LONELY IN YOUR FIRM GRIP: WOMEN IN ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN FAMILIES (original) (raw)

Recent feminist literature on Arab women has emphasized their agency and strategizing capabilities. In particular, researchers have highlighted women's skilled utilization of their blood rights for protection and lifelong support within the patriarchal group. I take issue with this generalization, using ethnographic material on Palestinians inside Israel. I argue that women's entitlement to protection is more limited than is usually assumed. An analysis of the code of familial commitment, particularly the interplay between gender and power, reveals that in order to obtain their family's commitment, Israeli-Palestinian women need to maintain a delicate balance between power and weakness. For a variety of reasons, women often fail to achieve such balance and hence suffer isolation and loneliness. Your husband loves you when you are rich Your parents love you when you are strong 1 The official ideology of the Palestinian family envisions the relationships within the patrilineal group as those of cohesion, solidarity, and mutual commitment , 2 and ignores the possibility of loneliness within it. By and large, men and women alike tend to embrace this official depiction of the family and to accept the idea that they should put the good of their family group first. Yet for women, this familial grip often yields an outcome quite the opposite of support and assurance.This is most obvious in the case of women who endure domestic violence but avoid seeking help outside the home, lest they damage their family reputation. 3 Mostly women find that they are on their own in times of crisis with their husband and children, when facing financial difficulties , or when making important decisions. For them, the family as ideology is significantly separate from the family as experience. While the former is collectivist and connotes empathy, support, and togetherness, the latter is frequently individualistic and connotes isolation, loneliness, and even threat. This experience, which is not infrequent among women inside Israeli-Palestinian families, is my focus here. I start with some working definitions. Loneliness is a broad concept with a range of meanings, positive and negative. For example, Winnicott (1958) considered the capacity to be alone as a positive, in fact an essential, component of balanced emotional maturity. Mous-takas (1961) defined loneliness as the most genuine existential condition and a vital source of creativity, love, and self-acceptance. Likewise, various cultures positively sanction periodical solitude, as in the case of Prophet Muhammad