Birthing the Nation california series in public anthropology The California Series in Public Anthropology emphasizes the anthropologist’s role as an engaged intellectual. It continues anthro- pology’s commitment to being an ethnographic witness, to describ- ing, in human terms, how life is lived beyond the borders of many readers’ experiences. But it also adds a commitment, through ethnography, to reframing the terms of public debate—transform- ing received, accepted understandings of social issues with new insights, new framings. Series Editor: Robert Borofsky (Hawaii Pacific University) Contributing Editors: Philippe Bourgois (UC San Francisco), Paul Farmer (Partners in Health), Rayna Rapp (New York University), and Nancy Scheper-Hughes (UC Berkeley) University of California Press Editor: Naomi Schneider 1. Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death, by Margaret Lock 2. Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel, by Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh Birthing the Nation Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh with a Foreword by Hanan Ashrawi UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley . Los Angeles . London University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England Grateful acknowledgment is made for reuse of material from previously published articles by the author: “New Reproductive Rights and Wrongs” in Contraception across Cultures: Technologies, Choices, Constraints, edited by Andrew Russell, Elisa Sobo, and Mary Thompson (Oxford: Berg Press, 2000), and “Conceiving Difference: Planning Families for the Palestinian Nation,” Critical Public Health 7, nos. 3– 4 (1997): 64–79. © 2002 by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kanaaneh, Rhoda Ann. Birthing the nation : strategies of Palestinian women in Israel / Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh ; with a foreword by Hanan Ashrawi. p. cm. — (California series in public anthropology ; 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-520-22379-9 (Cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 0-520-22944-4 (Paper : alk. paper) 1. Birth control—Israel. 2. Women, Palestinian Arab—Israel—Social conditions. I. Title. II. Series. hq766.5.i75 k363 2002 363.9Ј6Ј095694—dc21 2002001244 Manufactured in the United States of America 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 10987654321 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39 0.48– 1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper) ᭺ϱ To my mother, Dolores Agnes Kanaaneh, and my father, Hatim Abdul-Kader Kanaaneh, with love Contents List of Illustrations ix Foreword by Hanan Ashrawi xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction: Placing 1 1. Babies and Boundaries 23 2. Luxurious Necessities 81 3. Fertile Differences 104 4. Modernizing the Body 167 5. Son Preference 229 Conclusion 251 Bibliography 257 Index 277 Illustrations map Galilee 3 figures 1. The logos for the Israeli sick funds 51 2. “David’s Shield” plan for Judaizing the Galilee 54 3. “Every Month, Four Thousand Newborns in Gaza” 63 4. Poster: “Marriage under Age 18/Marriage above Age 18” 64 5. “Patience” by Naji il-Ali 66 6. Sliman Mansour’s painting The Intifada . the Mother 67 7. “Woman” page of al-Ittihad 70 8. Cover of Israeli Ministry of Health’s family planning pamphlet 79 9. Kamli and her son in his new room 87 10. Advertisement for Buddy Pudding 93 11. Child dancing in center of class 108 12. The Land—Motherland and Existence 127 13. Catalogue of beauty and weight-loss products 169 14. Advertisement for plastic surgery center 170 15. Advertisement for baby formula 174 ix x Illustrations 16. Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association poster: “To Prevent AIDS” 183 17. Cover of Ministry of Education’s sex education book Adolescence and Us 185 Foreword Hanan Ashrawi As I sit in my home in Ramallah, the sights, sounds, and smells of the Is- raeli attacks bombard my senses: helicopters, bombs, bullets, gas. The conflict that shapes this book is sadly alive and indeed booming louder than ever. News broadcasts around the world almost daily report the rising death toll. This sinister numerical game, whereby Palestinian vic- tims of Israeli live fire are daily given as x numbers killed and y numbers wounded, reduce our humanity to a series of abstractions. The victims’ names, identities, dashed hopes, and shattered dreams are nowhere mentioned. Absent too are the grief and anguish of their mothers, fa- thers, sisters, brothers, and other loved ones who will have to live with that tragic loss. This routinized reporting allows viewers to accept com- fortably the continued killing of this “intransigent,” “hard-line,” “vio- lent” people. Indeed, Palestinians’ will to resist subjugation and oppres- sion is spun by the media as proof of their culpability for their own victimization. Only through the most sophisticated and approachable analyses can the layers of abstraction and dehumanization begin to be peeled away. Rhoda Kanaaneh’s book, standing among the best of scholarship and still widely accessible, is an important model for such efforts. It gives voice to