Crossing Social and Spatial Boundaries for Claiming Gender Status: Israeli-Palestinian Bedouin Women in the Land Struggle
Keywords:
Bedouin women, land dispossession, political agency, intersectional identity, patriarchy, Israel
Abstract
The participation of young, educated Bedouin women in the struggle for land and against the Israeli government was largely inspired by events of the Arab Spring. In this paper, we examine whether, within the rigid social structure of Bedouin society, they could attain enhanced spatial mobility through participation in the struggle by crossing gender, race, class and spatial boundaries, and whether this participation could be harnessed back into their communities for their own social liberation. Interviews with women and men active in initiating, mobilizing and demonstrating were analyzed to better understand how they perceived the implications of this action for Bedouin women’s presence, identity and power in these public spaces. A complex process is revealed in which there are considerable contradictions between their perception of relative success in claiming status within the public space of struggle against the state, as well as importing some components inwards into tribal spaces, and their conscious choice not to pursue it further as an internal struggle against patriarchy.
References
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-----. (2006) Between tradition and modernization: Understanding the problem of female Bedouin dropout. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(1): 3-17.
-----. (2007a) Permission to rebel: Arab Bedouin women’s changing negotiation of social roles. Feminist Studies, Spring (33): 161-187.
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Abu-Rabia-Queder, S. and Weiner-Levi. N. (2008) Identity and gender in cultural transitions: Returning home from higher education as ‘internal immigration’ among Bedouin and Druze women in Israel. Social Identities, 14(6): 665-682.
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Ahmed, L. (1992) Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Asaad. K.S. (2009) Planning among the youth institutions in Palestine and its role in the development process. Discussion submitted to Dr. Abd AlHamid, A. & Dr. AlZbedi B. Nablus, Palestine: Al Najah University (Arabic)
Ashkenazi, T. (1957) The Bedouin: The Origins, Life and Customs. Jerusalem: Mass. (Hebrew)
Azzem, J. A. (2019) The Palestinian Youth: From Activism to Movement (1908-2019). Rammalla: Masarat Center Press. (Arabic)
Baker, A. (1998) Voices of Resistance: Oral Histories of Moroccan Women. New York: State University of New York Press.
Ben-David, Y. (1986) The Bedouin in the Negev. Idan, 6: 93-99. (Hebrew)
Bordo, S. (1997) The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity. In Conboy, K. & Medina, N (eds.), Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, New York: Columbia University Press, pp.90-113.
Brooks, P. (1993) Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
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Collins, H.P. (2000) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Crenshaw, C. (1989) Demarginalizing the Intersection of Sex and Race: A Black Feminist Critique of Anti-Discrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Anti-Racist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 14: 538-554.
Dinero, S. (1997) Female role change and male response in the post-nomadic urban environment: The case of Israeli Negev Bedouin. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 3:248-261.
Fenster, T. (1998) Space for gender: Cultural roles of the forbidden and the permitted. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 17: 227-246.
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Hafez. S. (2014) The revolution shall not pass through women’s bodies. Egypt, uprising and gender politics. The Journal of North African Studies, 19:2, 172-185
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Jakubowska L. (1992) Resisting ethnicity: The Israeli State and the Bedouin identity. In: C. & J. Martin (eds.), The Paths to Domination, Resistance and Terror. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, pp.85-105.
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Kandiyoti, D. (1996) Bargaining with patriarchy. Gender and Society, 2, 274-290.
Karplus, Y. and Meir, A. (2010) The right for endogenic spatiality: The case of indigenous peoples. A discussion paper presented at the Minerva Conference for Human Rights in Israel, Neve Ilan. (Hebrew)
Khamis, S. (2011) The Arab “Feminist” Spring. Feminist Studies, 37, No. 3, pp. 692-695.
Kozma, L. (2003) Women Write History: Feminism and Social Change in Morocco. Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and Africa Studies, Tel Aviv University. (Hebrew)
Joseph, S. (1997) The Public/Private. The imagined boundary in the imagined Nation/State/Community, The Lebanese Case. Feminist Review, 57: 73-92.
Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Manea, E. (2014) The Arab popular uprisings from a gender perspective. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Neue Folge, 61, No. 1 (März 2014), pp. 81-100.
Marteu, E. (2015) Bedouin women’s organizations in the Naqab: In Nasasara, M., Richter-Devroe, S. and Abu-Rabia-Queder, S. (eds). The Naqab Bedouin and Colonialism. London: Routledge, pp.145-160.
Marx, E. (1967) The Bedouin of the Negev. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Massey, D. B. (1994) Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Meir, A. (1997) As Nomadism Ends: The Israeli Bedouin of the Negev. Boulder, Co.: Westview.
-----. (2005) Bedouin, the Israeli State and Insurgent planning: Globalization, localization or glocalization? Cities, 22: 201-215.
-----. (2009) Contemporary state discourse and historical pastoral spatiality: Contradictions in the land conflict between the Israeli Bedouin and the State. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32(5): 823-843.
-----. and Gekker, M. (2011) Gendered space, power relationships and domestic planning and design among displaced Israeli Bedouin. Women Studies International Forum, 34: 232-241.
Middleton- Detzner, A., Slutzker, M., Chapple-Sokol, F., Mahmood, S. A. (2015) Women and The Egyptian Revolution: A dream deferred. In: M. Kurtz & L. R. Kurtz (eds.). vol. (1) Women, War and Violence. Santa Barbara, California. Denver, Colorado: Praeger, 325-332.
Northcote, J., Hancock, P., & Casimiro, S. (2006) Breaking the isolation cycle: The experience of Muslim refugee women in Australia. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 15(2): 177-199.
Ortner, S. B. (1996) Gender Hegemonies. In Ortner, S. B. (ed.) Making Gender: The Policies and Erotics of Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, pp.139-172.
Pessate-Schubert, A. (2003) Changing from the margins: Bedouin women and higher education in Israel. Women’s Studies International Forum, 26(4): 285-298.
Rabinowitz, D. and Abu-Bhaker, F. (2002) The Upright Generation. Jerusalem: Keter. (Hebrew)
Soen, D. & Shmueli, A. (1987) The Israeli Bedouin: Political organization at the national level. Middle Eastern Studies, 23: 329-347.
Sayigh, R. (1998) Palestinian camp women as tellers of history. Journal of Palestinian studies, 27(2): 42-58.
Spector-Marzel, G. (2010) From narrative approach to narrative paradigm. In Tobal-Mashiach, R. and Spector-Marzel, G. (eds) Narrative Research: Theory, Creation and Interpretation. Jerusalem: Magness, pp.45-80. (Hebrew)
Stuart, F. (1988) The woman, her husband and her custodian among the Bedouin in Sinai. Notes on the Bedouin, 19: 52-72. (Hebrew)
Trieger. G. and Davidson, Y. (2000) Attitudes toward labor among Bedouin women in southern Israel. Man and Labor, 10(1-2): 46-57. (Hebrew)
Walls, M. L. and Whitbeck L. B. (2012) The intergenerational effects of relocation policies on indigenous families. Journal of Family Issues, 33(9): 1272-1293.
Westfried, A. H. (1997) The emergence of the democratic Brazilian middle-class family: A Mosaic of contrasts with the American family (1960-1994). Journal of Comparative Family Studies 28(1): 25-53.
Yiftachel, O. (2006) Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Yiftachel, O., Kedar, A. and Amara, A. (2012) A new perspective on the dead Negev rule: Property rights in Bedouin space. Law and Governance, 14(1-2): 7-147. (Hebrew)
Zubaida, S (2014) Women, democracy and dictatorship in the Arab uprisings. In Fawaz A. Gerges (ed) The New Middle East Protest and Revolution in the Arab world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-----. (2008) Memory, Belonging and resistance: The struggle over place among the Negev’s Bedouin-Arabs’. In Yacobi, H. & Fentser, T. (eds.), Remembering, Forgetting and the Construction of Space. Ashgate: England,65-84.
