Palestinian Women and Politics in Israel

1. The Politics of the Trapped Palestinian Minority in Israel

1 The Politics of the Trapped Palestinian Minority in Israel From the very beginning of the war [July 2006],1 Arab and Jewish women demonstrated daily against the war in Tel Aviv and other places. I felt good that Israel finally discovered who could stand up to it, and that things were not going to be as they were in the past. Female activist from the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (DFPE), July 2007 During Harb Tamuz (July) 2006 war, Palestinians in Israel received a sharp reminder of their complicated and contradictory status as citizens of Israel and members of a larger Arab nationality and identity. Palestinians were caught between Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets and the Jewish state; the rockets killed nineteen Palestinian civilians out of a total of forty Israeli civilian deaths, more than double their proportion in the Israeli population (Daoud 2007), but the state viewed the Palestinians as collaborators with Hezbollah because they expressed solidarity with the Lebanese people. During this war, more than ever before, it was clear that the involvement of Palestinian women in political activism had become an essential feature of Palestinian politics in Israel. Women played an active role in various grassroots and informal political activities, such as organizing and participating in demonstrations and other efforts oriented against the war. However, this increased participation never translated into an actual role for Palestinian women in Israel’s political decision-making process at the level of formal politics. One of the fundamental themes of this book is that the marginalization of Palestinian women from formal politics in Israel is part and parcel of the political marginalization of the trapped Palestinian minority as a whole. Palestinian women’s struggle for political participation must be seen in the larger historical and political context of the Palestinian minority in Israel,2 11 The Politics of the Trapped Palestinian Minority in Israel which now constitutes about 19 percent of the Israeli population. More than a mere attempt at inclusion on the Israeli political map, the Palestinian women’s informal, grassroots political efforts are part of a profound struggle for identity, land, and survival for a national minority that has been systematically disenfranchised since 1948. Although Palestinians in Israel have received political rights, including citizenship, permanent residence , and the right to vote and run for public office, they remain alienated in the Jewish state and suffer from discrimination and marginalization at all levels (Bishara 1993; Smooha 1996). While factors such as patriarchy and socialization act as primary obstacles to Palestinian women entering into representative politics—as will be examined in the coming chapters—this chapter examines the effects of the interrelationship of ethnicity and nationalism on Palestinian women’s experiences in politics. To understand the national identity and status of Palestinian women in Israel, one requires a background understanding of the complex relationship between the Palestinian minority and the state of Israel. Three broad areas in particular deserve consideration: the historical circumstances that created the Palestinian minority in Israel following the creation of the Jewish state in 1948; al-Nakba3 (the catastrophe) that ensued for the Palestinian minority in Israel; and the contradictory ways in which the politics of Israel has impacted the Palestinian minority’s political, economic, and social experiences , including those of women.4 Palestinian Arabs Become a Minority in a Jewish State This analysis of the Palestinian minority in Israel is based on the analysis of trapped minorities.5 Danny Rabinowitz, an Israeli anthropologist, argues that Western liberal democratic theories do not explain minorities such as the Palestinian minority in Israel, which also claims rights to land (Rabinowitz 2001: 66). Thus, the concept of “trapped minority” is used to describe certain cases of national and ethnic minorities who are connected to a mother nation stretching across two states or more. These minorities become trapped when their homeland is taken over by recently established states and dominated by groups that separate members of these minorities from one another. According to the trapped-minority model, these minorities become alienated and marginalized twice: once within their im- 12 Chapter 1 posed state and at the same time from their mother state (Rabinowitz 2001: 64–85). In 1948, Israel was established as a Jewish ethnic state, or a state for one of several ethnic groups (Rouhana and Ghanem 1998), in what had been known before as Falastin. After the war, the indigenous Palestinian Arabs who remained on their...