The Lived Experiences of Married Palestinian Women from the Occupied Territories of 1967 Residing within the

Authors

  • Authors

  • Suhad Daher-Nashif
  • Areen Hawari

Keywords:

Palestinian Women, Triangle Region, Precarity, Intersectionality, Cultural Alienation

Abstract

Few studies have delved into the holistic lived experiences of Palestinian women, particularly those from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who are married and live inside Israel without documentation or permanent residency. This study employs intersectionality as a conceptual framework and explores how these women are deprived of civil rights and access to necessities of life. Furthermore, it uncovers how these women continuously experience daily life under a colonial regime that imposes a conditional citizenship restricted to Palestinians with Israeli passports, and within a patriarchal social context. The study sheds light on the experience of 10 women living in the centrally located Triangle [ al-Muthallath ] region and concludes that these women, most of whom are first and only wives, find emotional and financial support in their spouses and families. Yet they also face political hardships that prevent them from accessing basic rights (e.g., healthcare and education) and social difficulties that intensify the psychological implications, as well as their precarity and sense of cultural alienation, which leads them to develop multiple coping strategies.

References

  1. For more details on these provisions, see: United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights , accessed on 20/2/2023, at: https://did.li/ FZZfT
  2. On these agreements, see: United Nations, Human Rights Instruments: Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons , accessed on 20/2/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3XVtC2x; United Nations, Human Rights Instruments: Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness , accessed on 20/2/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3XUn4RV
  3. From the Arabic for "without nationality" [bidūn jinsiyya], the term refers to stateless residents, particularly of Kuwait.
  4. Dhuha Salem, "al-Mansiyyāt min al-Niswiyya: Ma alladhī Tuwājihuhu al-Nisāʾ al-Bidūn?," Manshoor , 30/7/2020, accessed on 20/2/2023, at: https://did.li/exxCN
  5. Grace Priddy et al., "Gender-Based Violence in a Complex Humanitarian Context: Unpacking the Human Sufferings Among Stateless Rohingya Women," Ethnicities , vol. 22, no. 2 (2022), pp. 215 - 232.
  6. Mariangela Veikou, "Back to Basics: Stateless Women and Children in Greece," Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies , vol. 19, no. 5 (2017), pp. 557 - 570.
  7. Shourideh C. Molavi, Stateless Citizenship: The Palestinian-Arab Citizens of Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 3, 6.
  8. East Jerusalemites can seek residency but not citizenship.
  9. Danielle C. Jefferis, "Institutionalizing Statelessness: The Revocation of Residency Rights of Palestinians in East Jerusalem," International Journal of Refugee Law , vol. 24, no. 2 (2012), pp. 202 - 230.
  10. Susan M. Akram, "The Search for Protection for Stateless Refugees in the Middle East: Palestinians and Kurds in Lebanon and Jordan," International Journal of Refugee Law , vol. 30, no. 3 (2018), pp. 407 - 443.
  11. Abbas Shiblak, "Stateless Palestinians," Forced Migration Review , no. 26 (2006), pp. 8 - 9.
  12. Yael Berda, The Bureaucracy of the Occupation: An Introduction to the Permit Regime (unpublished manuscript, 2012).
  13. Azmi Bishara, "The Pitfalls of a US-Israeli Vision of a Palestine State," Journal of Palestine Studies , vol. 35, no. 2 (2006), pp. 56 - 63.
  14. Suhad Daher-Nashif, "Vulnerability and Precarity of Palestinian Women in the Naqab," Third World Quarterly , vol. 43, no. 3 (2022), pp. 703 - 720.
  15. Ruth Preser, Bare Lives: Women without Status in Haifa and the North of Israel (Haifa: Isha L'Isha Feminist Institute, 2020) [Hebrew].
  16. Both films are available on Netflix.
  17. See: "Fustān al-Arūs," YouTube, 11/1/2020, accessed on 20/2/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3XMZmXy
  18. The track appears in the short film Targeted Citizen [muwāṭin mustahdaf], directed and produced by Rachel Leah Jones; see: "Fīdiyū Muwāṭin Mustahdaf," Adalah Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, accessed on 20/2/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3ILr2YB
  19. This region comprises the area of Um al-Fahem and Baqa Al-Gharbiyyeh at its northern side, and the area of Taybeh and Tira at its south.
  20. To read the full text of the law, its amendments, and petitions submitted to repeal it, see: Adalah Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Qānūn al-Muwāṭana wa-l-Dukhūl ilā Isrāʾīl (amr muʾaqqat) , accessed on 20/2/2023, at: https://bit.ly/3IN4gzJ
