Conclusions: strategies and issues for action

The experience of the period of transition to statehood in Palestinian society has been both rich and complicated, and perhaps particularly so in the area that we have scrutinized here: agendas, constraints and opportunities for legal reform of j7zαπ⅛-based family law.

Below, the researchers in this project have posed strategic questions and issues for discussion in an attempt to learn from this rich and complicated history, drawing in particular from the activism and ongoing strategic discussions and debates by the women’s movement and its allies, rather than issuing recom­mendations. Indeed, the researchers - and the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University - are positioned within the women’s movement and within the Palestinian national context and share in the dilemmas and insights of both.

It is also true that the more profound the strategic issue identified, the more difficult the strategic response. We are in fact bringing to bear the specificity of the Palestinian context on a range of issues that have been (and are) present in the Arab women’s movements throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The history and legacy of colonialism, the crises in the patriarchal order and gender roles, and the search for legitimation by weak, paternal and authoritarian states were enduring features of the landscape for much of the last century. As ^rFhompson (2000: 4) notes in an important new study of gender and citizenship in Syria and Lebanon in the Mandate era, gender became a ‘site of compromise and conflict’ among male actors in the civic order, the stability of which was often ensured by ‘gender bargains’ or ‘pacts’ at the expense of women’s rights.

We thus need to pay detailed attention to how these dynamics are constituted in the Palestinian case which offers particular constraints and opportunities, as a comparative perspective also shows that Islam and Islamic law are not ahistorical, but rather are shaped by specific political, social and economic circumstances. In our analysis of the recent transitional phase in Palestinian society, the authors jointly would like to draw attention to the follow ing strategic issues for discussion:

ι. I he conditions of Palestinian state formation offer many constraints, but also some opportunities for gender-aware legal reform of family law. The multi­dimensional strategy pursued by social movements during the transitional phase - national resistance, government advocacy and mobilization for protest — is an important framew^rork for maximizing opportunities in the next phase of state-building (where national resistance will remain in the search to advance national rights, for example of refugee populations and over land and water).

2. However, the weak and authoritarian nature of the emerging state and the clear search for legitimation through affirmation of its commitment to Islam and shari'a, among other factors, mean that a top-down strategy for legal reform (as originally in the case of Tunisia) is probably neither viable nor desirable.

3. Countering claims of its inauthenticity, the women’s movement should not only continue to press its national claims — based on women’s participation and sacrifice in the national struggle - but actively develop a counter-authen­ticity of Palestinian identity rooted in commitment to the needs and interests of the marginalized groups, including poor women, whose needs may differ from those of professional and middle-class women who dominate the women’s movement. We have noted, for example, the issue of maintenance, but there are a number of other issues (including nationalist issues such as prisoners, refugees and settlements) that differentially affect poor and middle-class women.

4. The latter point crucially addresses the opportunity to avoid a class-gender divide that has been an unfortunate feature in the history of Arab women’s movements, where the women’s movements, often despite themselves, have been isolated as elites, w^rhile the needs and interests of poor and working people have been taken as the ground for other movements, including Islamic populism. The past history of the Palestinian women’s movement and its links to women in various settings give it an opportunity to avoid this divide. In the context of legal reform, this means vigorous campaigns not only to listen to women in various settings, but to incorporate their needs and social and economic interests into legal reform frameworks. In a small way, this study attempts to do just this, by incorporating a study of the Hebron factory fire into its research, with the aim of publishing the study locally for advocacy for safe working conditions, rights and protection, as well as adequate compensa­tion within public and √wπ'α-based legal frameworks.

5. Recognizing the need for protection of Palestinian families in the specific context of the insecurity and conflict of the past fifty years and the absence of both physical and social protection is an important complement to the discourse of rights. Recognizing the importance families have played in national and individual survival also means developing legal reform in this context, perhaps with a dual emphasis on social protection through the institution of social security and strengthening democratic families.

6. The framework of the Palestinian national movement also offers greater oppor­tunities for links between the women’s movement and Islamic women’s groups and dialogue between secular and religious women (which are two different but related activities) as well as between the women’s movement and reform­minded elements of the religious establishment.

7. As the findings of various attitudinal surveys suggest, the majority of the population does support some type of legal reform, as long as it remains within the framework of shari'a. The meaning of this support requires much more discussion, and it is quite important to encourage a pluralism of views and defend the legitimacy of those who advocate legal reform towards civil law. However, given the radically different systems of family law that have developed under the rubric of shari’a, it is clearly useful to explore how to expand the principles of religious legal reasoning and legitimacy in the local context.

8. However, the specific principles of reform, while tending towards expanding women’s entitlements, are also marked by a host of conflicting values and interests. For instance, commitments to social equality and justice (framed in the nationalist sentiment of equality and rights) coexist with strong impulses towards preservation of the family and masculine authority within it. Similarly, contradictory attitudes exist towards the issue of legal authority. On the one hand, support is professed for the expansion of religious authority into wider arenas of life, which coexists with the preference that ‘the people’ vote to decide on what the letter of religious law should be.

The issues and strategic directions outlined above may also resonate in com­parative contexts, certainly across the Arab world, but perhaps in other states with systems presented as 5⅛π⅛-based law. In the Palestinian context, they are offered as a partial analysis for action built very much on the wisdom and experience of social movements in the Palestinian context, and particularly the women’s move­ment. In the next period of statehood, there will be the enactment of at least a temporary constitution, setting the broad framework for new legislation, and almost certainly a state-directed initiative under the aegis of the religious estab­lishment to unify personal status law between the West Bank and Gaza. The women’s movement and other social movements have developed strategies and initiatives to influence this process, requiring a widening of alliances and building and mobilizing constituencies. Contending voices within the religious establish­ment, as noted above, will be joined by a plurality of voices from women’s organizations, human rights and other non-government organizations, political parties and government institutions. This is necessarily a political process, and perhaps a lengthy one. However, without it, no series of projects, however useful, will be able to engage positively with the new, sweeping developments, conflicts and dynamics of Palestinian state and society for legal reform based both on gender equality and on the real interests and needs of the majority of women, men and families in Palestinian society.