Another problematic in the universalist methodology of intersectionality concerns the absence of cultural and historical specificity in its founding concepts. This absence corresponds to the exclusion of the concept of the state as a primary ingredient for a theoretical framework capable of understanding the political economy within which the forms of violence are identified and operate. Intersectionality, which suggests that the forces of violence against women (e.g. gender, class and race) are universal, does not help us understand indigenous women in the context of settler colonialism. Yet, as we shall see later, these forces of violence in a different historical stage, under a different form of state ‒ say, the settler-colonial state ‒ express different relations and take different forms. For example, the existing context of the state in which feminists can speak about concepts like public–private or gender differentiation, as well as the existing highly developed concept of class differentiation, are not applicable to settler colonialism or to understanding the life conditions of indigenous people. Hence the need for a different conceptual framework capable of understanding indigenousness and settler colonialism. An analysis of the lived experiences of indigenous women, as the following argues, necessitates a different feminist approach: one close to the experiences of the indigenous and cognizant of the violence of the settler-colonial regime and which acts with and on behalf of its victims. A feminism with such characteristics, in addition to being able to reach and represent the voices and experiences of indigenous women, can also provide a solution to the feminist debate on representation and the Other.
FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF INDIGENEITY AND SETTLER COLONIALISM
The above critique of the feminist debate on doing research with the Other will be re-examined in the following by focusing on Palestinian women in pre- and post-Nakba Palestine. Highlighted in the process will be the historical and cultural specificity of the settler-colonial state, its role in shaping gender relations, and its impact on women. This analysis will be largely based on raw oral history material (videotapes) of Palestinian refugees gathered through the project Palestine Remembered.1 I will discuss the historically and culturally specific notions of gender and class before and during British and Zionist settler colonialism. The main force of violence faced by indigenous Palestinians, I argue, is the settler-colonial state and not necessarily gender or class. It is this state that decomposes prior social forms and relations and recombines them into settler relations of gender and class. As such, the settler-colonial state must be logically prior to units of analysis such as gender or class. Indigenous peoples who fell under the wrath of the settler-colonial state experienced a totally different history and processes of change and violence than that experienced by marginalized settlers or immigrants. While economically the settler-colonial state – for example, British colonialism and the Zionist settler movement (1920–1948) – engendered many changes in the Palestinian peasant economy as the latter was transformed into a capitalist one, it is the political – and in fact, the existential – ideology of settler colonialism which made the greatest impact.
Unlike capitalism, which is characterized by inclusion and exploitation (e.g. of immigrants, Blacks and people of colour), settler colonialism is a form of capitalism that is primarily genocidal. It targets the physical existence of indigenous people; its ideology is based on wiping out the very physicality or bodies of the indigenous, grabbing and controlling their land, and erasing their culture and history. An epistemology of indigeneity, therefore, will be based on conceptualizing gender and class in their pre-capitalist (peasant) context. It will also be centred on the ontological existence of a group and not on individuals, as in the case of intersectional theory. One distinguishing feature of a feminist indigenous framework will be the latter’s focus on genocide and the notions of loss, absences, and erasure of the material and cultural existence of the indigenous.
GENDER AND CLASS AMONG INDIGENOUS PALESTINIANS UP TO THE NAKBA
Until 1948, Palestine had an overwhelmingly agrarian social structure, the vast majority of Palestinians being peasants, producing and reproducing themselves on the land. Both women and men partook in cultivation, planting, cropping and harvesting along with other forms of husbandry, caring for and raising cattle, pigeons, chickens and so on and using them in food production. Until 1948, the division of labour was more sex-based than gender-based: women assumed an equally important role in the production and reproduction processes of the household. In addition, there was very little if any real division between the private and the public spheres. The peasant household was an extension of the field, of the agricultural land, the place for the cattle, the vegetables and trees, the crops and plants. The term dar (home) used by the peasants did not express the nuclear home or house that we are familiar with, but rather was used for the space of the hamula (the extended family); this was also women’s space of work and socialization and of social, political and economic decision-making for the extended family or the village. In pre-conquest Palestine, the hamula might occupy a whole village or more than one village.
Upon listening to the voices of many women (and some men) recorded by the Palestine Remembered project, I realized the impressive volume of productive work done by women. For example, in one case in the village of Birya (Safad district), Fatima al-Sayyed, a refugee living in Syria, said: “some of the young women would take the figs [fresh and dried] and sell them in the Jewish corner … the road to there is hilly – no busses or cars, we would walk or use donkeys. I used to help my mother in making yogurt, labneh [strained yogurt], cheese and honey”. In responding to a question concerning schooling, she said:
There were no schools in our village. My father sent me to Ein al-Zatoun [another village] for one day only, one day! My mother complained, telling him, “I am alone and cannot do everything by myself: working outside, inside, caring for the cows, the sheep, the chicken and the grape field”. They pulled me out of school after only one day – how sad I became.
When asked about what she played with as a child, she responded: “I never had the time to play; I worked on the land with my father and helped my mother”.
