Women and the Israeli Occupation: The Politics of Change

The brief and dramatic war that initiated Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967 has become a source of long-term changes for Palestinians in the occupied territories, as well as for Israeli Palestinians and for Israeli Jews. Israel's victory created an occupier/occupied relationship which placed Israeli Jews in the position of power, and left the Palestinians of the occupied territories powerless. Within this dichotomy, the Palestinians of Israel have become and remained invisible. The inequality of the relationship, lasting more than half of Israel's life as a state, has had significant ramifications for men and women, Israeli and Palestinian. However, because of the difference in the daily experiences of men and women, how they have lived within the occupation has differed as well. Womenand the Israeli Occupationanalyzes the impact of this unbalanced relationship on the occupiers and the occupied, Palestinian and Jewish women.Tamar Mayer suggests that more than 26 years of military occupation has challenged social structures within all three societies, and exposed a set of previously unarticulated internal conflicts for each group. At the same time, the occupation has reinforced existing loyalties among and between Palestinian and Jewish women as they have moved into public political action and worked together to end the occupation. Through their joint activities, differences among the groups have surfaced.Women and the Israeli Occupationgoes on to examine the contention that the nature of the occupation resembles a colonial relationship, despite the obivous differences between military occupation and colonialism.