Palestinian women are always part of the national struggle, they are visible, but their contribution to the political movements, and the military groups met with silence. People avoid speaking about this aspect of women’s activity, though they may show public appreciation for female fighters - if those women are not part of their own family. In this thesis I am going to give voice to Palestinian women’s silenced experiences and shed light on their often-unrecognized roles in resisting the Israeli occupation. By looking closely at women who have been in Israeli colonial prison, this work traces their life experiences in order to understand the different ways that women negotiate their political, social, and individual position to challenge the Israeli occupation, and the conservative patriarchal culture. In this thesis I am going to discuss how Palestinian women’s political subjecthood and their political performance shift from visibility –as a community workers, mothers of political prisoners, or participants in funerals marches or protest, or even as housewives- to invisibility and under cover when they took roles in the military resistance groups. This shift requires women to be in a continuous process of spatial negotiation, demanding constant understanding and awareness of their boundaries and limitations, reflected in the visibility and invisibility. Palestinian women former prisoners create a space of negotiation through their understanding of the multilayered boundaries imposed around them by the conservative patriarchal culture that has a lot of concerned to protect women bodies and sexuality that is representing the family honour and reputation, and also the Israeli occupation which target women in their everyday life. Through their understanding for their boundaries, which is not fixed but constantly changing, and shaping and reshaping the politics of social relations and interaction that take place within them. I argue that women’s awareness of their boundaries influences the way they negotiate the space of incarceration and the tactics of survival that they forge.

Conference Title

women in war

Conference Country

Armenia

Conference Date

Sept. 17, 2016 - Sept. 19, 2016

Conference Sponsor

women in war

Additional Info

Conference Website