subjects that historically have been kept voiceless. In the array of diverse Palestinians she interviews, people otherwise thought of as “violent,” “dictatorial” “terrorists” are humanized. The book gives readers a beautiful introduction to individuals who become complex xi xii Foreword reflexive creatures—in short, human beings. These Palestinians are ca- pable of being subtle, introspective, witty, and playful as well as strate- gically blunt and dogmatic. These portrayals come as a welcome re- prieve from the ubiquitous distortions of the Palestinian people. They will unsettle any reader’s sense of complacency about the anonymity of Palestinians and thus the invisibility of their suffering and the meaning- lessness of their deaths. Significantly, one of the recent misrepresentations of Palestinians and perhaps the most blatantly racist slur against us is the Israeli and inter- national media’s theft of our humanity as parents. In an attempt to rob us of our most basic feelings for our children, we are accused of sending our children out to die for the sake of scoring media points. Even as 18-month-old Sara Abdil-Athim Hassan was shot in the back seat of her father’s car and other child victims were killed in and around their own homes, their parents were blamed for putting their children “on the front lines,” thus obstructing the free path of Israeli bullets. Rhoda’s book is a highly appropriate antidote; Palestinian mothers and fathers reflect on their parental roles, responsibilities, affections, and strategies. They carefully consider and weigh the impact of national struggle on their families, as well as medicalization, consumerism, and other trends of globalization that many parents around the world increasingly face. Birthing the Nation focuses on Palestinians living inside the borders of Israel established in 1948. Israeli propaganda would have us believe that these Palestinian citizens of the state are different creatures from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. We are told that these “Israeli Arabs” are happily integrated into the Jewish state. Despite such misleading claims, the current al-Aqsa intifada spilled beyond the bor- ders of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians living inside the so- called green line of Israel loudly and publicly demonstrated in solidarity with their compatriots in the Occupied Territories. In more than thirty towns and villages they protested the injustices of Israeli-imposed “peace.” The Israeli response also erased the alleged dividing line be- tween “Palestinian” and “Israeli Arab” when it shot thirteen of its Pales- tinian citizens dead. The same brutal military tactics are used on all Palestinians, regardless of citizenship. It seems Palestinians are subhu- man no matter what passport they carry. Two of the citizen victims, 18- year-old Alaa Nassar and 17-year-old Asel Asli, were from Arrabi vil- lage, Rhoda’s hometown. Anyone who wishes to understand the connections within and across state borders must read Rhoda Kanaaneh’s vivid analyses of the porous- Foreword xiii ness of the green line in relation to Palestinian identity. The contracting and expanding zones of identification that nurture a Palestinian sense of community are elegantly illuminated. Variously partitioned, annexed, occupied, closed, and besieged, these territories and histories fragment Palestinian identity but are also transcended by it. In discussing vital issues of fertility, demography, and modernization, Rhoda’s subjects use “Palestine” to refer to pre- and post-1948 entities, depending on the context. These linguistic switches and slippages highlight the limitations of the framework of the now collapsing peace process and the multiple forms Palestinian struggles take in varying locations. Among those kept voiceless, women are often doubly silenced. The expressions, arguments, and analyses of Palestinian women collected in this book, including those of the author herself, are thus doubly impor- tant for undoing misrepresentations. In part, this book is significant sim- ply because it is written by a mature and articulate Palestinian woman. We urgently need to hear more feminist perspectives (both male and fe- male) that, like Rhoda’s, seriously attend to the intersections of politics, “race,” class, religion, and gender. In the case of this book, the results of such an approach are fresh insight, powerful arguments against Is- raeli domination, and much-needed internal criticism. This multifaceted framework is relevant well beyond Israel and Palestine. It is indispens- able to anyone interested in struggles for justice and freedom, including those against racism and sexism, wherever they may occur. March8, 2001 Acknowledgments This book has been shaped, nurtured, and supported by a great number of people. Elaine Combs-Schilling of Columbia University went well beyond the call of duty in supervising its first incarnation. She pains- takingly read draft upon draft, providing a great deal of feedback, from “There should be a comma here” to deeply insightful criticisms of my arguments. I hope her remarkable capacity for nuance is evident in my text.