Human rights and Western agendas

The women’s movement had assumed that the use of international frameworks of human rights and United Nations conventions as a source of argument would be acceptable in nationalist discourse, given the long history of Palestinian claims that are framed in its resolutions and language.

In the booklet and subsequent public attacks, the main focus of the Islamists was not an issue in personal status law per se, but rather proposals regarding reform of the criminal code which touched on a set of issues concerning control of sexuality, morality and the family: the issue of zina (adultery). The parliament’s recommendation that adultery not be considered a crime, but simply grounds for divorce, was presented by the Islamists as actively condoning immoral behaviour and the moral breakdown of society, a breakdown such as already exists in the West.

Islamist views on the parliament were not entirely uniform, in particular among the younger female constituency. For example, a leader of the Islamist Al- Khansa Society for Women made a relatively dissident statement in the local press (Al-Ayyam, 14 March 1998) stating that she was not against the parliament in principle, but resented the marginalization of Islamist women within it. Islamic women’s organizations, which also were founded in the post-Oslo period as an alternative to the secular women’s movement, took up the point of responding to the ‘authentic’ needs of society in an effective way.