Description
The purpose of this paper is to provide insight on how young Palestinian women, aged 18 to 35, are engaged in resisting the Israeli Occupation, how they define political engagement, and the relation their definitions have with their resistance against the Israeli Occupation. This will be carried out by discussing the role of women in Palestine's goal for independence throughout history, the gender disparities women experience, current instances of dissent by Palestinian women, as well as interviews and surveys completed by Palestinian women, aged 18 to 35 living in the West Bank. Also discussed is the gap in definitions of political participation between the West and non-Western societies due to Eurocentric biases that are present in these definitions and how these definitions pertain to life in the West Bank for young Palestinian women. Findings from the surveys and interviews show that while Palestinian women face massive inequality from the Occupation they are not absent from the opposition to Israel, especially in their daily lives. It is in their daily lives that these women do the most acts of resistance, from posting on social media to dancing the Dabke. In this paper I also argue that going along with Edward Said's "Orientalism," political scientists are unable to use current definitions created in the West to describe political engagement in Palestine because these definitions do no create space for those living in the Global South, especially for those living under Occupation.
