I have just watched a remarkable talk by Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi at the July 2010 Chautaqua convocation (see http://fora.tv/2010/07/13/Hanan_Ashrawi_Palestinian_Womens_Quest_for_Validation). Ashrawi, long a spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority, has been largely absent from the US media since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007. When the mainstream media focus shifted to attacks on Hamas, presumably to distract public attention from Fatah’s illegitimate control over the West Bank (they lost the January 2007 election and legally Hamas should govern both Gaza and the West Bank).

After the Hamas party defeated the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Fatah party in democratically contested elections in January 2007, both the US and Israel rejected the election outcome. With US support, Israel attempted to reinstate the military occupation of Gaza. When Hamas fighters repulsed the Israeli Defense Force, the US and its allies imposed economic sanctions on Gaza, and Israel imposed a crippling blockade (violating UN conventions stipulating that foreign occupiers provide the necessities of life to occupied populations). The mainstream media tends to get these details wrong, which is why I clarify them.

Now that Obama has got Israel and the Palestinians to agree to resume peace talks, Ashrawi is in the news again.

Hanan Ashrawi and the Third Way Party

Dr Hanan Ashrawi is a 63 year old Palestinian Christian legislator, activist, and scholar. She was educated both at the American University of Beirut and the Univiersity of Virginia, where she received a PhD in literature. She was a protégé, colleague and close friend of the late internationally renowned Palestinian activist Edward Said.

She has been elected numerous times to the Palestinina Legislative Council and is a member of the Third Way party, founded in December 2005 as an alternative to the two party domination of Fatah and Hamas. In the January 2006 elections, the Third Way received 2.41% of the popular vote and won two seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. The low numbers belie their actual political strength. On June 15, 2007, Palestinina National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas named Salam Fayyad, founder and leader of the Third Way, as Prime Minister of the new “emergency government” (remember Abbas’ Fatah party lost the election), following Israel’s failed attempt to reoccupy Gaza.

The Role of Women in the Intifada

Ashrawi’s presentation at Chataqua provides a view of the Palestinian struggle rarely seen in either the mainstream or the progressive media. She focuses on the critical role Palestinian women played in building the Intifada (the Palestinian resistance movement) and the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. She points out that Israel’s wholesale imprisonment of Palestinian men during this period left it mainly to Palestinian women to carry oout the struggle against Israeli occupation.

In her view, the most important accomplishment of Palestinian women during the Intifada was the building of grassroots non-governmental organizations to provide essential services – schools, health clinics, garbage collection, security – ending the Palestinians’ reliance on Israel to provide this infrastructure. As Ashrawi points out, the women’s movement recognized early that fighting the occupation wasn’t sufficient – that they had to devote equal attention to building the infrastructure of a future Palestinian state. Palestinian women also carried out a highly effective campaign of non-violent resistance that, in 1994, allowed Yasir Arafat and other PLO leaders to return from exile to form the Palestinian Authority.

She also describes of the ongoing battle of the Palestinian women against the sexism of PLO leaders who expected them to withdraw from political life and return to their kitchens once they had won their battle for them.

Ashrawi’s Views on Hamas

Her observations on Hamas are also very interesting. She feels their victory in 2007 represents a protest vote against the failure of Fatah to end increasing Israeli encroachment on Palestinian territory and against notorious cronyism and corruption in the Fatah party. She also points out that Hamas providing a variety of essential services to sectors of the Palestinian population totally overlooked by Fatah.

She is highly critical of the US and Israeli for their violent “collective punishment” of the Palestinians for electing Hamas in 2007. In fact, she feels the US and Israel are chiefly to blame for turning the Palestinian struggle into a culture of violence, which she asserts is unlikely to be productive in building a viable Palestinian state.

Her presentation leaves no doubt the Palestinian women’s movement is the strongest in the Arab world, which Ashrawi feels is a direct result of the self-knowledge that results from fighting occupation and repression. And as she also points out, Palestinian feminism isn’t limited to educated middle class women, as in many western countries. Instead it represents a genuine cross-class movement built from the ground up. It is also her firm belief that the failure to involve the women’s movement in past peace negotiations is largely responsible for their failure.

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