A Feminist View of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Hello Everybody

It’s been a tragic last few weeks following Hamas’s attack on Israel and the escalation of violence in Palestine. It is ironic that just last month we published a Q&A exploring exactly the connection between peacekeeping, gender, and the environment. We are now witnessing in real time how much damage a conflict really does, especially for pregnant people, children, and the environment. We are at a pivotal crossroad - one where we lean deeper into a patriarchal system that brings more destruction to everyone and everything, or a more feminist approach that looks to solve the root causes, while giving a voice to those most affected by this decades-long conflict. Palestine has been a central feminist concern since at least the 80’s and our reading suggestions this week dive deeper into that history, both in the US and in Germany. We also have a great op-ed on our blog on a related topic - looking at why gender-based violence needs to have a greater focus at this year’s climate negotiations. Read the piece by Dr Keerty Nakray here.

The Round Up

On the morning of October 7th, the Islamist militant movement Hamas attacked several Israeli villages, military bases, and a music festival near the border with Gaza, firing rockets, killing hundreds and taking around 200 people hostage. Two days later, on October 9th, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant ordered a complete siege on Gaza. Since then, over 6,000 bombs have been dropped on the 365 km² (141 sq mi) strip. Amidst active bombing, water and electricity have been cut off, food is scarce, and half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents - around half of whom are children - are under evacuation orders. Thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee. As in all conflict and humanitarian situations, sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice are severely compromised. Already around 50,000 pregnant people in Gaza are without access to needed health services, and around 160 births are happening every day, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). With little hope of a ceasefire in near sight, experts and humanitarian organizations warn that pregnant people, and those who have just given birth, are facing a crisis.

Israel has illegally occupied Palestine since 1967. Prominent feminist thinkers like Angela Davis, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Judith Butler have long argued that Palestine should be a central feminist concern. People living in Palestinian territories under occupation are subject to systemic state violence from the Israeli military and live under what Amnesty International has deemed an apartheid state. For queer and gender-nonconforming people and Palestinian women and girls this is exacerbated by a deeply patriarchal society where they experience higher rates of unemployment, lower wages, discriminatory labor practices and where existing laws against gender-based violence are outdated and often ineffective.

For years, Palestinian women have been active in fighting against these structures, both within and outside of their society. They have found solidarity outside of Palestine, from the Black feminist movement to Jewish feminists. In March 2021, the newly formed Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC) launched a pledge and open letter asking US women, feminist organizations, social and racial justice groups, and people of conscience to adopt Palestinian liberation as a critical feminist issue. The pledge listed six concrete steps and commitments towards advancing a truly intersectional and decolonial feminist vision in Palestine. These include embracing Palestinian liberation as a critical feminist issue; pledging support for Palestinian rights to free speech and political organising; rejecting the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism; endorsing the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement; divesting from militarism; and calling to end US political, military and economic support to Israel.

Israeli feminists have long recognized Palestine liberation as a feminist issue. Since the early years of the first large-scale Palestinian uprising in the 1980’s, the Israeli Women in Black movement, held vigils in Jerusalem carrying signs that simply read “End the Occupation.” Just days before Hamas’s attack, a joint Israeli/Palestinian feminist peace coalition had gathered in Jerusalem to call on political leaders to negotiate an end to the bloodshed and resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Yet since the start of the siege on Gaza, heads of Western states seem intent on taking an opposite stance. Pro-Palestinian protesters have been criminalized in the UK, some protests banned in France and Germany and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called pro-Palestinian protests “a glorification of violence.” The US has opted instead to expedite a bill in “foreign aid” of which $14 billion would go to Israel , $14 billion to the US-Mexico border, and more than $60 billion to Ukraine and ordered officials not to publish press pieces containing the phrases “end to violence/bloodshed,” “restoring calm,” and “de-escalation/ceasefire,” according to HuffPost.

Our Recommended Reading

• Read: this great article, written at the end of 2022. “Designing the Future in Palestine” locates feminism within the current struggle of Palestine and lays out a solid argument for why any decolonial solution to the conflict must have feminism at its core.

• Read this excellent longread on “Palestine, Feminism, and the Pitfalls of Liberalism—in Germany and Beyond.” This Q&A reads more like an article and the authors dissect important points related to the current conflict, from the role of liberalism and modern ideas of statehood to the weaponization of antisemitism and Germany’s past.

• Listen: Palestinian Women’s struggle against Colonization and Patriarchy. Dr Yara Hawari, a Palestinian feminist scholar, writer, analyst and activist, walks us through the decades-old history Palestinian women’s resistance against settler colonialism, apartheid, and patriarchal violence.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” - Rumi

^{**(October 26th, 2023 - this post was updated to add language about Palestine’s occupation by Israel.)}