Our Sisters' Promised Land: Women, Politics, and Israeli-Palestinian Coexistence

2. On the Borders of Nations: Sororal Transnational Territory

CHAPTER 2 • On the Borders of Nations: Sororal Transnational Territory I publicly declare before the nation and the world that I too am occupied and enslaved territory, the West Bank in me and the East Bank Struggle within me each according to its ability -Bracha Serri Love for a homeland [moledetJ is natural But why does love stop at the border? We are all one family We are all responsible for the other We are all leaves on a tree The tree ofhumanity Love for a homeland is natural But why does love stop at the border? -Chava Alberstein Women Transgressing Borders: Legitimating Palestinian Nation-ness On November 18,1991, the newspaper Hadashot published a striking photograph of an exuberant group of Israeli-Jewish women peace activists holding hands with Hannan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Middle East peace talks in Madrid, where she had been instrumental in placing Palestinian nation-ness in the international community. Hannan Ashrawi's circle of female supporters and well-wishers included prominent leaders among the Israeli Left whose names were quite well-known in the country, such as Shulamit Aloni, who was a member of Knesset and is now a minister in the government; Alice Shalvi, the chairwoman of the Israel Women's Network; Yael Dayan, a well-known writer and now a member of the Knesset; Naomi Chazan, a professor of political science and now a member of the Knesset; and many others. The women were making a political statement regarding Palestinians. Publicly, they broke Israel's official denial of Palestinian nation-ness: they defied the Likud government's position that there were no longer any 1967 borders, that the Occupied Territo43 44 Our Sisters' Promised Land ries (including the city of Ramallah) were part of a Greater Israel, and that there was no Palestinian nation. In holding hands with Hannan Ashrawi and through other public events, Israeli and Palestinian women created transnational spaces for both nations several years before Norway offered such a space for Israelis and Palestinians in 1993 and before Washington provided a transnational ceremony in 1993 that would publicly establish new political facts in the Middle East in the historic handshake between the leaders of Israel and the PLO. The women's journey to the town of Ramallah in the Occupied Territories entailed crossing the 1967 borders, the so-called green line, to honor a Palestinian woman who had been outspoken in her criticism of the Israeli occupation . Women clasped hands across national boundaries in a local event, and, according to Hadashot, when Hannan Ashrawi returned from the Madrid conference the Israeli women went to her home in Ramallah on a bikur hizdahut (solidarity visit)-a transgressive act in 1991 because its purpose was to honor a Palestinian leader. The Hebrew word hizdahut means both "solidarity" and "identification with," and this dual meaning suggests that the women's visit was in fact a double transgression: it both supported Ashrawi as a leader and suggested their identification with her political positions and against their own government regarding the nation-ness of Palestinians. For a number of years before the signing of an agreement between official representatives ofIsrael and the Palestinians, women of both nations were steeped in a peace activism that demanded innovative approaches to three complex questions: How can they work together toward peace from within their respective communities, and from within their own nationness , yet recognize the rights of the other nation? How can they create a transnational space (across nations) in which they can act jointly? How can they sustain dialogues and actions when differences have to be confronted and when periodic crises seriously threaten their solidarity? The Gulf Crisis, for example, brought dissent into the Peace Camp and challenged its solidarity with Palestinians. Yet the members of Shani, Women against the Occupation, remained firm in their support for Palestinian nation-ness. They published a position statement in February 1991, during the Gulf War. The Shani document argued that Israel must take three steps in order to begin a resolution of conflict: first, it must recognize the Palestinian nation and its aspiration for a state of its own; second, it must negotiate with the legitimate representative of the Palestinians, the PLO; and, third, it must On the Borders of Nations 45 support the establishment of a Palestinian state side by side with the state of Israel, because this is the...