What does doing politics mean in a context of occupation, settler-colonialism, and prolonged state violence such as Palestine? This book traces Palestinian women’s forms of political activism, ranging from peacebuilding and popular resistance to their everyday survival and coping strategies. Over the last decades, the Israeli occupation has tightened its grip on Palestinian life; settler-colonial violence against Palestinians has risen, and Palestine is more fragmented—politically, socially and spatially—than ever. For most Palestinians, neither the official liberal peace agenda nor the libera ... More

What does doing politics mean in a context of occupation, settler-colonialism, and prolonged state violence such as Palestine? This book traces Palestinian women’s forms of political activism, ranging from peacebuilding and popular resistance to their everyday survival and coping strategies. Over the last decades, the Israeli occupation has tightened its grip on Palestinian life; settler-colonial violence against Palestinians has risen, and Palestine is more fragmented—politically, socially and spatially—than ever. For most Palestinians, neither the official liberal peace agenda nor the liberationist resistance paradigm offers promising solutions to unlock the status quo of political paralysis in Palestine today. Instead, they simply try to get by and struggle through quotidian, small-scale, informal efforts to establish a livable environment for themselves and their loved ones. Women play a major role in these micro politics. The ethnographically grounded analysis in this book focuses on the intricate dynamics of daily life in Palestine, tracing the emergent politics that women practice and articulate there. Rather than being guided by larger categories, such as party politics, social movements, or binaries between the public and the private, it zeroes in on women’s own, often complex and ambiguous, everyday politics. Shedding light on contemporary gendered political culture and alternative “politics from below” in the region, the books invites a rethinking of the functionings, shapes, and boundaries of the political.