November 17, 2024

By Maria Holt

Source: UN Women/Suleiman Hajji

When I started to research the crisis of violence against women in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, a sub-category of violence against women globally, I quickly discovered that it is neither realistic nor desirable to talk about the ‘Arab woman’ or the ‘Arab-Muslim woman’. In other words, it is best to avoid generalization. A more productive approach, I found, is through listening to the stories of individuals as a way of constructing a more nuanced – and infinitely more interesting – narrative. From research, including fieldwork in several MENA countries, a number of observations emerged. There is an argument to be made that, while women tend to be inhibited and disempowered by multiple forms of violence, they are increasingly entering the democratic space through their own agency and are resisting violence by organizing on their own behalf.

To balance, on one side, the grave impacts of gender-based violence on women and girls in the MENA region and, on the other, their efforts to combat violence, my research considered three elements. First, the gap between international human rights legislation to combat violence and the reality on the ground, both in terms of state law-making and social norms. Second, I examined how societies construct specific narratives to justify violence against women. Finally, I looked at the diverse forms of agency and activism practised by women, as individuals and in organizations, to claim their place as democratic actors. In my view, there has been significant progress but, as I will argue, the efforts of women and law-making at the local level is not enough; international solidarity and support are also essential.

Violence against women in war and peace

There is a huge difference between the ongoing struggle of women throughout the region to secure their right to live in safety from domestic violence in times of peace, and the terrible violences inflicted on women and girls during periods of armed conflict. A horrifying example of such cruelties is the current catastrophe (as I write) being endured by Palestinian women and girls in the Gaza Strip at the hands of a genocidal Israeli regime. In this short piece, I will assess the achievements of Palestinian women to claim their rights, set against a background of extreme violence and oppression.

The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women defines it as ‘any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life’ (1993). Despite the harsh conditions of life, women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been active, both locally and within an international human rights framework – indeed, have acted as a model for activists in the region – to improve the rights and protections for women and girls (Holt 2021).

But since October 2023, when the resistance group Hamas attacked military and civilian targets in southern Israel and the Israeli government responded by unleashing a devastating assault on the Gaza Strip, women in Gaza have been subjected myriad forms of gender-based violence. This has severely impaired their coping mechanisms and endangered family and social life. The violence has also raised serious questions about, on the one hand, women’s rights within a global human rights system; and, on the other, the double standards of western feminism.

The voices of Palestinian women

Women in Gaza ‘have born the brunt of this war. Our burdens have multiplied, and our sense of privacy has vanished (Nada, quoted in Humaid 2024). In the words of Noor: ‘After having lived in my house, with my trees and my garden, I live in a tent… with no means of life. I cannot sleep due to the barking of dogs all night long, alongside the psychological anxiety I live with’ (DRC 2024). Tagreed described how she had to give birth against a backdrop of forced displacement; her baby girl ‘was not doing well. No diapers, no milk, we had nothing. [Since we left Jabaliya Refugee Camp], she has had the flu, cold, and coughing… Medicines are not available. Her mouth is infected. Even clothes are not available. We scratch to find from here and there, and it’s not warm enough for her’ (quoted by Al-Haq 2024).

There are many examples of gender-based violence in Palestine. Women and girls face the ‘risk of being forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily detained by Israeli forces. They frequently endure strip searches, humiliation, and other forms of torture, along with cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment during their arrest and detention’ (Al-Haq 2024). But, while humanitarian assistance barely reaches any part of the population, women and girls ‘are further disadvantaged by gender inequality in access to supplies, services and resources’ (UN Women 2024). Famine and disease have been escalating, and ‘women and girls are expected to be hit the hardest, as women tend to… deprioritize their food intake when access to food is restricted’ (UN Women 2024).

Response of western feminists

Although overwhelming, it is not only the catastrophic violence of the Israeli assault that is notable. A young woman who lost her five-month pregnancy as a result of the conflict, remarked that ‘everyday, there’s news of Gazan women being killed or displaced’. She wondered ‘how the feminist movement will react. Will they do anything for the women of Gaza?’ (Safi 2024). This is a pertinent question, but it appears that the feminist movement, along with western policy makers and public opinion more generally, has been – to say the least – ambivalent about the women of Gaza. Women of the Global South have been critical of the scant attention given by western feminists to the plight of Palestinian women. One reason suggested for this is that Palestinian women do not neatly fit ‘into the narrow lens through which many western feminists… evaluate their compatibility with their own values and morals’. Instead, they are viewed as ‘too religious’ because ‘they do not conform to the Eurocentric definition of liberation’ (Akrimi 2024).

Some western feminists, while vociferously condemning Hamas’s attack on Israel, have failed to show much empathy or understanding of the long-standing suffering of Palestinian women. For example, when someone posts a message on X ‘supporting Palestine and acknowledging the decades-long suffering of Palestinian people under Israeli occupation and oppression, they are faced with the same loaded questions: “Do you support Hamas?” “Do you condemn the attacks on Israeli civilians?”’ (Aldossari 2023). In other words, Palestinian women are viewed as both ‘too religious’ and as supporters of terrorism.

As gender researcher Maryam Aldosarri writes: ‘I want to ask all those feminists in the west who are not only making posts, signing statements and writing columns unconditionally supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself  but also working tirelessly to “cancel” anybody who dares either to put a spotlight on decades of Palestinian suffering, or call for an end to Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza, which is killing and maiming hundreds of women and girls every single day: Is that what you call feminism?’ (2023).

Yasmine Akrimi argues that Gaza represents a tragic missed opportunity for western liberal feminism ‘to redeem itself by broadening its critique of the patriarchal, violent state apparatus accountable for femicides and the impunity of sexual violence in the Global North’. It is critical, she adds, for western feminists to form genuine alliances with Palestinian women, but also to contextualize the history of western feminism, ‘acknowledging how the feminist agenda has frequently been appropriated to justify wars, foreign interventions, and atrocities’ (2024).

Double standards

There is a serious credibility gap between the copious international documents designed to protect the human rights of women all over the world and the reality on the ground in Palestine. Western states and their feminist movements appear only too happy to leave Palestinian civilians, including women and children, to their fate. The situation has caused what has been described as a ‘moral crisis’. Israel has ‘inflicted gendered harm on an entire society and, since gender equality and women’s empowerment have become global markers of respect for human rights’, the west’s ‘refusal to even acknowledge, let alone eliminate this harm renders much of its human rights discourse problematic’ (Sadiki and Saleh 2024). I would suggest that it is worse than ‘problematic’. Palestinian women, in Gaza and elsewhere, have shown remarkable resilience in the face of decades of brutal occupation and dispossession. They are yet again being made into scapegoats for an international human rights framework that has lost all meaning and legitimacy.

Key words: gender-based violence; Palestinian women; Gaza Strip; western feminism; international human rights.

Professor Maria Holt is an Emeritus Fellow at the University of Westminster in London, where she taught Middle East Politics for almost 20 years. She specializes in gender, politics and violence in the Middle East and North Africa, with a particular emphasis on Palestine and Lebanon, and has published extensively. She is currently working on a project that examines the negative depictions of Arab and Muslim women in the western media.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Demos Tunisia-Democratic Sustainability Forum.