Democratic Palestine : 34 (ص 30)
غرض
- عنوان
- Democratic Palestine : 34 (ص 30)
- المحتوى
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from the beautiful picture of a woman upholding the banner
and chanting songs of victory, to a cold climate saturated with
ideology, bureaucracy, voluntarism, political consciousness
lagging behind ideological consciousness, etc. Here we have to
make a clear distinction between the national will and
bureaucratic administration on the one hand, and the objective
effects of national action which supercede both will and ad-
ministration on the other.
The Palestinian national movement has occupied the
political stage in the Arab world for more than two decades. It
has experienced massacres, martyrs, sieges, famines, bom-
bardments, assassinations, etc. It was enough to stir Palesti-
nians, men and women, educated and illiterate, rural and ur-
ban, and draw them into the movement which is a mixture of
war, maneuvers, attack, waiting, etc. From the moment of her
birth, the Palestinian woman understood that the camps were
not the roots of Palestine, and the tents were no more than
passing phenomena.
The movement brought about undeniable objective changes
which advanced or retreated in various ideological orbits. The
gap between the sphere of the movement and its ideology was
sometimes reminiscent of Balzac who was himself reactionary
but wrote progressive novels. The Palestinian organizations
upheld many slogans, ranging from left to right. Women too
had a place in these slogans. Yet the problem here is not the
raising of slogans, but implementing them. When it came to
that, not all were progressive. Women were present in all the
organizations, but they did not all move out of their traditional
positions.
From the conservative camp, we often heard: Women are
here to liberate the homeland, not to emancipate themselves.
The positive aspect is clear in the first phrase in that women are
accepted as integral parts of the organization and as in-
dividual fighters in the struggle. But the negative aspect stands
out when the leader draws a line between human emancipation
and the liberation of the homeland, as if the latter were possi-
ble without the former. The real problem here lies in the
emancipation of the conservative leader from his traditional
ideology which recognizes only the traditional woman. The
researcher can also find another false motto: Women are half
of the society. Although those who follow such a notion do
recognize that women have a role, they reduce it to a quan-
titative role; they perceive women’s labor without perceiving
them; they recognize women only for utilitarian purposes.
The gap between the political consciousness of the militant
fighter for the homeland, and the ideological consciousness
which views the struggle only in terms of traditional standards,
is only one of the obstacles to women’s emancipation. There
are other objective hindrances that compound the first. Here
we see the contradiction anew, as well as the complexity of the
situation of the Palestinians. Being bound to the family may
seem a negative phenomenon according to sound logic, but it
seems to be positive in the Palestinian case, because the
absence of a homeland, together with the exile mentality and
the various atrocities experienced, often mean that the family
serves as a small homeland. Yet, this positive aspect itself is
equivocal. Correct revolutionary logic always tends to break
down all narrow relations. Facing this problem, the attitude of
the resistance has been equivocal and diffuse. The left has tried
to find theoretically progressive and unfettered formulae,
while the right has continued to emphasize tribal and com-
munal allegiances, supporting family ties and narrow in-
dividualism. In this way, it has contributed to the preservation
of traditional values so that women would remain reproductive
machines in spite of the fact that they have taken up arms.
Another contradiction is perceivable: The resistance has
tried to preserve the traditions of Palestine. But instead of up-
dating these traditions, it has time and time again tended to
consecrate the past. This leaves women as peasants plunged in
hard work day and night, while remaining traditional. Here I
would venture to say: While revolution in the true sense ap-
proaches the future, the unforeseeable and what is new, the - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 34
- تاريخ
- أغسطس ١٩٨٩
- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
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