Zahra Hankir, ed., Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World (New Texts Out Now)

Zahra Hankir, ed., Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World (New Texts Out Now)

Zahra Hankir, ed., Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World (New Texts Out Now)

By : Zahra Hankir

Zahra Hankir  (ed.), Our Women on the Ground: Essays By Arab Women Reporting From The Arab World (Penguin Books, 2019).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you edit this book?

Zahra Hankir (ZH): My primary goal was to give Arab and Middle Eastern women journalists a global platform to share their experiences of reporting from and living in the region from which they hail. The international media narrative on the Middle East and North Africa has been dominated, for decades, by Western correspondents who often cover the area for a year or two, return to their home countries, then write memoirs or authoritative non-fiction books, or become renowned talking heads. I hoped to amplify the voices of Arab and Middle Eastern women journalists who are doing ground-breaking and authentic work during tremendously tumultuous times—often focusing on telling under-reported tales, particularly about women. These sahafiyat, or women journalists, to my mind, have not historically received the same levels of attention or praise as their Western counterparts (there are encouraging signs that this dated and skewed approach is starting to change, but much remains to be done). The reporters have unique and intimate access, and as such are able to tell the story of the Arab world and broader Middle East with a profound sense of nuance and cultural understanding. The women also offer a necessary alternative to predominantly male voices that emerge from the Middle East, and as such, they regularly challenge established and flawed accounts of the region and its women.

As an example, Azadeh Moaveni, who kindly wrote a generous blurb for Our Women on the Ground, authored Guest House for Young Widows, a gripping and intricate account of thirteen women who joined the Islamic State. The women, who are largely vilified and misunderstood in the global media narrative swirling around ISIS, shared intimate details of their lives with Moaveni over the course of several years of unflinching investigative reporting. To my mind, the extent to which Moaveni was able to earn the trust of these women was in part due to her ability to profoundly understand many of their struggles and to write and report without judgement, given she is Middle Eastern and Muslim herself. Moaveni’s approach added authenticity, depth, and credibility to the story behind the headlines, much as I intended to do with Our Women on the Ground

What binds them all is the fact that they are unwavering in their pursuit of truth and their desire to disseminate it.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

ZH: Given the context within which the sahafiyat operate in, and the sort of reporting they do, the themes the book addresses are quite hefty, and range from grief and guilt to love and loss. Broadly speaking, the essays fall under five overarching motifs: Remembrances, for the women who reflect on their past; Crossfire, a double entendre for the women who have dual identities and who have covered or experienced war; Resilience, for the women who approached their work with that very ethos; Exile, for the women who heartbreakingly were forced to leave their homelands and contend with living elsewhere; and Transition, for the women whose essays focused on rapidly changing countries or a changing industry.

Some of these women have been sexually assaulted, threatened, propositioned, detained, or even shot at while on the job, but have persisted nonetheless. They have contributed to dispelling the many myths saturating an often basic depiction of the region to which they have cultural, linguistic, and personal ties, while fighting patriarchy and sexism. And at the same time, they have also been able to use gender to their advantage, managing to conduct harrowing interviews with other women precisely because being female has given them access a male reporter would not have been able to secure as easily, if at all. What binds them all is the fact that they are unwavering in their pursuit of truth and their desire to disseminate it. All of these elements are addressed head on in the book. No subject matter is shied away from. 

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work? 

ZH: Over the course of my fifteen-year career in journalism, I have consistently sought to tell underreported tales that broaden and deepen our understanding of the Arab world, particularly cultural stories. I have also very much focused on women in my writing, particularly women of color, in a humble attempt to highlight the important work that they do despite the very many obstacles they face (some of which I have personally had to contend with). This book very much felt like the culmination of those efforts and interests: the culture and society of the Arab world and the importance of women taking control of and delivering their own narrative, if we are to ensure that the narrative is told fairly, accurately, and comprehensively.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

ZH: The women in this book demonstrate that without their voices and work, the stories of the region, with all of its nuances and intricacies and complexities, would remain partly told. My hope is that readers will come away from the book with a far deeper and more enriching understanding of the Arab world and broader Middle East, and a strong sense of the resilience of its women.

I ultimately hoped to advocate for local voices, for a more inclusive narrative, and for more diverse newsrooms through this project. I do hope that aspiring Arab women and women of color journalists the world over will be encouraged by the stories in this book. I have received so many messages on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter from women who say they feel inspired by the sahafiyat in Our Women on the Ground, and hope to pursue meaningful careers in journalism themselves, focusing on their own communities. Those messages bring me profound joy.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

ZH: I am working on another long-form project that explores women and culture. I am aware that sounds quite vague, but for now I cannot share more! Mostly because I have no idea whether it will come to fruition. But I am excited about digging into another project after taking something of a prolonged break, particularly as much of my reporting will (perhaps inevitably) focus on the Arab world.

J: Would you have done anything differently? 

ZH: It is far easier to say this in hindsight, given the many constraints I was working under and the countless variables I had to take into consideration, but I would have tried to ensure better representation from the Maghreb region and from the Arabian Gulf, and I would have focused on including more women who work solely for local publications rather than for Western ones, as well as stringers (who tend to be relied on by Western reporters). If only I had more space! But I will say I put my heart into this book, giving it everything I could for two years, and am incredibly proud of the product and of the women who worked so beautifully and resolutely with me despite so many moving parts in their own lives. I would do it all again in a heartbeat if I could.

