Palestine

Nationalism and Motherhood in Palestine

Motherhood is seen as an essential part in the Palestinian national struggle by religious and secular political groups. The 1988 Declaration of Independence stresses the centrality of women's reproductive and child rearing roles for survival. While some voices view motherhood as women's main moral and national obligation, often seeking support in religious texts, others condemn such attempts to restrict women to the private sphere and demand their equal role in the national struggle. Women often embed their political activism in the socially accepted framework of motherhood. Mothers defend Palestinian youth from Israeli soldiers; are targeted, killed and arrested; and, suffering from occupation policies such as house demolitions or family separation caused by different residency permits, carry the burden of keeping family and societal structures intact.

With the process of Palestinian nation-state building initiated but unrealized, women's reproductive behavior have become markers of both survival and modernity. Fearing to be outnumbered and uprooted, women are encouraged to have many children and teach them Palestinian history, traditions, and values. The image of a resistant, steadfast, sacrificing, and morally superior mother is taken up by many Palestinian artists as a national Palestinian symbol of the homeland: A Mother Palestine who is eternally giving and loving toward her children. The public performance of mothers of martyrs (required by a nationalist discourse that associates motherhood with sacrifice) has been interpreted as encouraging children to martyrdom and violence. Empirical studies, however, point to Palestinian mothers who widely suffer from depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and other mental health problems caused by their loss.

International, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations' efforts to promote women's rights, family planning, and reproductive health care have been informed by a modernist national discourse urging women to raise their children in nuclear families to be educated, modern national subjects. Although 50.2 percent of married women aged 15–49 use family planning and 98.8 percent of mothers receive health care during pregnancy (2006), the right to reproductive health care, as stipulated by the Palestinian health law, is not guaranteed due to the health sector's dependence on volatile foreign funding, and mobility restrictions and security problems caused by the Israeli conflict. Women have been hindered from accessing continuous and/or emergency lifesaving prenatal care (resulting in high maternal and infant mortality rates) and forced to deliver at checkpoints or at home. Lack of adequate public childcare services have resulted in low higher education enrollment (2.8 percent) and labor force participation (16 percent) of women married at age 15 or above (2007).

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