§ INASMUCH as state-sponsored reform of Islamic family law can be understood as part of nation- and state-building projects (Kandiyoti 1991), mobilizations by social groups for legal reform are also eminently political.

Moves for legal reform by non-state actors always come up against competing interests and are ultimately resolved by relations and operations of power. In the process, however, mobil- izational strategies involve attempts to define the interests and well-being of the collectivity in line with the particular vision of legal reform being put forth.

In the debates that have taken place over reform of Islamic family law in the West Bank and Gaza since the mid-1990s, such contending claims about the nature of Palestinian society - or the nature of Palestinian identity - clearly entered the political field. At the level of the public, powerful assertions were made by Islamist leaders about the Islamic nature of Palestinian society while counter-claims were put forth by secularist political factions about pluralism and democracy as core components of a collective identity that was pre-eminently nationalist (Hammami and Johnson 1999). As such, the debates broke open a long simmering conflict between a legacy of secular nationalism and a newer resistance identity⁷ that was nationalist but based in narrower ethnic and religious terms.

Within the particular reform strategies posed by different groups, identity claims-making was also apparent but often less consciously articulated. Underlying the varying positions were competing claims about the social attitudes towards shari'a based on radically different assessments of the nature of Palestinian society.³⁹ Those representing Islamist visions tended to pose Palestinian society as unani­mously committed to the current system of family law, and actually desiring the extension of shari'a into other areas of life.

This chapter attempts to assess critically these varying claims about Palestinian society’s attitudes towards reform of family law by juxtaposing them with the analysis of various polling data produced on the population in the West Bank and Gaza since 1995. Due to the peculiarities of the ‘peace process’, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have since the early 19gos become one of the most polled populations, if not in the world, certainly in the Middle East. While donor provision of resources for polling was linked to the political agenda of the Oslo Accords, the motivations and interests of Palestinian pollsters were (and are) much more varied. Thus, while the majority of polls have focused on measuring ‘public mood’ towards the peace process, changing political affiliations (in the narrow sense), or support for various types of political action, there has been a parallel but more covert interest by pollsters with the ‘social’. This interest in the social comes from the opening up of a new political terrain engendered by the state formation process in which NGOs, the women’s movement and to a lesser extent political organizations began to confront what seemed to be a post-conflict situ­ation where social priorities and needs could finally take precedence over the exigencies of national liberation. Equally, the range and variety of issues addressed through polls had to do with a society which had been denied data on itself (by the Israeli occupation) finally having the freedom to produce and access such knowledge.

Public opinion polling is scarce in the Middle East, where autocratic regimes tend to view the public, as such, as threatening. In contrast, the Palestinian context has seen little direct intervention by the political authorities to limit or censor polling activities - probably because in the context of political negotiations with Israel they actually helped the Palestinian Authority assert that there is a Palestinian public with ‘red lines’ on certain issues of national rights, which the Authority cannot afford to be seen to be crossing. However, although outcomes of polls are regularly reported in the local media, a media discourse on the ‘public’ that deploys polling data in the creation of a ‘public opinion’ remains overshadowed by a nationalist rhetorical political tradition which continues to speak of the ‘people’ and the nation. Thus, although polling data are in the public domain, there remains a limited public for them - save among academics and think-tank analysts.

It is this surprisingly innocuous nature of polling in the West Bank and Gaza that, I will argue, allows us to use its findings, if not at face value, at least as a window into stated values, commonsense notions and dispositions of the various sectors of Palestinian society not yet self-conscious of themselves as a ‘public’. Various positions have been put forth on the impact of the lack of free expression experienced under Israeli occupation on how the population responds to polls. At one extreme, Fouad Mughrabi (1996) suggests that continued fear and suspicion affects polling outcomes, while at the other, Nadir Izzat Said (1997) suggests that because of previous silencing, there is now a strong motivation to speak one’s opinion. This debate is more related to questions about the political authority, security sendees and political opposition than to those that deal with social issues and religious belief.

In the context of analysing social movements, James Jasper (1997: 285-6) makes the following argument:

Protestors’ efforts to mobilize people and resources depend, naturally enough, on what cultural understandings are out there to appeal to.

Public opinion, indeed, represents misleading aggregates of individuals’ beliefs, emotions and morals. At the same time, public opinion data are one of the few means available to try and draw a larger picture of the varied cultural meanings held in a society. The ability to call on shared cultural meanings is what makes mobilizations for social or political change possible - and thus public opinion data can be a useful tool in the process of claims-making.

This chapter begins by assessing what various surveys suggest about the role of religion in social and political life in Palestine. This is followed by a review of attitudes towards the roles and rights of women in the society as expressed through various survey data. Finally, the findings of a poll on attitudes towards family law reform undertaken by the project team in Palestine in spring 2000 will be reviewed.⁴⁰