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 Ha d aid Ta e, 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 is justified with the control of Abu Mazen and Hamas there is no very familiar colonial trope of saving brown freedom of the press, Christians are women (and minorities from brown men. 57 persecuted and radical Islam is the sole Yet such rule raises the question of ruling religion. Human rights, women’s rights demographic anxieties; what will happen in particular, are trampled. 55 when Israel adds millions of Palestinians to its populace? In the next section I outline the The solution to the oppression of women and Sovereignty discourse’s Gileadian answer. discriminated groups, at least in Palestine, is the application of Israeli sovereignty that will Arab women s modern liberation as a save them from the trials of Arab self-rule. demographic strategy Without granting Palestinians equal citizenship in the Israeli state, as sovereignty As mentioned, the Zionist left has also been according to the Ribonut framework rests concerned about Palestinian demography. only with the Jewish People, a benevolent Not putting forward an alternative cultural or Israeli rule will be an improvement for civic definition for what a Jewish state means Palestinians and will deliver them from their in a democratic context, much of the Zionist
______APSA MENA Politics Section: MENA Politics Newsletter | Volume 3, Issue 2, Fall 2020 19 left still relies on a racialized understanding opportunities for Palestinian women and of Judaism, where a Jewish state’s definition greater reproductive choice is simply an is simply a state with a Jewish demographic intrinsic concern with women’s equality and majority. The two-state solution aims to decision making autonomy, he argues that facilitate such a majority while maintaining this is a positive trend because, he writes, it Israeli democracy. The Sovereignty discourse works in our favor by our he means a is in dialogue with the left’s preoccupation Jewish demographic majority). If the choice with demography and attempts to alleviate of the Palestinian woman to have fewer the concern that an Israeli annexation of the children is a cause for optimism for Ettinger, West Bank will bring about a Palestinian the opposite in the Jewish woman is also a demographic majority. The left’s worry is cause for rejoicing. For him, demography baseless, this discourse asserts, because of works in our favor because today the trend the celebrated modernity of the Palestinian for Arab women, age 20-30, is in the direction woman that has led to her declining fertility. of less than three births on average while for Jewish women, the trend points to more than The most well-known and cited right wing three births on average. 60 authority on this subject is former ambassador and demographer Yoram Another contributor, David P. Goldman, is the Ettinger. His view, widely heralded by author of a book titled Why Civilizations Die sovereignty advocates, is that there has been (and Why Islam is Dying, Too). Similarly to an overcount of the Palestinian population in Ettinger, he sees modernity as heralding the West Bank. Furthermore, as he writes in Muslim and Arab demographic decline the pages of the Sovereignty journal, The broadly, and as a result, the ascendance of present situation is that there is a Jewish Israel’s superiority. It is difficult to measure majority of sixty six percent in the area, the impact of modernity, but one failsafe including Judea and Samaria and within the gauge of the social transformation now Green Line. This majority will become a underway is the sudden demographic demographic tailwind, stemming from the transition underway in most of the countries surge in Jewish fertility, especially among of the regions. Arab, Turkish and Persian secular Jews, compared with the collapse of birth rates are falling from pre-modern to Muslim fertility, stemming from various post-modern levels, and the result is a aspects of modernization. 58 He attributes the sudden aging of their populations. 61 The erosion of Palestinian fertility to the liberation of women from the restrictions exposure of Arab women to Western and limitations of traditional society is a education and culture. Applauding the positive development, as per the author, but modern liberation of these women, he again not due to an intrinsic concern with explains that, UNRWA has broadened the women’s rights, but rather because it causes, infrastructure of local colleges and the Arab in the view of the author, Muslim woman takes advantage of these educational civilizational decline. Writing about the opportunities. She marries much later and, broader Middle East, he notes that women in consistent with the Western attitude; the region now reject the constraints of Palestinian women have become the second Muslim family life as soon as they obtain a most frequent users of birth control methods high school education. The shock of sudden in the Arab world (after Moroccan passage from traditional society into the women . 59 Lest we think that the reason for modern world has produced the fastest-ever celebrating expanded educational fall in fertility rates in the Muslim world. Yet
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Israel, he delightedly notes, is not subject to tomorrow morning out of Ben Gurion Airport such a decline, in fact, he states, Israeli if only they were allowed to do so. Israel Jewish fertility rate [is] 3.11 vs. 2.91 for West should help these Palestinian emigrate and Bank and Samaria Arabs. Furthermore, In yet currently it makes it difficult for them to October 2015, Israel's Jewish fertility rate is do so. He points that anyone who reads higher than in any Arab country, other than public opinion polls and comes into contact Yemen, Iraq and Jordan. So, while Arab and with the Arabs of Judea and Samaria knows Muslim women’s educational and material that there is a very large percentage who advancement has utility as it decreases their would consider leaving. 62 A minority of the reproduction rate, the opposite is true of Sovereignty journal contributors openly Israeli women. As he states, Israel’s robust discusses, like Ettinger, Palestinian fertility profile…is a symptom: Israel is the population control. For example, MK Bezalel only industrial country in the world to Smotrich, until recently Israel’s Minister of reproduce at above the replacement rate of Transportation, argues that Palestinians who 2.1 live births per female, and by a want collective self-determination should be substantial margin. It is a gauge of Israel’s moved to another country with the help of long-term social and economic viability in Israel. Other contributors simply suggest contrast to the civilizational decline around incentivizing vast numbers of Palestinians to it. Therefore, in this demographic battle in emigrate in order to eliminate the which women’s wombs are the gauge of demographic threat they pose.63 civilizational ascendance or decline, time is on Israel’s side, he triumphantly asserts. Conclusion: implications for the future
