New Book: Daniele, Women, Reconciliation and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Daniele, Giulia. Women, Reconciliation and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The Road Not Yet Taken. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014.

 

 

URL: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415722452/

 

Abstract

Women, Reconciliation and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict explores the most prominent instances of women’s political activism in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Israel, focussing primarily on the last decade. By taking account of the heterogeneous narrative identities existing in such a context, the author questions the effectiveness of the contributions of Palestinian and Israeli Jewish women activists towards a feasible renewal of the ‘peace process’, founded on mutual recognition and reconciliation.

Based on feminist literature and field research, this book re-problematises the controversial liaison between ethno-national narratives, feminist backgrounds and women’s activism in Palestine/Israel. In detail, the most relevant salience of this study is the provision of an additional contribution to the recent debate on the process of making Palestinian and Israeli women activists more visible, and the importance of this process as one of the most meaningful ways to open up areas of enquiry around major prospects for the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Tackling topical issues relating to alternative resolutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this book will be a valuable resource for both academics and activists with an interest in Middle East Politics, Gender Studies, and Conflict Resolution.

Table of Contents

Foreword Ilan Pappé

Introduction

 

Part I: Ethno-Nationalism and Women’s Activism From a Critical Viewpoint

1 Challenges to the intertwined narratives of Palestinian and Israeli Jewish Women

2 Palestinian Women and Deep-Rooted National Narrative Identity

3 Different perspectives of Narrative Identities Among Israeli Women Activists

 

Part II

4 Parallelism and Inextricability of Women’s Narratives in Palestine/Israel

5 Deconstructing Ethno-national Narrative Identities: Women’s Activism Within the Paralysis of Military Occupation

6 Women Activists Towards Political Criticism and Joint Actions

 

Conclusion

New Article: Harris, Palestinian, Druze, and Jewish Women in Recent Israeli Cinema on the Conflict

Harris, Rachel S. “Parallel Lives: Palestinian, Druze, and Jewish Women in Recent Israeli Cinema on the Conflict: Free Zone, Syrian Bride, and Lemon Tree.” Shofar 32.1 (2013): 79-102.

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shofar/v032/32.1.harris.html

Abstract

Free Zone (Amos Gitai, 2005); The Lemon Tree (Eran Riklis, 2008) and Syrian Bride (Eran Riklis, 2004), explore the Arab-Israeli conflict through women’s experience of the political and military stalemate. In presenting Palestinian, Druze, and Israeli women, these filmmakers attempt to contrast and compare women’s shared encounters, including their experience of patriarchy. While the characters may come from diametrically opposed sides, their experiences as women occlude their political differences. In these films, women are foregrounded within the plot, and have agency over their actions if not their situations. Rejecting the masculine frame that has governed representations of the conflict, these filmmakers demonstrate a new kind of approach in Israeli film that considers feminist aesthetics in the construction of character and plot, as well as the treatment of women’s physicality, gaze, territoriality, and agency.

Cite: Greenberg, Private-Public Dichotomy in Girls’ Education in Mandate Palestine

Greenberg, Ela. “Invading Spaces: Challenging the Private-Public Dichotomy in Girls’ Education in Mandate Palestine.” Hawwa 10:1-2 (2012): 59-76.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/haw/2012/00000010/F0020001/art00004

Abstract

This paper examines gendered space within the framework of the education and training of Palestinian Arab girls in Mandate Palestine. Concepts of gendered space, at least within the sphere of education, were rooted in the Ottoman period, with the British reinforcing or adapting already existing ideas that shaped girls’ education by gender and spatial norms. Some of these ideas were also colonial imports, and did not reflect the attitudes of the local Palestinian Arabs. The local population often defied this spatial dichotomy, or internalized it. Women also had to negotiate notions of gendered space so that they could become educated, especially in terms of higher education.

 

Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World