Feminist Intifada

Abstract

Highlighting twenty-first-century Palestinian feminist formations, this essay chronicles a trajectory of over a century of women’s organizing that led to the contemporary moment. The essay argues that women and feminist praxis have been exemplified in each moment of Palestinian intifada, though national anticolonial liberation politics did not always accommodate feminist language or ideas. Palestinian women have played an instrumental role in each phase of contestation and community organizing against colonial, military, and state formations. Whether creating a women’s front, making space for women within the national movement, or developing a communal politics of care from within, the labor women have performed for the Palestinian liberation struggle can be read through a feminist ethos. The essay argues that feminist praxis was always present and that, while the language of feminism is contested in Palestinian social and political spheres, Palestinian feminist trajectories are compatible with and necessary for the actualization of Palestinian liberation and freedom from Zionist rule.