Defending their Land, Protecting their Men: Palestinian Women's Popular Resistance after the Second Intifada

Abstract

Popular resistance has, following the recent uprisings in different Arab countries, received increased media and scholarly attention. Yet, the role that women and gender play in civil resistance movements remains understudied. In this article I analyse different forms, contexts and framings of Palestinian women's protest activism after 2000, arguing that their acts can potentially affect social and political change. Although so far unsuccessful in sustaining concrete material changes, women's embodied protest politics, by radically challenging conventional male-dominated political discourse and practice, might provide visionary outlines of a non-masculinist, non-militarist, yet proactive form of political culture in Palestine.