Speaking about healthcare in the village, she said that Amneh, a female villager, used to tshatteb [make a cut on the leg or shoulder of the sick person], then burn and wrap the cut. They also used kasat hawa [cupping] and herbs, like mint, sage and camomile. The younger girls walked to the well – a long walk from our house – and would fill pots with water, or took the clothes and washed them there. My grandmother was the daya [midwife] of most women in the village.
When asked about how the older women entertained themselves, she said: “After they separate the wheat grains, they would take the canes [long wheat straws], colour them, weave them together, and make atbaq [straw plates of all sizes for use at home]”. As such, even leisure time could have a component of what we might see as work.
Ratiba Abu-Fannah from Kufur Qari’ (Haifa district), a refugee from Jordan, had something similar to say:
We used to bring the water from the well in clay pots. Each one of us would have one pot on her head and two on the donkey. We would take our clothes and wash them there … we also used to make our oven [taboun] using fire and clay topped with manure until ready, then bake the bread in it; we planted and harvested using the sickle. One woman would separate the corn, and another, standing with a large quffah [a straw bucket] gathered it, and when the quffah was full, the men would place it on the donkey or on carts for sale. I used to sew clothes; I swear by God, some nights I slept on the sewing machine out of exhaustion, especially during Ramadan. We also made khawabi [clay storage jars] for storing wheat and olive oil. We would go to the wheat mill to grind the wheat and bring the flour. In our house we had cows and sheep; we used to milk the cows and make labneh and cheese. I used to collect the eggs from the chicken and sell some of them. We also had pigeons which I took care of and fed.
The testimony of Aisha Khalil from Deir Tarif (al-Ramla district), a refu
gee in Jordan, corroborated the above experiences of peasant women’s work:
In my village there were three or four dayas, and they were midwives for all of the women. Every day we used to carry the clay jars, walk to the well and bring water back. At the age of five or six, I started working on our land … we would spend the whole day working – watering the land by carrying water from the well. We would take turns with the other villagers, using the same well. I used to go fetch hatab [wooden logs] for the taboun and its fire and fetch the water; we girls would go and pick fool [fava beans]. No, no, women never rested or stayed at home … we would work every hour of the day. I remember how women used to give birth in the field, while working. At the age of six, I used to water the field, one tree after another. My older sister and I would spend the whole day in the field, picking corn, sesame and all … No sitting at home … every day we went to the field and returned home with them [the men in the family]. Our life was work … no rest … always at work to feed the family … those in the dar worked on cleaning wheat, sesame, barley, hummus, lentils … we would clean the sesame, let it dry, then clean it and sell it in Ramla [a nearby city].
These oral histories demonstrate a non-capitalist definition of the concept of work as opposed to the form of labour under capitalism, and challenge the distinction between the public and private spheres. Most importantly, they show the strong relationship between land and indigenous women’s lives.2 The work experiences of indigenous peasant women as presented above challenges the gender division of labour in the capitalist context. It also challenges Orientalist feminist perspectives on Muslim/Arab/Palestinian women in which they are cast as “traditional” and silent recipients of their patriarchy (Abu-Lughod 2002).3 These voices demonstrate that males and females were largely sovereign in their own domains, and male power, while not absent, was not “patriarchal” in the way it is now. “Patriarchy”, in other words, is more a result of imperial settler colonialism, which intensified post-Nakba, than being something primordial. A feminist analysis of the colonized, as the following shows, must be cognizant not only of the colonial violence and its direct and indirect effects on women, but also of the latter’s experiential reality as agents of change and resistance. Palestinian women’s work under colonialism was not confined to the economic sphere of production and reproduction, but also ventured into the political sphere as agents of change and anti-colonial resistance.
WOMEN’S AGENCY AND RESISTANCE
Between 1920 and 1948, a process referred to by Marx as “so-called” primitive accumulation, one defined by Rosa Luxemburg as “imperialism”, began to encroach on Palestinian lives. The British, in an effort to pay for the maintenance of their colonial administration, began to impose high taxes on the peasants’ lands and property. They also introduced the Land Registry Ordinance in 1920, which aimed at parcelling the otherwise collectively possessed/owned lands for the purpose of taxing them. The inability to pay cash for the tax, as most peasants used a barter system and not money, led to imprisonments and the impoverishment of peasants – estimated in 1930 at 30% – and the confiscation of their land (see Nadan 2007). This process was further exacerbated by the British policies of “opening up” Palestine to the European (Jewish) settlers, policies aimed at establishing a Jewish entity in Palestine. This meant further land confiscation and then transfer to the Zionist settlers.
The violence of settler colonialism in Palestine was met by an equally fierce resistance, especially on the part of its direct victims, the fallaheen (peasants). The 1936–1939 revolution, which included a six-month general strike, epitomized this resistance. As the guerrilla war was waged against the British and the Zionist colonial project, violence perpetrated by both the British and the Zionists was inflicted on the indigenous Palestinians; many men were executed, killed, tortured, and imprisoned while women suffered the loss of their loved ones and, in many cases, the destruction of their homes and the ruin of the fruits of their work.