-----. (2013) The Gendered Historical Discourse on the Nakba: The Perspective of Bedouin Arab Women in the Negev. PhD Dissertation, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. (Hebrew)
Abu-Rabia-Queder, S. (2005a) Coping from marginality—Three generations of Bedouin women in the Negev. In Dahan-Kalev, H., Yanai, N. and Berkowitz, N. (eds.) Women in the South—Gender, Space and Periphery. Beer-Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, pp.108-86. (Hebrew)
-----. (2005b) Models of activism: Bedouin women in the Negev. Mifne, 46-47: 23-26. (Hebrew)
-----. (2006) Between tradition and modernization: Understanding the problem of female Bedouin dropout. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(1): 3-17.
-----. (2007a) Permission to rebel: Arab Bedouin women’s changing negotiation of social roles. Feminist Studies, Spring (33): 161-187.
-----. (2007b) The activism of Bedouin women: Social and political resistance. HAGAR: Studies in Culture Polity and Identities, 7: 67-85.
-----. (2016) The Paradox of Professional Marginality among Arab-Bedouin Women, Sociology, 1-17 DOI: 10.1177/0038038516641621
Abu-Rabia-Queder, S. and Weiner-Levi. N. (2008) Identity and gender in cultural transitions: Returning home from higher education as ‘internal immigration’ among Bedouin and Druze women in Israel. Social Identities, 14(6): 665-682.
Ahmed-Khassem, F. (2002) Breaking through—paying the price. Panim, 22: 72-83. (Hebrew)
Ahmed, L. (1992) Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Asaad. K.S. (2009) Planning among the youth institutions in Palestine and its role in the development process. Discussion submitted to Dr. Abd AlHamid, A. & Dr. AlZbedi B. Nablus, Palestine: Al Najah University (Arabic)
Ashkenazi, T. (1957) The Bedouin: The Origins, Life and Customs. Jerusalem: Mass. (Hebrew)
Azzem, J. A. (2019) The Palestinian Youth: From Activism to Movement (1908-2019). Rammalla: Masarat Center Press. (Arabic)
Baker, A. (1998) Voices of Resistance: Oral Histories of Moroccan Women. New York: State University of New York Press.
Ben-David, Y. (1986) The Bedouin in the Negev. Idan, 6: 93-99. (Hebrew)
Bordo, S. (1997) The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity. In Conboy, K. & Medina, N (eds.), Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, New York: Columbia University Press, pp.90-113.
Brooks, P. (1993) Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.
Collins, H.P. (2000) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Crenshaw, C. (1989) Demarginalizing the Intersection of Sex and Race: A Black Feminist Critique of Anti-Discrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Anti-Racist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 14: 538-554.
Dinero, S. (1997) Female role change and male response in the post-nomadic urban environment: The case of Israeli Negev Bedouin. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 3:248-261.
Fenster, T. (1998) Space for gender: Cultural roles of the forbidden and the permitted. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 17: 227-246.
Forbes-Martin, S. (2004) Refugee Women (2nd ed.). Oxford: Lexington Books.
Fraser, N. (1989) Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Goren, A. (1992) Symbolic aspects of the Bedouin woman’s clothing and ornament. Notes on the Bedouin, 23: 39-47. (Hebrew)
Hafez. S. (2014) The revolution shall not pass through women’s bodies. Egypt, uprising and gender politics. The Journal of North African Studies, 19:2, 172-185
Hundt, G. (1988) Patterns of conflict among Bedouin women. Notes on the Bedouin, 7: 19-29. (Hebrew)
Jakubowska L. (1992) Resisting ethnicity: The Israeli State and the Bedouin identity. In: C. & J. Martin (eds.), The Paths to Domination, Resistance and Terror. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, pp.85-105.
Jamal, A. (2018) Evolving elites and new political thought in the Israeli Palestinian society. In Aziz Haidar (ed.) Political Aspects of the Lives of Arab Citizens of Israel. Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute, 19-51. (Hebrew)
Kandiyoti, D. (1996) Bargaining with patriarchy. Gender and Society, 2, 274-290.
Karplus, Y. and Meir, A. (2010) The right for endogenic spatiality: The case of indigenous peoples. A discussion paper presented at the Minerva Conference for Human Rights in Israel, Neve Ilan. (Hebrew)
Khamis, S. (2011) The Arab “Feminist” Spring. Feminist Studies, 37, No. 3, pp. 692-695.