 

Excerpt from the book

Hannah Allam

The Woman Question

Even in the Middle East, where there is no shortage of heartache, Iraqi women are known to be particularly tough. The guttural Iraqi accent only underlines that reputation. Nelly, a chain-smoking, melodramatic Egyptian hairdresser in Baghdad, once whispered to me that Iraqi women were the region's most beautiful-until they opened their mouths.

I observed that tough exterior in hundreds of Iraqi women I met over the years. The elderly women trudging through the southern marshes with heavy sacks of reeds strapped to bowed backs. The stoic mothers looking for their sons among the corpses strewn at the scene of a suicide bombing. The pregnant militant who put a gun to my head in a Sadr City alleyway, and my Iraqi female friend who calmly swatted it away and lectured the attacker about her terrible manners.

Those sorts of stories accumulated until they formed an archetype: the tragic yet resilient Iraqi woman, a metaphor for the country itself. In hindsight, it seems so facile to see Iraqi women only through the prism of their war-ravaged lives, but how else do you report a story where pain is etched on the face of every woman you interview?

[…]

Zeina Erhaim

Hurma

After a series of clashes like these with soldiers at checkpoints — many of which caused my male chaperones great distress — I decided to start covering my hair with the Palestinian keffiyeh, carefully wrapping it around my head in the way Arab men traditionally do to protect themselves from the desert sun. The change didn’t help to lower my profile, however, so in 2015, I started to arrange the keffiyeh around my head as if it were a full headscarf, covering my hair completely. By the time I left Syria for southern Turkey for good in 2016, I was wearing a long, dark coat along with a formal, regular hijab.

The only way I could challenge those dim colors while living in Syria was by wearing bright underwear and colored pins on my scarf. They were tiny dots of color, yes, but they made me feel better. I didn’t quit using my expensive anti-wrinkle cream either. “There’s a helicopter hovering above our heads and a barrel bomb could be breaking both of us into pieces at any minute, so why the hell are you worried about aging?” my husband at the time, Mahmoud, would ask. There’s a chance we may live through this war and come out of it in one piece, I thought. And if we do, all of the hard work I put into sustaining my skin’s elegance will have paid off. I want to live a long life and to write about what I witnessed so that no one will forget what happened here. And I want to have supple, crease-free skin, too.

[…]

Nour Malas

Bint El-Balad

I particularly never identified with the straddle that comes with being a hyphenated American: Syrian American, in my case. But because I worked for a US newspaper, I found that not only was that duality an accurate and apt description of me throughout my reporting in the Middle East, it was also a helpful one that I could use to my advantage in certain situations. Still, it was always a little awkward explaining I had never lived in Syria. Sometimes this conveyed a social class barrier—of someone with the means to live abroad—or else a woman so Westernized that I might as well have not been of Syrian origin at all.

But remembrances of Syria over many cups of tea, and even a meal or two scraped together from meager ingredients, eventually diluted the differences. After all, it wasn’t just that I spoke Arabic but my specifically Syrian accent that eased me into the small, intimate quarters of refugees and helped me get reporting done, for the most part, with ease and trust.

I learned to navigate the corners of my family identity and history, and use my experiences as a native reporter in the region, to see and access deep or difficult parts of the story. Instead of dreading the question “Min wein, anseh?” (Where are you from, miss?), which I was asked in every conversation and interview, I came to cherish the mutual exploration that would follow. What bound us was always more obvious, in the moment, than what made us different.

At least for the first few years of the war, this was true.

[…]

Nada Bakri

Love and Loss in a Time of Revolution

I sometimes think of Anthony’s death as an unintended consequence of the Arab revolts.

In February 2012, he sneaked into Syria for the second time to interview armed rebels and opposition activists for The Times. The smugglers who agreed to take him arranged to hike and travel by horseback across the mountainous border between the two countries. Anthony had asthma and was allergic to horses, but he had his inhalers and had never needed more than that.

The last time I spoke to him was on Feb. 14, 2012. He was in northern Syria and called me from his satellite phone to wish me a happy Valentine’s Day. He said he was to leave Syria in a day or two, again traveling by hiking and horseback, and that the trip had been the best one of his entire career. Malik and I traveled to Antakya on the night of Feb. 16 to meet him.

Shortly before midnight, I was awakened when my cellphone rang. It was Jill Abramson, who was the executive editor of The Times. “Anthony had a fatal asthma attack,” she said. I repeated the sentence in my head, but it took some time to understand what she was trying to tell me.

I curled up on the bathroom floor and cried. I wanted to scream but Malik was asleep, and I didn’t want to startle him.

In her book about the death of her husband, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” Joan Didion writes that “people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible.” Invisibility is a comforting feeling when your heart is so heavy. After Anthony died, I preferred places where I knew no one and where no one knew me.

This was more than seven years ago. And yet on some days, it still feels as raw as it did that night in Turkey. I quit journalism, left my home in Beirut, and moved thousands of miles away from everyone I knew and everything familiar. Motherhood has saved me from making the wrong choices and forced me to get out of bed when I had no energy, will or desire to do so. Along the way, I became someone I don’t recognize. I lost my balance and the discipline I once had. Being a journalist and being in the Middle East are both constant reminders of my loss. I needed the distance from both to be able to grieve and feel alive again.

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.