Reflecting on this period, Najiyyeh Ahmad, from Indoor (Nazareth district) and now a refugee in Jordan, had the following to say: “The British were putting a lot of pressure on us; they refused our men the right to sell or export their oranges … you would see the older men sitting and crying”. She added that,
In 1936 after six martyrs from our village fell – I don’t know who would inform the Ingleez [British] about the thuwwar [revolutionaries] in our village … the soldiers surrounded our village, invaded our homes and messed them up; they spilled the oil, mixed the flour with lentils and other grains, and dumped everything on the floor. They killed four men, including my uncle.
Similarly, Said Zubi from Sirin (Beisan district), a refugee in Jordan, whose village was wiped out by the Zionists, reported the following:
Our village revolted in 1936. The British imposed excessive taxation on us; they never accepted produce [in return for taxes], only cash, and we didn’t have it. The revolutionaries in Sirin were in the mountains. Most men in the village were trained in using arms. Sheikh Nayef Zubi, a leader in the 1936 revolution, trained all the young men in the village. The British starved us during the revolution … but we were steadfast and continued with the revolution. The revolutionaries used to hide their weapons in a hole inside the cow barn. My mother snatched a rifle from a lone British soldier and hid it.
The memory of Palestinian women peasants helping and protecting the revolutionaries from the British by hiding their weapons or hiding them in the house and feeding them is a recurrent narrative among many of the stories of the indigenous refugees.
Here is Shahira Sadeq from Deir al-Qadi (Akka district), a refugee in Jordan:
We never wore veils; we wore mandil [a traditional Palestinian headdress] decorated with oya [needlework]4 … all the women of the village would go out to the main roads and spray the stone roads with water [to prevent dust]. My family helped the thuwwar; they cared for them and fed them. One day, the British gathered the shabab [young men], brought the mukhtar [village elder], and asked him to name them all. He started by saying, “This is ibn N [the son of N], abu X [the father of X] … he named them all, including the shab [a young man] whom he didn’t know, but who was one of the thuwwar. One of the villagers was an informer and told about the thuwwar. They used to raid the homes, break the doors, ruin the mooneh [food saved from one season to the next], and wreak chaos in the homes. The women in the village knew the thuwwar, they cared for them, would cook for them and send them food.
Fatima al-Sayyed, mentioned above, speaks highly of her neighbour’s wife, Nathmeh al-Arnous,
who used to wear a cloth belt to hide weapons and would deliver them to her husband … these were heroes. The British came to the village and demolished four houses … when he [Nathmeh] was followed by the British, as I was back from fetching water, I saw him entering my Aunt’s house … she protected and hid him.
Said Zubi succinctly described British and Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine, saying: “The British committed many crimes against us; they intended to erase our identity as Palestinians while at the same time aiding the Zionists against us. We were poor, and the rifle was very expensive … many villagers sold all they had to buy a rifle and fight them”.
The crushing of the Palestinian revolution in 1939 and the start of World War II led to the increased militarization of the Zionist settler movement and intensified violence against indigenous Palestinians, a process which led to the establishment of the state of Israel and to the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), which I define as genocide. Genocide, which represents the utmost form of violence afflicting the indigenous people, must be at the core of our feminist analysis.
THE NAKBA THROUGH INDIGENOUS PALESTINIAN VOICES
Before theorizing the Nakba as genocide, we shall refer to the voices of Palestinian women (and men) expressing the violence of the Zionist settler-colonial forces – violence which targeted their physical and bodily existence in addition to their cultural and historical being. In Sirin, wher
e most of the village males were involved in anti-colonial resistance in the 1930s and throughout the 1940s, Said Zubi testified:
The Zionists forced the village women to leave in 1947, and led them by force towards Jordan … Until May 1948, the men kept infiltrating their village during the hasad [harvest season] to bring wheat to their families. But they would be attacked by the Zionists, forcing them to flee under fire. In May 1948, after they occupied Nazareth, the Zionists destroyed Sirin, turning it into rubble. They bombed Sirin and all the villages around Beisan. How hard we fought them, but [Said Zubi was crying at this point], we were defeated!
Aisha Khalil recalls:
Before we tahajjarna [were forced to leave], ahel [families/villagers] of Deir Tarif each owned a rifle. Each day, one hamula member would spend the night out, protecting athyal al-balad [the outskirts of the village] … until the Jews surrounded us and we became very frightened. In the meantime, we were hearing news about the massacre in Ramla, where they killed people in the Mosque, and we became very scared. The whole village also heard about the massacre of Deir Yassin [where 249 women, men, and children were massacred by the Zionist Irgun] and the news about butchering pregnant women. Our family, like others in the village, said that we didn’t want this to happen to us. The shabab in our village would go to the Abbasiyya district and partake in the resistance. One day a plane dropped bombs at the outskirts of my village. I was fetching water at the Ain [well] when I heard the bombs; I ran back home with the empty jarra [water jar] and saw two villagers and told them: “Let’s leave before they kill us all”.
An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba Page 7