The state of Israel and the Palestinian nation are at a monumental juncture in their histories. Both have a chance to claim a new future but more than a quarter of a century of occupation has had significant social, political, economic, cultural, psychological and moral ramifications for Israeli and Palestinian men and women. Women and the Israeli Occupation analyses the impact of the occupier/occupied dichotomy on the lives of Palestinian, Israeli Palestinian, and Israeli Jewish women. The book argues that the Occupation has exposed internal conflicts, challenging social structures within all three societies, but has also reinforced existing loyalties as Palestinian and Jewish women have moved into public political action and worked together to end the Occupation. It suggests that although military occupation is not colonialism, there are many similarities in the Israeli/Palestinian case.

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.

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.

In 1949 Jerusalem, a young girl knows better than to ask about the sudden darkness in nearby Lifta. She carries the memory of a place once filled with the sounds of stone-cutting men and the sight of women in long, brightly embroidered dresses carrying fruit baskets on their heads. Sixty years later, she finally faces the answer to her own unspoken question. In 2009, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor who worked at the Nuremburg trials--and still dreams about the medical "experiment" photos she once filed into endless boxes--now dreams of sailing into Gaza with help and hope for her Palestinian "brothers and sisters." Reading like a memoir, this anthology combines 14 women's stories into a collage of unbearable loss, unspeakable horrors, incredible strength, and a belief in the unwavering power of truth. Seeing the Israeli occupation through each storyteller's eyes, our well-worn filters fall away, and we begin to see as our own these women's journeys and join them in their quest for justice and lasting peace.

In this updated edition with a new introduction by activist Anna Baltzer and forward by Israeli journalist Amira Hass, Jewish women including Baltzer, Starhawk, Hannah Mermelstein, Alice Rothchild, Sandra Butler, Emma Rosenthal and others offer personal narratives of the emerging Jewish perspective about the Israeli Occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. The women describe their own journeys along with stories of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals working for peace, justice and democracy in Israel/Palestine. REVIEWS: "Throughout history, women's stories have played a key role in drawing attention to social injustices and human rights violations. Indeed it is stories that have shaped the Jewish-American experience and collective memory... This anthology contains Jewish-American women's stories spanning generations, life experiences, and means of questioning the status quo and making room for more than one victim. Their bravery in speaking out against the injustices perpetuated by our own people (this time) is not the main story here--the legacy they will create is through their acts of witnessing the truth, swallowing its ramifications and exposing stories too often untold to Jews worldwide. If there is ever to be true, just peace and reconciliation in Israel/Palestine, it must start with embracing our traditions and stories enough to depart from them and teach new ones." -Emily W. Schaeffer, American-Israeli human rights lawyer/anti-occupation activist "Writing with personal modesty yet great humanity, these courageous women offer richly textured, revelatory accounts that will grip the reader's thoughts and feelings. All the selections are finely rendered, insightful, and endowed with a determined sense of justice and compassion." -Michael Parenti, author of Contrary Notions and God and His Demons "A moving collection of readings by Jewish women writers committed to the quest for justice and compassion in Palestine and Israel. They powerfully articulate, in their different ways, the axiom of our common humanity. It may have taken our whole life to reach that place (as one contributor put it), but those who are finally able to see, must stand up and advocate for sanity now, today." -Deb Reich, translator, Abu Ghosh, Israel/Palestine

This book summarizes the major sufferings of the Palestinian women who are living under the Israeli occupation, and whose basic rights are conitnuously violated by this occupation. It sheds the light on the women’s social, economic and health status, and how suffering is imposed and aggravated by the occupation; all in a concise, simple, academic and interactive style.

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.

A Jewish American's moving account of Palestinian daily life under the Israeli occupation.

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.