ABSTRACT
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women's movements in Egypt and Palestine used feminist and nationalist discourses to articulate positions against imperial and neo-colonial practices. The disruption of old forms of thinking called for by Sandra Harding and Chandra Mohanty is creating space in which women's initiatives and struggles in the Middle East and elsewhere may elicit new interpretations regarding the gendered nature of local, regional, and international politics. In this space, for example, one may begin to read against the grain of hegemonic interpretations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by paying attention to feminist interventions in the international policymaking arena. This chapter explores several examples of women's struggles in different parts of the Middle East as locations from which crucial political phenomena can be theorized. Julie Peteet traces dynamic changes in Palestinian women's participation in the resistance movement patterns of male-female relations within one particular community.