  21. Barhoum Jaraisey, "Qānūn al-Muwāṭana wa-l-Dukhūl ilā Isrāʾīl (amr sāʿa – qānūn ṭawāriʾ) 2022," Special Report , Madar: The Palestinian Centre for Israeli Studies, 13/3/2022, accessed on 20/2/2023, at: https://did.li/HBM5q
  22. Yael Stein, "Forbidden Families: Family Unification and Child Registration in East Jerusalem," B'tselem; Center for the Defence of the Individual, 2004.
  23. Islah Jad, "Feminist Reading of the Palestinian Constitution Draft," Review of Women's Studies , no. 2 (2003), pp. 8 - 12.
  24. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color," in: Martha Albertson Fineman (ed.), The Public Nature of Private Violence: Women and the Discovery of Abuse (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 93 - 118.
  25. Avtar Brah & Ann Phoenix, "Ain't I a Woman? Revisiting Intersectionality," Journal of International Women's Studies , vol. 5, no. 3 (2004), pp. 75 - 86.
  26. Ann Phoenix & Pamela Pattynama, "Intersectionality," European Journal of Women's Studies , vol. 13, no. 3 (2006), pp. 187 - 192.
  27. Mikko Joronen & Mitch Rose, "Vulnerability and its Politics: Precarity and the Woundedness of Power," Progress in Human Geography , vol. 45, no. 6 (2021), pp. 1402 - 1418.
  28. Sandra Harding, "Feminist Standpoints," in: Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber (ed.), Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2012), pp. 46 - 64.
  29. When quoting participants, we have used nondescript names for some places to protect their privacy. For instance, instead of directly quoting "in Jatt", we have written "in town" or "in the West Bank". Source: prepared by the authors.
  30. Rehab's was the only case of a six-month visit permit being granted. She reports that this was with the help of her brother, who works for the Palestinian Authority.
  31. It is worth noting that after the death of Nour's father, her mother married a man from within the Green Line and moved there to live with him. They have a residence permit.
  32. The concept of muʾakhkhar (or mutaʾakhkhir) refers to the amount paid by the husband to the wife over the course of their marriage or in the event of a divorce.
  33. This 1991 law identifies the eligibility requirements for employing foreign labourers and obtaining work permits, as well as the employer's duties to foreign workers and to the state. For more details, see: "Qānūn al-ʿUmmāl al-Ajānib (Qawānīn)," Kol Zchut , accessed on 20/2/2023, at: https://did.li/4MeIw. It is worth noting here that we are dealing with general Israeli law toward foreigners in spite of our conviction that Palestinian women are in their home country and are not migrants or foreigners.
  34. Omaima was the only participant with Israeli citizenship, which she explained is due to her being born before the 1967 occupation of the West Bank in one of the regions subsequently classified as within the Green Line.
  35. This refers to families where the mother is requesting a renewal of her residency or identity card.
  36. Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem.
  37. An arranged marriage, according to which a sister and a brother swap-marry another set of a sister and a brother in two different marriage contracts based one a two-family agreement.
  38. Judith Butler, "Performativity, Precarity and Sexual Politics," AIBR. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana , vol. 4, no. 3 (2009).
  39. Penny Johnson & Eileen Kuttab, "Where have all the Women (and Men) Gone? Reflections on Gender and the Second Palestinian Intifada," Feminist Review , vol. 69, no. 1 (2001), pp. 21-24, 26.
  40. Rema Hammami, "Precarious Politics: The Activism of 'Bodies that Count' (Aligning with those that don't) in Palestine's Colonial Frontier," in: Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti & Leticia Sabsay (eds.), Vulnerability in Resistance (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), p. 161.
  41. Lilian Abou-Tabickh, "Women's Masked Migration," in: Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh & Isis Nusair (eds.), Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender among Palestinians in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), p. 189.
  42. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception , Kevin Attell (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
  43. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Security Theology, Surveillance, and the Politics of Fear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
  44. Butler, Gambetti & Sabsay.
  45. Christopher Harker, "Geopolitics and Family in Palestine," Geoforum , vol. 42, no. 3 (2011), pp. 306 - 315.

Downloads

Published

2023-01-01

Usage statistics

37 views 63 downloads

Issue

Section

المقالات