 GAZA CITY - Campaigners working on behalf of women are looking to Wednesday’s Palestinian election with trepidation, fearing that if elected, Hamas will enforce Islamist values.
The five-year-old Palestinian uprising has caused countless deprivations and clocked the rising power of Hamas, whose armed opposition was considered instrumental in Israel’s withdrawal of all troops and settlers from Gaza last year. Its charity network has supported victims of violence, supplying money and opportunities to some of the Palestinian territories’ most impoverished residents.
Blatent Latent in its mission was a heady brand of Islamist fundamentalism piped out from Hamas mosques which has more recently found a new outlet in the radical group’s decision to join the political mainstream and run for the legislature.
| So it shouldn't exactly be a surprise that they'll treat the women like cattle. |
With polls putting Hamas neck-and-neck with the moderate ruling Fatah party, many women fear the Islamist movement could be in a position to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, marginalise their rights and make the headscarf compulsory. “To be frank, we are really worried about the future we will have after 25 January,” says Naila Ayesh, director of the foreign-funded Women’s Affairs Center that promotes women’s rights and electoral participation.
She was jailed twice by the Israelis, once as a student activist when she suffered a miscarriage in prison, and secondly for campaigning on behalf of Palestinians deported from Gaza during the first intifada. She refuses to wear the headscarf. People have thrown stones at her when taking her child to nursery. Today, Ayesh fears that the advantages Palestinian women have over some of their sisters in the Arab world are under threat.
| Not that this would cause you to make peace or anything. |
“Socially and politically we’ll have problems. Hamas will ask for Islamic, Sharia law to be the main issue and of course this is not what we want.”
Even if Fatah remains in power, this mother-of-two worries the party may give ground to Hamas on issues such as family law, by facilitating polygamy, and discriminating against women in divorce cases and custody rights.
| Which is, after all, what Saint Pancake was fighting for, right? |
Elsewhere in Gaza City, 35-year-old hairdresser Hossam Abu Mohammed fears his livelihood and thriving ladies’ salon could be at stake if Hamas performs well in Wednesday’s election. “Maybe they won’t allow males to work for ladies. We don’t know. Maybe they will close us down. Then what’ll I do? This is my work for 15 years,” he says, dressed in tight denim, a scarf flung louchely round his neck.
| I think Mo' is a little light in his loafers, which means he's going to have other problems with Hamas ... |
“Already we’re dying. There are no coffee shops. There’s no normal life. We can’t go to parties, we can’t go out to drink, there is no social life. There’s no McDonalds,” he says, jabbing the air with his cigarette for emphasis.
| Maybe you could move to Detroit. Your cousin has a gas station there, you could set up a beauty salon next door. Ah, Detroit ... |
He has four children and supports his parents on the proceeds of what he and his five to six employees make with haircuts, pedicures, manicures, tattoos, waxing and hair extensions. Pictures of sultry beauties with luscious locks and a flash of cleavage expose the gulf between him and Hamas.
“Religion should be a personal choice and not something imposed on people,” says Miriam Daqqa, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine which, like Hamas, is fielding its first parliamentary candidates. “We expect to have problems with Hamas if it gets a good position and certainly if it tries to pass laws that can affect the status of women,” she says. “But we will work to strengthen democracy and equality.”
| I think Miriam's on the list to be stoned. |
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