“Palestinian women stepped out of their houses and onto the streets to protest in twelve cities for women’s rights and for an end to the occupation. They were clear that true liberation for women cannot take place without a liberated homeland.”
By Stella Swain
In 1933, the British High commissioner for Palestine, Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, noted that a “new and disquieting feature” of protests in Jerusalem was the prominent part taken by women, who had led demonstrations and joined in the fight back against the colonial police. It was a shock to him to see women standing firm, alongside Palestinian men, against the British Mandate and its policy of support for settler colonialism. Today, nearly a hundred years on, Palestinian women continue to resist.
The 8th March marks International Women’s Day and, whilst British corporations wish us a “Happy #IWD!”, we know that freedom from gendered oppression can never be complete without the liberation of all oppressed people, both here in Britain and across the world. That is why it is so important, this International Women’s Day, to stand with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality.
In Gaza, Palestinian women are again facing a complete blockade of humanitarian aid, even as they return to their homes that have been reduced to rubble by Israeli bombardments. Palestinian women in the West Bank are facing increasing settler and Israeli state violence, being thrown out of their homes and killed by Israeli forces. 116 Palestinians have been murdered in Gaza since the ceasefire agreement, many of them women and children.
Throughout their homeland, Palestinian women resist the sexual and gendered violence that is central to Israel’s project of colonial occupation every day, and they resist attempts to speak over them or reduce them to mere passive victims by telling their own stories, as the journalists, spokespeople and writers that have shown the world the horrors of the last two years.
As far back as the period of British Mandate, Palestinian women were crucial to the struggle against imperialism. Much as the Israeli military does today, the British Mandate enacted collective punishment on the people of Palestine, killing and injuring many women and children in their attempts to quash Palestinian liberation movements, even as they ignored or derided Palestinian women as lesser subjects.
The first Arab Women’s Congress was established in October 1929, bringing together over 200 Palestinian women in Jerusalem at its first meeting. It focused on two causes that these women understood as central to the rights of women across the Middle East: opposition to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and opposition to the colonisation of Palestine.
The members of the Arab Women’s Congress protested the British policies of police brutality and collective punishment against Palestinians, marching straight from their first meeting to the British High Commissioner’s house in Jerusalem to present him with their complaints. They did not only offer support to Palestinian men in the fight for civil rights: they were actively pushing the cause forwards.
Similarly, during the First Intifada, key parts of the uprising were led and sustained by women’s committees in local communities across Palestine. Women and girls led demonstrations, as well as forming and managing health clinics, co-operatives and schools. It is this reproductive labour, this sustaining of the community, that allows for the enduring sumud of the Palestinian people: the steadfast refusal to be driven from their land. We have seen this more than ever in the past two years, as Palestinians have been displaced, had their homes destroyed and families murdered by Israel, yet still continue, still determined to live in peace in their homeland.
In 2019, Palestinian women took to the streets in protests which were described as the founding of Tal’at, a specifically Palestinian feminist movement. Tal’at means ‘stepping out’ in Arabic: Palestinian women stepped out of their houses and onto the streets to protest in twelve cities for women’s rights and for an end to the occupation. They were clear that true liberation for women cannot take place without a liberated homeland, and that that liberation of the land will be incomplete until the liberation of every Palestinian, including women.
Palestinian women in the present day also organise more formally through groups like the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees. In response, UPWC faces intense repression from the Israeli state. In August 2022, the Israeli occupation raided, stole documents from and sealed the doorways into the offices of seven Palestinian organisations, including the UPWC. They left behind military orders ordering the closure of the offices. This targeting of Palestinian civil society highlights a key facet of Israel’s occupation: the attempt to stop Palestinians organising themselves. The UPWC “aims to improve the status and empowerment of Palestinian women to ensure true equality between men and women and social justice for all groups of society”. This work will continue no matter how many offices Israel barricades.
In 2023, already months into the genocide, Palestinian feminists including the UPWC released a call from Palestinian women. They called on people across the world to escalate their campaigns, to show them meaningful, material solidarity by taking action to bring down Israel’s regime of oppression. They called for aid to Gaza, to reject the forcible transfer of Palestinians from their homes, and for all countries to impose a comprehensive military-security embargo on Israel. Shamefully, the British government has utterly failed to answer this call. It is up to us to ensure they are held to account.
As the statement from Palestinian feminists reads: “This moment is the litmus test for humanity and the very meaning of justice and freedom. If not now, when?” In the honour of every Palestinian women killed, of every one still fighting, we must take action this International Women’s Day to end British complicity in Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide.
- Stella Swain is Youth and Student Campaigns Officer at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign– you can follow the PSC on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and Bluesky.
- EVENT – Women for Palestine: Louise Regan of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign will speak alongside Samia Al-Botmeh from Birzeit University online this Tuesday (March 11) at 18.30 UK Time. Info and register here.