The falling fertility rate among Palestinian The demographic discourse I presented in women allows advocates of Israeli this paper, although superficially couched in sovereignty to sidestep the more explicit a language of women’s empowerment, bodes engagement with active efforts toward ethnic ominously for any possibility of equal demographic reduction. Yet it is clear that the ethnonational and gendered citizenship logic of demographic control of minorities under Israeli sovereignty. What if in a post- through policies aimed at reducing their annexation future Palestinian women’s numbers haunts the Sovereignty Movement’s fertility rate increases? discourse. Ettinger suggests that the governments of Israel cannot encourage Arab Annexation advocates already provide us emigration not because it is tantamount to with clues as to their potential response. ethnic cleansing, but rather because it is, as Smotrich, for instance, recently participated he phrases it, not exactly politically correct, in a news conference in the Negev Desert to put it politely. Yet he discusses Israeli together with Naftali Bennett, former unimplemented initiatives up until 1977 Education Minister and former Defense directed at moving a number of large Arab Minister, and Ayelet Shaked, former Justice families. Not forcefully, of course, but to help Minister.64 The purpose of the conference them move to South America, Western was to target the Palestinian Bedouins in the Europe and other places. These efforts, he Negev, who are already citizens of Israel, and says, should be encouraged. He points to the highlight the danger in their high population fact that, at least according to his reading, growth. Seeing citizenship through the lens of there are a number of clans in Samaria of the fertility rate, when Palestinian women, as significant size that would be willing to leave opposed to Jewish women, have too many
______APSA MENA Politics Section: MENA Politics Newsletter | Volume 3, Issue 2, Fall 2020 21 children, they reconstitute themselves as a GENDER AND THE LAW IN THE ARAB WORLD: threat to the state. Smotrich stated that the TEXT, PRETEXT, AND CITIZENSHIP Bedouins double their population size every 12 years and this is something that By Catherine Warrick must be dealt with. He called this trend a bomb, which, if we do not dismantle its The body of scholarship on gender and apparatus, will detonate on us even more politics is rich and wide-ranging, as the powerfully. He argued that if Israel makes essays in this issue of the newsletter Bedouins more Westernized, their fertility demonstrate, and it has been particularly rate will decline. fruitful in the interrelation of gender issues
and the law. The study of law has helped to While he sees himself as an already so-called identify and delineate the role of gender in modern subject who wants to Westernize many arenas of politics, from executive and Palestinian Bedouin women, it is noteworthy legislative power to the role of parties, that Smotrich himself has seven children. The electoral campaigns, and public opinion. founders of the Sovereignty journal, Nadia Conversely, scholars of gender have made Matar and Yehudit Katzover, each has six and significant contributions to the five children respectively. Smotrich and his understanding of law and politics, fellow annexationists argue that they want to particularly in the study of the boundaries empower the Palestinian woman, who with and experiences of citizenship, contestation education and employment opportunities about tradition, and the role of religion in the will have greater reproductive choice. In the state. Bedouin context, she will be able to resist polygamy and to reduce the number of This scholarship has perhaps been most children she is expected to have. Yet the visible in fostering the inclusion of gender as Jewish woman is subject to a different logic in an analytical category in mainstream politics. which having more choice is decoupled Writers on gender and citizenship in the from lower fertility rates. The modernized 1980s and 1990s firmly established gender Palestinian woman is expected to organically as an important issue in the analysis of state and autonomously choose fewer children, power to define its relationships with society; while the modern Jewish woman is expected as Suad Joseph pointed out, the to choose the opposite. That this so-called concept of citizenship has been gendered choice is their obsessive concern, and that from its origins in the Middle East, as they so starkly center it on the desirability of elsewhere.65 Citizenship, both in the sense of Jewish fertility and the undesirability of nationality and in terms of political Palestinian fertility should alert us to the participation, was a chief focus of scholarship profound racism of these new forms of in this era, producing foundational studies on appropriation of the feminist language of women’s movements, informal politics, women’s choice. Studying the intersections nationalism, and public opinion.66 More of racial and gendered concerns in Israel’s recent work on the nexus of gender and law annexation discourse helps us better grasp in the past two decades has built on this the forms of hierarchical citizenship regimes scholarship, expanding our analyses of both the sovereignty project seeks to cement. the politics of gender and the complexities of
citizenship beyond the original issues of Lihi Ben Shitrit, University of Georgia, women as subjects of the law. Studies of [email protected]
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refugees. The number of states in each category is indicated 62 Amba ador (re .) Yoram E inger Demograph ork in below the migrant size categories. o r fa or, Ribonut 2(2014): 11. 39 Rana H eini, Go Anno nce Pri ilege for Children 63 http://ribonut.co.il/BlogPostID.aspx?BlogPostId=117&lang of Jordanian Women Married to Foreigners, Jordan Vista, =1; see al o Dr. Sherman H mani arian Sol ion: An November 9, 2014. interview with Dr. Martin Sherman, Director, Israel Institute