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16 Lack of a Final Solution to Palestine Leads to Bizarre Policies, Like

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16 Lack of a Final Solution to Palestine Leads to Bizarre Policies, Like 16 lack of a final solution to Palestine leads to GILEAD IN PALESTINE bizarre policies, like this women’s one.”49 By Lihi Ben Shitrit Implications In her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, These findings suggest that states with large which has received renewed attention migrant populations per capita and sensitive following its adaptation to a television series demographic politics are less likely to by the same name, Margaret Atwood tells of remove DTW from their nationality laws. In the dystopic Republic of Gilead, a state and addition, one way these states can buffer society single-mindedly obsessed with the themselves from international and domestic management and control of women’s fertility. pressures for such nationality law reform is While the description of Gilead was inspired by securitizing the reform. This securitization by historical examples of policies designed to may be particularly effective in the Arab control women’s bodies,50 today’s “Gileads” world, where even more democratic actors, often take on more subtle forms. In this piece like U.S., EU, and UN officials, tend to I discuss the ways in which contemporary privilege stability over political and social Israeli discussions of annexation of the West reforms in their policy agendas. Bank revolve around an explicit and implicit preoccupation with the “Palestinian woman” In addition, these findings highlight the seen strictly through her reproductive intersection of women’s and migrant’s rights functions. in nationality laws as well as broader citizenship debates. In doing so, it makes two The essay is based on discourse analysis of broad contributions. Theoretically, this the publications from 2013 to 2020 of the research suggests that more attention should Sovereignty Movement (Ribonut in Hebrew) be devoted to understanding the intersection – the most vocal and influential group of women and migrants in state policies and pushing the annexation agenda. It seeks to in the persistence of discrimination toward identify the contours of the sovereignty both groups. For practitioners, this insight discourse as it grapples with the question of suggests that an effort to remove DTW in Palestinian demography. I argue that nationality conferral likely requires although more subtle than that of the simultaneous efforts to address or mitigate nightmarish Gilead, and at times even framed the demographic politics in which these as a “feminist” concern for Palestinian reforms are entangled. Overall, migration is women’s rights and opportunities, this an important factor to consider and study anxious fixation on Palestinian fertility, by further when evaluating persistent barriers advocates of Israeli sovereignty in the West to women’s nationality rights. Bank, has equally pernicious undertones. As in Gilead, women’s hierarchized citizenship is Lillian Frost, Virginia Tech, [email protected] linked to their varied (desired or undesired) reproductive capacities.51 Palestinian women’s incorporation into Israel – following the desired annexation of the West Bank – is a question that rests solely on their diminished threat of producing ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____ APSA MENA Politics Section: MENA Politics Newsletter | Volume 3, Issue 2, Fall 2020 17 demographically undesirable (i.e. though the movement is lead primarily by Palestinian) children. members of the Jewish settler movement, its supporting interlocutors and participants An implied but less discussed mirror image of encompass the highest echelons of Israeli the Palestinian woman in this Israeli Gilead is politics. For example, in the period from the Jewish woman whose contribution to the November 2013 to May 2018, the movement project of annexation is her enhanced published ten issues of its journal Ribonut, or fertility. Ethnic demographic competition is Sovereignty. Of 168 persons who appear in not new or unique to the context of the publications as contributors, Israel/Palestine. Moreover, it is not only the interviewees, or thought authorities, 39 Israeli right that has been concerned with persons were at the time of the publication, Palestinian demography. The Zionist left has or are currently, Members of Knesset (Israeli advocated for a two-state solution with the Parliament). Of these, 25 held government argument that in its absence, Palestinians will cabinet positions as ministers or deputy become a demographic majority that will ministers. The largest representation was of overtake Jews between the Jordan River and MKs from the ruling coalition – Likud and the Mediterranean. Yet what makes the settler parties like the Jewish Home - but the annexationist iteration of the phenomenon list also included a few MKs from ultra- more elusive and thus more effective is its Orthodox parties, and even one from each of cooptation of the feminist language of the so-called centrist Kulanu and Blue and “women’s rights” and women’s choice and White parties. Some of the high profile autonomy. The implications of the government participants in the journal were demographic discourse identified here Israel Katz, currently the finance minister; remain pertinent to future research as well as Naftali Bennett, who until recently was feminist activism in the context of defense minister and before that, education Israel/Palestine. Even as public attention to minister; Yuli Edelstein, currently the the question of annexation is experiencing a minister of health; Yariv Levin, currently the momentary lull due to the COVID-19 speaker of the Knesset; Ayelet Shaked, who pandemic, the political forces that advocate until recently was Israel’s justice minister; for the application of Israeli sovereignty in Yoaz Hendel, currently the minister of the West Bank are continuing to push their communications; and many other high office agenda. It is imperative to continue and holders. Additional contributors included deepen the study of these forces in order to elected officials in settlements, academic clearly grasp what exactly is meant by Israeli experts affiliated with universities or think sovereignty in this case. tanks, and well-known journalists and media personalities. Demography and the Sovereignty Movement In the 12 volumes of Sovereignty published to date (2020), demography or demographics The preoccupation with Palestinian women come up 109 times. In the following, I and their reproductive capacity is a highlight some of the themes surrounding consistent theme in the publications of the this discourse on demography as it concerns Sovereignty Movement, the most vocal itself with the “Palestinian woman.” network lobbying for the application of Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. As Some contributors to the pages of the Meirav Jones and I show elsewhere,52 even Sovereignty journal express their deep ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____ APSA MENA Politics Section: MENA Politics Newsletter | Volume 3, Issue 2, Fall 2020 18 concern with “women’s rights” in Palestine. oppression. Another article explains this by This is perplexing when coming from stating that “a Palestinian state is the intellectuals, activists, and politicians who farthest thing from human rights that it is have done little to promote policies possible to imagine.” The left’s false tying of advancing Palestinian women’s rights. The Palestinian statehood to issues of human plight of Palestinian women is framed within rights is merely a misleading marketing ploy, the greater plight of the Muslim and Arab the author argues. He writes, “dear people of woman, oppressed by her society and the Left…Is there really not even a little culture. This lowly state of Muslim, Arab, and mercy in your hearts for the poor Palestinian women alongside other Palestinians, that you relegate them to a life minorities is contrasted with their status in under such a regime? What - aren’t they Israel, which is portrayed as a beacon of human beings? What have they done to you, respect for rights. As one article puts it, for leftists, that you work so diligently to impose example, “Europe is…aware of the upon them a life of oppression and persecution faced by various minorities in maltreatment?...And we have still not spoken the Muslim world and sees Israel as a haven of the oppression of women and the beating for them.” It continues to highlight the of women, or about child slavery and “[p]ersecution of Christians, of women, of exploitation, about unbridled religious children and other minorities.”53 Another coercion, about the destruction of any contributor asserts, “There is apartheid monument that is not connected to their among Arabs; among the Arabs there is religion, or about trampling on the honor of oppression of women and minorities; the the unfortunate and on and on…The Right’s Arabs do not honor human rights, they have plan of application of Israeli Sovereignty, no democracy…[Yet] we have multiple races with all of its difficulties and limitations, on here and more freedom of religion and the contrary, is the one that entails both the democracy than the US.”54 All these ills of rights of the fathers and human rights.”56 discrimination and persecution, according to this discourse, are epitomized in the state of To “save” Palestinian women, minorities, and affairs under Palestinian control. As one Palestinians in general from their writer explains, “In the areas under the civil predicament, Israeli rule
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