THE WOMENS FRONT - NATIONALISM, FEMINISM, AND MODERNITY IN PALESTINE

Nationalisms are polymorphous and often internally contradictory, unle ashing emancipatory as well as repressive ideas and forces. This artic le explores the ideologies and mobilization strategies of two organiza tions over a 10-year period in the occupied Palestinian territories: a leftist-nationalist party in which women became unusually powerful an d its affiliated and remarkably successful nationalist-feminist women' s organization. Two factors allowed women to become powerful and facil itated a fruitful coexistence between nationalism and feminism: (1) a commitment to a valiant of modernist ideology that was marked by grass roots as opposed to military mobilization and (2) a concern with provi ng the cultural worth of Palestinian society to the West, a project th at was symbolized by women's status in important ways. By comparing in ternational and indigenous feminist discourses, the study also demonst rates how narratives about gender status in the Third World are implic ated in, and inextricable from, international economic and political i nequalities.