Israeli Politics Herzog, Hanna. \"A

Israeli Politics

Herzog, Hanna. "A Space of their Own: Social-Civil Discourse among Palestinian-Israeli

Women in Peace Organizations." Social Politics. Discourses Among Palestinian- Israeli Women Vol. 6. Oxford University Press Fall 1999. 6: 344-369.

The social status of women in the Middle East is a topic of frequent media discussion and controversy. Hanna Herzog's article entitled "A Space of their Own: Social-Civil Discourse among Palestinian-Israeli Women in Peace Organizations," suggests that during the social fluidity of the Intifada, the position Israeli-Arabs women held in their society experienced a discernable shift. It caused them to rise to positions of power within advocacy and peace organizations, even though women did not gain fully equal status to Palestinian males in jointly run organizations. Herzog also examines the complex question of identity in general in the region. Arabs who are citizens of Israel often find themselves ostracized because of their ethnic and/or national status by Jewish Israelis and non-Israeli Palestinians. The article ask: how does an individual who is socially marginal within Israeli society because of nationality and marginal within their own society because of gender or nationality generate an effective voice within their community?

To better address her research question, Hanna Herzog strives to allow these women, so often silenced, to speak about their experiences and beliefs in narrative form. This personalized approach encompasses fifty in-depth interviews conducted in 1995 with Palestinian-Israeli women who were members of various peace or advocacy organizations. Herzog does not claim to be able to encompass the entire range of opinions of every Israeli-Palestinian woman but she strives to show that there is greater diversity of opinion and identity than may be initially suspected by outsiders. She frames her research with appropriate historical context to demonstrate its importance was well as acknowledges the difficulty of her task.

The identities of "Israeli Arabs" or the citizens of Israel of who are Arab extraction contains a paradox, as these citizens often also identify themselves as Palestinians, although they are citizens of Israel, unlike many other stateless Palestinians. They suffer considerable social, educational, and economic discrimination. But Arab women are often granted new access to education, by compulsion of the Israeli state, and women work to enable their families to survive, even if fathers and husbands tried to retain patriarchal control over female lives. This is why issues of female empowerment as well as nationalism were are critical parts of some peace group's missions.

Herzog suggests that the militaristic Israeli discourse privileged male as well as Jewish voices. However, the more spontaneous peace organizations generated by specific events during the struggle enabled women to enter, exercise authority, and set the terms of peace discourse in ways they were unable to before, and in marked contrast to other women in the Middle East. Middle Eastern nations with more formalized government structures often inhibited or limited female participation in politics, and only entertained reforms at an incremental pace.