Islamist women redraw Palestinian debate on rights

NABLUS, West Bank -- With her textured handbag, heavy mascara, and a veil revealing only her eyes, Alaa Awdeh sounds like the ultimate feminist. Women, she believes, should have equal rights in Palestinian society, especially the right to die in the armed struggle against Israel.

''That's what I am looking for, to sacrifice my life," said Awdeh, 18, an Islamic studies major at Al Najah University in Nablus and enthusiastic member of the youth wing of Hamas, the radical Islamic group.

Islamic women like Awdeh have redrawn the debate over women's rights in Palestinian society. In the past, the fight was between secular feminists and men who wanted to protect their monopoly on political and social power. Now the debate is between Western-style feminists and religious women who want to share political power without changing the traditional role of women in the family.

This month's campaign for the Palestinian legislative election set for Wednesday has thrust that debate into the open.

Hamas has attracted legions of women followers of Islam, giving them control over Hamas-funded educational and job-training programs, and encouraging them to finish school and attend university, but at the same time restricting their legal rights to those laid out in the Koran.

Hamas candidate Muna Mansour, 44, is a former high school physics teacher whose husband, a Hamas founder, was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike in 2002 against Hamas militants considered responsible for attacks against Israel. She considers herself a modern woman, supporting her family and campaigning for office, but also a devout Muslim for whom the Koran can ultimately resolve any policy question.

''We are Muslims," Mansour said. ''If others try to pass a law which contradicts Islam, we say Islam is the solution."

For instance, Mansour said the Koran says that girls should go to school and pursue careers, but also that married people who commit adultery should be stoned to death, an incongruous blend of seemingly contrasting values.

Palestinian support for religious factions, in particular Hamas, has exploded over the last 10 years, frustrating secular women who have worked in politics for decades and who now find many young women turning to a starkly different Islamic vision of empowerment and equality.

Secular Palestinian women have fought for legal parity with men, and have also worked with Israeli women to further the peace process. Dozens of women are running for the legislature as candidates for the secular Fatah party and for several independent, secular coalitions.

''We don't want religion to dominate our life," said Hania al-Bitar, director of a secular Palestinian group that helps youths. Bitar, 38, is running for the Palestinian legislature on a secular slate called ''The Third Way."

The Islamists' growing popularity is a bitter pill for secular activists like Bitar, who is also committed to a democratic system, even if it brings results she abhors.

''Maybe I won't be happy in a system dominated by Hamas, but I have to accept the results of the election and work within the system to change it," Bitar said.

Khalil Shikaki, a political scientist considered the most reliable pollster of Palestinian public opinion, said that the Palestinian struggle against Israel had yielded contradictory effects on Palestinian society.

On the one hand, he said, Palestinian society evolved to allow women a degree of political equality rare in the Arab world, because everyone -- women and children as well as men -- was drafted into the political and military struggle against Israel.

At the same time, the realities of occupation and violence also encouraged society to revert to its most traditional social networks: the family, the tribe, and mosque.

''You need more conservative social values to survive under occupation," Shikaki said. ''You don't have a government to protect your rights."

After the 1993 Oslo Accords, Fatah won control of the new Palestinian Authority, presiding over a period of relative calm in the conflict with Israel until violence erupted anew in 2000. Critics charge that instead of strengthening their support base during the lull, Fatah leaders and other intellectuals disconnected from the public.

As a result, the original secular leaders of the Palestinian nationalist movement left the field open for Hamas, with its network of mosques and social-services groups to make deep inroads in Palestinian society.

Now, the female Hamas candidates say they have inherited the mantle of women's rights.

''It is your role to fight corruption, make reform, and avenge humiliation, like the women who took revenge on the streets of Tel Aviv, Netanya, and Jerusalem," university professor Mariam Saleh, a Hamas candidate, exhorted an all-women Hamas rally in Nablus, a week before the Palestinian vote, in an apparent reference to female Palestinian suicide bombers in those cities.

In a fiery speech, Saleh said women were more pivotal than men because women serve as doctors, scientists, holy warriors, and the heads of families whose men are in Israeli prisons.

About 400 women, most of them professionals, attended the rally. Awdeh, the college student who yearns for a role in Hamas's military wing, marched through the convention hall with a few dozen members of the women's youth wing.

They all wore white headscarves and lime-green vests emblazoned with a pair of fists and the slogan ''One hand builds, the other hand fights."

''If they ask me to be a martyrdom fighter, I will not hesitate. I will respect the call of God," Awdeh said before a more senior Hamas member silenced her.

''Sorry for the misunderstanding," said school administrator Hutam Umm Mohammed Salameh, 41. ''Some of our young people do not know how to express themselves, and give a distorted view of what we are about."

Some issues unite women candidates across the secular-religious divide. Every party running in the Palestinian elections has made women's issues a priority on their platform, promising to improve educational and job opportunities for women.

Election rules require about 20 percent of the candidates for district seats to be women, and the system is designed to give women at least 10 percent of the 132 seats in the Palestinian legislature.

But the women from Fatah, Third Way, and other secular parties will have to bridge a major cultural divide to cooperate in government and social services with the religious women from Hamas.

''Islam is the solution for all our problems in life," said Saleh, who teaches religion at Al Quds University in Jerusalem.

With Hamas poised to take a third or more of the seats in the Palestinian legislature, according to polls, Palestinian politicians will have to address the Islamic agenda for women's rights.

Independent Islamists like Majda Fadda, a recently elected member of the Nablus city council, are likely to serve as the intermediaries between the secular and religious female factions in the next Palestinian government.

Fadda, a 45-year-old pharmacist who speaks Arabic, Russian, and some English, never joined Hamas, although she works closely with its members and shares many of their views.

Palestinians, Fadda said, need better schools, more jobs, and a reliable water supply for starters -- issues that can be resolved only if leaders cooperate across party lines and work with Israelis despite Hamas's official platform, which calls for the destruction of Israel.

''If it is in the people's interests and provides services, there is no problem to deal with Israelis or anybody," Fadda said.