Democratic Palestine : 34 (ص 27)
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- عنوان
- Democratic Palestine : 34 (ص 27)
- المحتوى
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. — —" = aus ame ae © ame
Palestinian Women
at the Core of the National Struggle
(
This essay by Dr. Faysal Darraj addresses theoretical and practical questions about the liberation of
Palestinian women, in the light of the outstanding role played by women in the intifada.
By many criteria, Palestinian women emerge as militant
fighters and mothers of generations of both militants and
martyrs. Each woman is a human monument evoking pride as
well as sorrow. While remaining a staunch fighter, she is
equally the mother of a lad martyred before he reaches twenty,
the sister of a fedai whose body is torn by enemy bullets at
dawn, the daughter of yet another fedai who departed for the
occupied homeland and has yet to return, the comrade of a
youth who has never tasted the pleasures of childhood.
The Palestinian woman is a mixture of the splendor of
dignity and the bitterness of grief. No comparison can be made
between her and the traditional woman who starts life openly
admitting that she is helpless. While some consider the eman-
cipation of women as a luxury or a pastime with little
significance, history has plucked the Palestinian woman from
her traditional bed and inherited functions, to throw her into
the furnace of the struggle for big dreams stemming from the
usurped homeland, or small dreams relating to providing
bread for her family, or waiting for her husband to return
safely from battle.
The Palestinian woman was born into a gloomy and unjust
history; she was destined to write an epic full of blood, tears
and suffering. More than a century of struggle and oppression
has given the Palestinian woman the strength to withstand the
martyrdom of the child she brought up on a pittance, to
rebuild her shanty in the camp time after time. It has created
the great woman of the intifada, a woman who, armed with a
stone, walks in the martyr’s funeral, visits her imprisoned son,
upholds the flag of Palestine, cradles her cheeks in anguish,
ploughs the land, reads the daily newspaper, kneads the dough
and discusses daily matters. She knows the qualities of the
kings and the presidents, together with the language of the
enemy. With her traditional gown and distinct dialect, that
barefooted woman looks much more beautiful than those who
wear uniforms; she is richer than all the kings who have by
chance obtained.a handful of silver from the sand; she is wiser
than all those who never speak without first mentioning their
academic titles.
In the course of her life, the Palestinian woman has ex-
perienced her transformation in a number of localities: in the
refugee camp, in the Palestinian resistance movement, and in
the anti-occupation movement in the occupied territories. The
question now is this: If we put aside the miserable period of the
refugee camp, is it then possible to talk about the women under
occupation and the women of the Palestinian political
> - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 34
- تاريخ
- أغسطس ١٩٨٩
- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
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