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Wisconsin State Journal · 28 December 2004

CP-2004-005

Pressured not to run, Palestinian women did well at polls

By Mohammed Ballas, Associated Press, Yabed

Pressured not to run, Palestinian women did well at polls — Wisconsin State Journal, 28 December 2004
Wisconsin State Journal · 28 December 2004

Transcribed from the clipping

“YABED, West Bank — Women faced pressure not to run as candidates in the Palestinian local elections. But they did — and they won, with more than half of them defeating their male opponents in this conservative, traditional Arabic society. Palestinian women won 51 seats in Thursday’s elections, 32 of them winning their place outright without having to claim a seat reserved for women by Palestinian law. Maisoun Badarneh, a 44-year-old teacher elected as an independent candidate to the council in the town of Yabed, said she faced intense opposition from relatives and neighbors who argued it was unacceptable for a woman to hold a position requiring daily contact with the public. ‘The majority of my problems were due to society’s inability to accept the idea of women participating in the municipality,’ Badarneh said, adding that four other female candidates in her town dropped out before the elections due to family pressure. The role of women in the Palestinian struggle has seen peaks and valleys. Leila Khaled pushed women into the forefront in 1969 when she hijacked a TWA airliner to Syria, and Hanan Ashrawi has had a long career as a Palestinian spokeswoman, legislator and human rights activist.… ‘We were hoping for more, but this is a beginning,’ she said of the elections. ‘We’re delighted and plan to have a big celebration for the women.’ In the village of Abwein, north of Ramallah, Fatima Suhweil, 59, received more votes than any of the 27 other candidates despite religious-based parties campaigning relentlessly against her. Now she will be mayor of the village… Suhweil attributed her support, from both men and women, to her record in building up and running a girls’ high school. ‘People knew that I would be successful regardless,’ she said, adding that she wanted to use the position as a springboard to run for parliament… ‘Women are demanding a say,’ he said.”

Context added by this archive

Seventy-five years after the first Arab Women’s Congress drove through Jerusalem in seventy automobiles and the wire counted the cars, four Palestinian women are named in one dispatch, three with ages and jobs, two of them elected. The paper also draws the line this archive draws: it explains Palestinian women’s politics by starting with Leila Khaled.

Cite this item

"Pressured not to run, Palestinian women did well at polls," Wisconsin State Journal, 28 December 2004. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2004-005. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2004-005

Elsewhere in the archive

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2004-005.

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