Simona Sharoni’s innovative approach to the conflict in the Middle East stresses the relationship between gender and politics by illuminating the daily experiences of women in Israel and in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Among the issues explored are the connections between the violence of the conflict and the escalation of violence against women; the link between militarism and sexism; and the role of nationalism in building individual and collective identities. Sharoni also shows the impact of Intifada (the Palestinian uprising in December, 1987) on the Palestinian and Israeli women’s movements. While women’s coalitions such as these are critical subjects in and of themselves, the actions of marginalized women are rarely, if ever, given serious treatment in the study of international relations. With this book, Sharoni creates an aperture for the emergence of new perspectives and alternative methods in the development of a new vision in global politics and gender equality. The interdisciplinary scope of the book will make it valuable to scholars of political science, women’s studies, conflict resolution, and Middle East studies.

Women, Reconciliation and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict explores the most prominent instances of women’s political activism in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Israel, focussing primarily on the last decade. By taking account of the heterogeneous narrative identities existing in such a context, the author questions the effectiveness of the contributions of Palestinian and Israeli Jewish women activists towards a feasible renewal of the ‘peace process’, founded on mutual recognition and reconciliation. Based on feminist literature and field research, this book re-problematises the controversial liaison between ethno-national narratives, feminist backgrounds and women’s activism in Palestine/Israel. In detail, the most relevant salience of this study is the provision of an additional contribution to the recent debate on the process of making Palestinian and Israeli women activists more visible, and the importance of this process as one of the most meaningful ways to open up areas of enquiry around major prospects for the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tackling topical issues relating to alternative resolutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this book will be a valuable resource for both academics and activists with an interest in Middle East Politics, Gender Studies, and Conflict Resolution.

As the crisis in Israel does not show any signs of abating this remarkable collection, edited by an Israeli and a Palestinian scholar and with contributions by Palestinian and Israeli women, offers a vivid and harrowing picture of the conflict and of its impact on daily life, especially as it affects women's experiences that differ significantly from those of men. The (auto)biographical narratives in this volume focus on some of the most disturbing effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: a sense of dislocation that goes well beyond the geographical meaning of the word; it involves social, cultural, national and gender dislocation, including alienation from one's own home, family, community, and society. The accounts become even more poignant if seen against the backdrop of the roots of the conflict, the real or imaginary construct of a state to save and shelter particularly European Jews from the horrors of Nazism in parallel to the other side of the coin: Israel as a settler-colonial state responsible for the displacement of the Palestinian nation. Nahla Abdo is Professor of Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa. She has published extensively on women and the state in the Middle East with special focus on Palestinian women. She contributed to the establishment of the Women's Studies Institute at Birzeit University and has found the Gender Research Unit at the Women's Empowerment Project/Gaza Community Mental Health Program in Gaza. Ronit Lentin was born in Haifa prior to the establishment of the State of Israel and has lived in Ireland since 1969. She is a well known writer of fiction and non-fiction books and is course co-ordinator of the MPhil in Ethnic Studies at the Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin. She has published extensively on the genedered link between Israel and the Shoah, feminist research methodologies, Israeli and Palestinian women's peace activism, gender and racism in Ireland.

This book finds and explores a gender gap in political support in the Occupied Palestinian Territories whereby more women than men support Hamas, and more men than women support Fatah. The author then shows how economic interests and religion largely explain this gender gap, and explores how the Israeli occupation, the Israel-Palestine conflict, women’s rights, nationalism, and political repression impact Palestinian political support. She demonstrates how religion interacts with nationalist discourses, which in turn reinforce differential gender roles in Palestine. She also shows how patronage impacts political support in a gendered way, with Fatah’s ability to provide employment opportunities being strongly linked to their support base amongst men. The book concludes with an analysis of similar trends in the wider Middle East, with women across the region tending to prefer religious parties, compared with men. While making an important contribution to studies of Palestinian politics, this book also has implications for much broader issues, such as explorations of gender and political support beyond the Western context and understanding widespread female support for Islamist parties in the Middle East. It highlights the importance of situating explorations of political support within their wider context so as to understand how particularities of ideologies, economies and social structures might interact in a specific political system. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of gender studies, Middle East studies, and comparative politics. It will also appeal to those with a broader interest in Middle East politics and development.

"In this landmark book, Katz skillfully demonstrates the complex ways that gender ideology was inextricably linked to and reinforced the formation of both Palestinian Arab and Jewish Zionist national identities in the first half of the 20th century."--Sherna Berger Gluck, California State University "This is the only historical study in which the discourse of both Arabs and Jews is the centerpiece and that discourse is analyzed as undergirding the construction of nascent ideologies. . . . The text is a marvelous synthesis of the many conflicting narratives about Palestine in the years leading up to Israeli statehood."--Lisa Pollard, University of North Carolina, Wilmington "This book makes a significant contribution to Middle Eastern and women's history scholarship. It is unique to find the cases of these two nationalist movements treated simultaneously in this way, in this period. It is an intriguing interweaving of the gendered narratives."--Palmira Brummett, University of Tennessee Drawing on a variety of source materials, ranging from popular print media to poetry, film, political treatises, and biographies and autobiographies, Sheila Katz examines the ways in which gender operated in forming the political identities of Palestinian Arabs and Jewish Zionists. By exploring both gender definitions and their expressions in the everyday lives of two contesting peoples, she provides a highly nuanced understanding of how gender affects the discourse of conflict between two competing national movements. Through this balanced discussion of the histories of Jewish and Palestinian women during Palestine's formative years, Katz makes a significant contribution to scholarship in Middle Eastern and women's history. Working at the intersection of several disciplines, Katz provides a wide-ranging examination of the formation and expression of national identity and the changing gender roles that help shape it. She uses gender as a tool to examine the creation of boundaries and power relations among nations. Through a discussion employing the materials and methods of history, sociology, literary criticism, and anthropology, this study offers a unique examination of identity formation in Palestine during the first half of the 20th century and an analysis of both Palestinian and Jewish women in their respective national movements, illuminating gender as a linchpin of international conflict.

An examination of the violence perpetrated against women in politically conflicted or militarized areas.