour throughout the occupied territories so they can see it firsthand? Thanks.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: Okay, in answer to your first question, I don't believe there's a separate feminist strategy as how to end the occupation. I think you're right, there's a lot of strategies how to endure the occupation. There have been thinking and writing women at Birzeit University that we get in touch with all the time. Again, really the emphasis is on survival. It's not on anything beyond that. I think the solution is quite understandable and the solution is independence, 2-state solution. It's really— the majority of Palestinians really adhere to a 2-state solution. They don't adhere to anything more radical than that. I'm convinced of this. On the issue of have we ever addressed NOW or Ms. Magazine about touring the area, well, Robin Morgan was invited and she did tour the area and she came up with the wrong conclusions. OK? We have always sent articles to Ms. Magazine only to be turned down. I'm one of them. I've written occasionally to Ms. Magazine. No, you know, you don't write our type of journals. In some demonstrations they were called upon to address the issues of Palestinian women. Betty Friedan made a statement maybe once or twice. That's about the end of it. They remain really very much interested in individual liberation, what we call individual liberation. And there's a school of Arab feminists that adheres to that. OK. That, one of them being Nawal Saadawi in Egypt, who of course has become over the years— I see her quite often— more and more in tune of general socioeconomic conditions. But there's been some Arab feminists who would like to pursue a feminist feminist agenda rather than a feminist nationalist agenda, more or less. But you know, the misperceptions of the American feminist movement boggle the mind, not only the American feminist movement, The Western feminist movement. You remember during the first Gulf War before Mr. Bush Senior decided to send troops to Kuwait, Germaine Greer, Germaine Greer who is Australian, remember the Australian feminist, Australian and then British, came with a famous statement. She said, look how much she misunderstood completely. She said we shouldn't go to the rescue of people who actually treat their camels better than they treat their women.

Maria Steffen: Yes.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: Is that the only lesson she understood from the collusion of the American tradition and the Arab tradition in a situation of war? That's the only thing she understood. So we do need to create bridges. We do. I agree with you. And I think feminists should be able to talk to each other. But you know, historically during the United Nations glorious conferences on women every 5 years or so, Palestinian women always swung to the side of South African women.

Nancy Nye: Yes.

Ghada Hashem Talhami: And they stood alone facing the entire world with their own brand of feminism. You remember the big blowup in Kenya when the South Africans and the Palestinians held up a different standard of feminism that just was really opposed by everybody. And I'm afraid we may stay that way until there is some political resolution to the Palestinian issue. That's the way it looks to me.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much.