Kozma, L. (2003) Women Write History: Feminism and Social Change in Morocco. Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and Africa Studies, Tel Aviv University. (Hebrew)
Joseph, S. (1997) The Public/Private. The imagined boundary in the imagined Nation/State/Community, The Lebanese Case. Feminist Review, 57: 73-92.
Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Manea, E. (2014) The Arab popular uprisings from a gender perspective. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Neue Folge, 61, No. 1 (März 2014), pp. 81-100.
Marteu, E. (2015) Bedouin women’s organizations in the Naqab: In Nasasara, M., Richter-Devroe, S. and Abu-Rabia-Queder, S. (eds). The Naqab Bedouin and Colonialism. London: Routledge, pp.145-160.
Marx, E. (1967) The Bedouin of the Negev. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Massey, D. B. (1994) Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Meir, A. (1997) As Nomadism Ends: The Israeli Bedouin of the Negev. Boulder, Co.: Westview.
-----. (2005) Bedouin, the Israeli State and Insurgent planning: Globalization, localization or glocalization? Cities, 22: 201-215.
-----. (2009) Contemporary state discourse and historical pastoral spatiality: Contradictions in the land conflict between the Israeli Bedouin and the State. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32(5): 823-843.
-----. and Gekker, M. (2011) Gendered space, power relationships and domestic planning and design among displaced Israeli Bedouin. Women Studies International Forum, 34: 232-241.
Middleton- Detzner, A., Slutzker, M., Chapple-Sokol, F., Mahmood, S. A. (2015) Women and The Egyptian Revolution: A dream deferred. In: M. Kurtz & L. R. Kurtz (eds.). vol. (1) Women, War and Violence. Santa Barbara, California. Denver, Colorado: Praeger, 325-332.
Northcote, J., Hancock, P., & Casimiro, S. (2006) Breaking the isolation cycle: The experience of Muslim refugee women in Australia. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 15(2): 177-199.
Ortner, S. B. (1996) Gender Hegemonies. In Ortner, S. B. (ed.) Making Gender: The Policies and Erotics of Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, pp.139-172.
Pessate-Schubert, A. (2003) Changing from the margins: Bedouin women and higher education in Israel. Women’s Studies International Forum, 26(4): 285-298.
Rabinowitz, D. and Abu-Bhaker, F. (2002) The Upright Generation. Jerusalem: Keter. (Hebrew)
Soen, D. & Shmueli, A. (1987) The Israeli Bedouin: Political organization at the national level. Middle Eastern Studies, 23: 329-347.
Sayigh, R. (1998) Palestinian camp women as tellers of history. Journal of Palestinian studies, 27(2): 42-58.
Spector-Marzel, G. (2010) From narrative approach to narrative paradigm. In Tobal-Mashiach, R. and Spector-Marzel, G. (eds) Narrative Research: Theory, Creation and Interpretation. Jerusalem: Magness, pp.45-80. (Hebrew)
Stuart, F. (1988) The woman, her husband and her custodian among the Bedouin in Sinai. Notes on the Bedouin, 19: 52-72. (Hebrew)
Trieger. G. and Davidson, Y. (2000) Attitudes toward labor among Bedouin women in southern Israel. Man and Labor, 10(1-2): 46-57. (Hebrew)
Walls, M. L. and Whitbeck L. B. (2012) The intergenerational effects of relocation policies on indigenous families. Journal of Family Issues, 33(9): 1272-1293.
Westfried, A. H. (1997) The emergence of the democratic Brazilian middle-class family: A Mosaic of contrasts with the American family (1960-1994). Journal of Comparative Family Studies 28(1): 25-53.
Yiftachel, O. (2006) Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Yiftachel, O., Kedar, A. and Amara, A. (2012) A new perspective on the dead Negev rule: Property rights in Bedouin space. Law and Governance, 14(1-2): 7-147. (Hebrew)
Zubaida, S (2014) Women, democracy and dictatorship in the Arab uprisings. In Fawaz A. Gerges (ed) The New Middle East Protest and Revolution in the Arab world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Published
2023-01-22
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