Frances S. Hasso

THE “WOMEN'S FRONT” Nationalism, Feminism, and Modernity in Palestine

Nationalisms are polymorphous and often internally contradictory, unleashing emancipatory as well as repressive ideas and forces. This article explores the ideologies and mobilization strategies of two organizations over a 10-year period in the occupied Palestinian territories: a leftist-nationalist party in which women became unusually powerful and its affiliated and remarkably successful nationalist-feminist womens organization. Two factors allowed women to become powerful and facilitated a fruitful coexistence between nationalism and feminism: (1) a commitment to a variant of modernist ideology that was marked by grassroots as opposed to military mobilization and (2) a concern with proving the cultural worth of Palestinian society to the West, a project that was symbolized by womens status in important ways. By comparing international and indigenous feminist discourses, the study also demonstrates how narratives about gender status in the Third World are implicated in, and inextricable from, international economic and political inequalities.

MODERNITY AND GENDER IN ARAB ACCOUNTS OF THE 1948 AND 1967 DEFEATS

The victory which the Zionists have achieved…lies not in the superiority of one people over another, but rather in the superiority of one system over another. The reason for this victory is that the roots of Zionism are grounded in modern Western life while we for the most part are still distant from this life and hostile to it. They live in the present and for the future while we continue to dream the dreams of the past and to stupify ourselves with its fading glory. 1

OVERVIEW: ENGAGING THE ARAB HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2005 ON WOMEN

The Arab Human Development Report 2005: Towards the Rise of Women in the Arab World (AHDR 2005) , published in Arabic with English and French translations, was launched at the end of 2006. With a title carefully crafted to avoid Western development buzzwords like “empowerment” and to signal the inclusion of all women living in the region, it is the third in a series of detailed studies meant to unpack the themes of the original overview report that garnered both acclaim and criticism when it was published in 2002. The other two topical reports examine what were billed as “deficits” in knowledge and in freedom. This one tackles what the original report framed as the third major obstacle to the flourishing of the Arab world: the deficit in gender equality.

Civil and the Limits of Politics in Revolutionary Egypt

Based on analysis of scholarly and primary sources that include July 2011 and January and February 2014 fieldwork in Cairo, this article examines civil as a word with multiple synchronic meanings and shifts in valence in Egypt between January 2011 and July 2013. I argue that civil stood as a rhetorical placeholder in a time with few secure ideological positions, little agreement about the content of the good society, and wide recognition of the enormity of obstacles to transformation. The article draws on Jacques Ranciere’s understandings of “politics” and “police” to examine sensibilities and relations of transgression and control that work on and through bodies, intimacies, and meanings of the civil. Among the essential lessons of the 2011 Arab revolutions is that ideological differences and material inequalities do not easily melt, even in emergent, pluralistic, and nondoctrinaire revolutionary politics, because it is difficult to erase positional and embodied differences in the scenes where politics are made.

Comparing Emirati and Egyptian Narratives On Marriage, Sexuality, and the Body

O n March 3, 2004, I turned on my television to the al-Jazeera Arabic satellite station, based in Doha, Qatar. The weekly program, “For Women Only” (lil nisaa’ faqad ) was on, and the topic was a comparison of “love” versus “traditional” (arranged) marriages. Most of those e-mailing and calling, and they were predominantly men, argued that “traditional” marriages had a higher rate of success. In addition to the host, and in typical fashion for this program, there were three female guests. In this case, one was a PhD and well-known Algerian poet and author who was hooked into the studio by satellite from Paris. The other two women, a Lebanese sociologist and professor, and an Egyptian physician of Islamist orientation whose clinical practice focused on sexual problems among married couples, were in-studio. It appeared that all the women were Muslim.

Entering and Remaking Spaces: Young Palestinian Feminists in Jerusalem

O n January 10, 2016, I conducted a lively one-hour group interview in a bookshop and café in Jerusalem with five Palestinian women activists in Lajnat al-Shabat, or the Young Women’s Committee of the Jerusalem District, which is affiliated with the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and is widely known for its energy and creative activities in Jerusalem despite its recent establishment. The women ranged from twenty-four to twenty-seven years of age, and all but one were single. Four of the five women worked in day jobs not connected to their activism, and one was unemployed. The core group comprises eight women and thirty to thirty-five “regulars” attend events and trainings. I had met most of the women on January 7 at an evening sit-in held in a tent outside the East Jerusalem office of the Red Cross. Earlier that month two young male Palestinian activists had sought refuge in the Red Cross office, violating an Israeli restraining order based on the 1945 British Mandate Defence (Emergency) Regulations that barred them fromJerusalem,where they live. Israeli forces arrested the men at the Red Cross on January 6 (Hasson 2016). The January 7 sit-in was organized by members of the Young Women’s Committee, who invited family and friends of the youngmen to share their accounts, stories, and jokes during the event. In the January 10 interview I asked the women about their priorities, their primary challenges, their ideological orientations, their views onmen’s involvement and gender issues, and the impact of class differences on their work. Participants included Shahd Yaseen and her sister Yasmine Yaseen, both from Silwan; Ilham Shaheen from the Old City; Naheel Bazbazat fromWadi Joz; and ʿAhd Abu Khdair from the village of Shuʿfat. Ruba ʿOdeh could not attend themeeting but offered her