Crossing Social and Spatial Boundaries for Claiming Gender Status: Israeli-Palestinian Bedouin Women in the Land Struggle

The participation of young, educated Bedouin women in the struggle for land and against the Israeli government was largely inspired by events of the Arab Spring. In this paper, we examine whether, within the rigid social structure of Bedouin society, they could attain enhanced spatial mobility through participation in the struggle by crossing gender, race, class and spatial boundaries, and whether this participation could be harnessed back into their communities for their own social liberation. Interviews with women and men active in initiating, mobilizing and demonstrating were analyzed to better understand how they perceived the implications of this action for Bedouin women’s presence, identity and power in these public spaces. A complex process is revealed in which there are considerable contradictions between their perception of relative success in claiming status within the public space of struggle against the state, as well as importing some components inwards into tribal spaces, and their conscious choice not to pursue it further as an internal struggle against patriarchy.