#notyourhabibti: No Free Homeland Without Free Women
Twitter/Hayat Mirshad
50 years ago, the year 1969 marked the beginning of a new era of the Palestinian liberation movement. A photo of Leila Khaled, a member of the left-wing PFLP, circulated and went viral all around the world following her attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to the United States. The notable part of this photograph? The keffiyeh, the scarf that is a symbol of Palestinian identity and resistance, was wrapped around her head in place of a hijab. A turning point in the recognition of women as equal in the movement to liberate Palestine was sparked, and the trend of wearing the keffiyeh as she did soon spread around the world.
The struggles facing the PFLP at the time included a lack of international support for their cause, a goal which was quickly resolved because of Khaled, and the use of the symbol in the same fashion continues to this day. The lesson for the resistance movements of today? If you want to achieve the liberation of your people and the liberation of your homeland, the need to implement feminism and the inclusion of women to your cause is indispensable, be it in Palestine, Kashmir, the United States, or Sudan. Essentially, there will be no free homeland without free women.
The participation of women in Palestinian protests ranges from each Intifada, to marches in New York and London, and the Great March of Return in Gaza. But something else occurred this year that I’ve been covering since its beginning that was not covered by mainstream media. The Tal’3at marches in every major city in occupied Palestine and around the world in solidarity with Palestinian women. The female-led protestors marched against misogyny, so-called “honor” killings, and against the Israeli occupation. These protests saw a rebirth of female activism that declares their struggles to be threefold; an end to honor killings, an end to discrimination on the basis of sex, and an end to oppressive lives under Israeli occupation.
On the streets of Ramallah, just across the street of Safar Cafe, a store stands that embodies the lesson for every national liberation movement, a symbol of defiance in occupied Palestine, that practices grassroots manufacturing and activism in one of the most oppressive areas of the world. The key to understanding the need to begin this new area of resistance, one that includes all people, can be understood with what started as a single hashtag. #notyourhabibti.
The store, named BabyFist by its founder to represent the rise of youth activism, is known for its jean jackets labeled #notyourhabibti and other phrases, and actively seeks to break down barriers rarely spoken about in Arab and Palestinian communities.
“We work to unearth the labyrinth of gender-based issues affecting women, men, and everyone in-between and provide a safe space in which we can discuss and challenge those issues, with the conviction that deviating from the norm is be celebrated.”
BabyFist seeks to bolster Palestinian entrepreneurship by running family-owned shops across the occupied West Bank. Despite the Israeli and Egyptian joint blockade of Gaza, BabyFist has decided to move all manufacturing to the Gaza Strip to help bolster the local economy.
“The clothes on our backs are some of the most intimate connections to other human beings (those who made them) and to intricate realities for communities across the globe. Israel controls movement for Palestinians in the West Bank and completely inhibits movement for Palestinians in Gaza. This extends to items, meaning that fabric to make something is often held up at checkpoints for months, and finished products leaving from Gaza to the West Bank are taxed. When Gaza is 4 hours away by car but it can take weeks for items to arrive, Israel has effectively made it so that Gaza and the West Bank operate as different countries. Each item of clothing then transforms into a symbol of resistance. It defies Israeli attempts to control movement and spatial dynamics. It represents the persistence to work, to create, to connect in the face of some of the most oppressive circumstances in the world. If you have any of our clothes, wear them loudly and proudly, and share the story behind the threads.”
I believe that the PFLP’s embrace of feminism and female members, and the lack of support from the PLO contributed to the downfall of Yassar Arafat’s once-proud resistance movement. The PLO, which became the Palestinian Authority, is now a puppet state complicit in Israeli oppression of Palestinians, similar to Bantustans in Apartheid South Africa. However, the PFLP’s embrace of feminism made Khaled the face of the national liberation movement abroad. They continue the struggle and is the largest party in the Legislative Council apart from Hamas or Fatah, and is the only political party that may call itself revolutionary. It is only with the full implementation of feminism as an ideology within the national liberation movements of today, that the failures of those of yesterday will not occur again.