Final session: affirmation of democracy, gender agendas subsumed
In the final session of the model parliament in Gaza, the invited representatives of seven political parties (including a smaller Islamist group, the Islamic Jihad, but excluding Hamas) gave opening solidarity statements (Hammami and Johnson 1999: 335).
The parliament thus assumed the stature of a nationalist event. Almost every speaker affirmed the important role of women in the national struggle, as well as the right of free speech as fundamental to the nationalist project. Typically, women’s rights were linked to the modernist and nationalist project of statebuilding. Nationalism was also evoked as a justification for legal reform, including personal status laws: the laws in force were repeatedly described as ‘foreign’ and imposed by occupying powers. When it came to the specifics of reform, however, most of the political leaders were either vague or somewhat conservative in their focus and recommendations.By contrast, in the deliberations of the parliament itself, the final session successfully addressed a range of personal status issues. One of the women’s movement’s consistent demands — raising the marriage age to eighteen for both men and women passed easily, and, as the survey undertaken for this project shows, is a demand with popular support. Early marriage is increasingly seen as a problem in Palestinian society; with 25 per cent of females in a 1994 court record sample marrying at sixteen or under (Welchman 199g: 36). The prohibition on polygyny, on the other hand, passed by a narrow margin of forty-two for, thirty-two against, and five abstentions. A number of other useful recommendations, such as increasing women’s rights in child custody and divorce and protecting her rights to dower and inheritance, were also offered in the Gaza session (Al- Ayyam, 28 April 1998; Welchman 2000: 365-7).
None of these achievements was noted in the final declaration of the parliament, which emphasizes the nationalist and democratic character of the forum it had created, terming it a ‘democratic Palestinian platform’ and going on simply to list the areas of legislation reviewed before quoting in full the equality provisions of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration ends with the slogans: ‘We will continue our struggle for democracy. Yes to freedom of expression. No to the repression of thought. Our slogan is: Equality is our Path to Building and Progress.’ The statement thus avoided the questions that the women’s movement and other activists for legal reform would face in the next period: what is a viable platform for family law built on gender equality and what is the approach to, and role of, Islamic law in this initiative? Can gender equality be addressed, in President Arafat’s words, ‘without contradicting shari'a’?And, crucially, does either state or society offer allies and opportunities to meet the needs, interests and rights of Palestinian men, women and children in a new Palestinian family law?
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