Palestinian feminism: Analytics, praxes and decolonial futures

Abstract

This article theorizes Palestinian feminism as an analytical lens and a political project. Grounded in histories and ongoing organizing for anticolonial liberation, it outlines contemporary challenges and possibilities for Palestinian feminist organizing in the homeland and the shataat. Further, it centers Palestine as a space for enacting feminist praxis more broadly, and calls on feminist scholars and activists to join the struggle for Palestinian liberation.

On Love, the Palestinian Way: Kinship, Care and Abolition in Palestinian Feminist Praxis

“…Following Orisanmi Burton, I theorize Palestinian women's letter writing as "an ethnographic and political modality" (2021: 2) that is part of a broader repertoire of Palestinian feminist praxis and the living archive of Palestinian rebellion deployed to survive within and struggle against racial gendered colonial violence and erasure. Amidst the ongoing oppression Palestinian women face as a result of the intersections of settler colonial and patriarchal violence (Ihmoud 2022), relations of kinship and care constitute an underexplored and undertheorized aspect of Palestinian feminist world-making.…”

“…There is also, in this letter, an implicit critique of hegemonic androcentric and patriarchal notions of Palestinian national liberation, which has elevated men as primary revolutionary actors and peripheralized women's leadership, including revolutionary praxis in the intimate space of the home. Like their Arab sisters and other Indigenous communities who have resisted colonialism, Palestinian women have always resisted oppression and dehumanization, being primary agents of change and revolution (Ihmoud 2022).…”

“…In reactivating the call to recognize Palestine as a feminist issue, a call issued by a long tradition of Palestinian feminist movements and a citation of a transnational archive of Palestinian feminist rebellion (Ihmoud 2022), the PFC both highlights the disproportionate violence and oppression that Palestinian women face in the context of Zionist colonialism, and calls for open feminist solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle. 10 This is a vision guided by the PFC's love for the Palestinian homeland, and its values of love as a methodology for anti-colonial resistance and liberation.…”

When Feminism Redefines National Liberation: How Tal’at Movement brought Feminism to the Core of the Palestinian National Liberation Struggle

“…The recognition that gender-based violence is intrinsically linked to the process of dispossession of land, settler colonialism, and neoliberal imperialism is a recurrent frame in their discourse. The Palestinian and more in general Indigenous scholarship has recurrently linked the land to Indigenous women's bodies, Nada Elia (2017) and Nadine Naber (2011Naber ( , 2017, as well as early career scholars such as Sarah Ihmoud (2019Ihmoud ( , 2022. Their work specifically focuses on the links between Palestinian women's bodies, the land, and femicide.…”

Trans Women and/in Sport: Exploring Sport Feminisms to Understand Exclusions

“…Through this focus on post-colonial feminist, black feminist and queer of color critique, the discussions engage with de-colonial feminism. However, de-colonial feminism is larger than these three approaches; it comprises of several feminisms, including indigenous feminism (Tlostanova et al, 2019), Palestinian feminism (Ihmoud, 2022), and Islamic feminism (Mincheva ,2023).…”