“The reality of Palestinian women is one of resilience and of liberation”: An Interview with Muna Nassar

Muna Nassar is a Palestinian Christian woman from Bethlehem who advocates for justice for the Palestinian people. She has worked as a project coordinator for Kairos Palestine and current works as an Executive for Advocacy at the World Communion of Reformed Churches. We met last year at a conference in the UK engaging different reflections and solidarities on the global quest for justice and liberation. A forthcoming book produced from this gathering—Awake, Emerging and Connected: Meditations on Justice from the Missing Generation, edited by Victoria Turner—is being published by SCM Press later this year. Metanoia got the chance to sit down with Muna and reflect on the chapter she contributed to this project. As a writer, she aims to articulate and represent the diversity of Palestine and Palestinians, highlighting their voice and agency.

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Your chapter is titled “Palestinian Women: The Question Within the Question.” What is this “question” and why does it need to be asked? 

The question of Palestine has been a question looming over decades in the quest for liberation and in the anti-imperial movement. Many questions fall within this big question, questions like the right for self determination, the question of borders, the question of statehood, and many other entangled questions. However, the question of gender often seems to be considered not as urgent of a question. The reality is one of systematic oppression that all Palestinian suffer of irrespective of their gender. However, women are doubly othered as they are firstly Palestinian, living under an occupation that takes the basic human rights away from all individuals of the Palestinian community, and second as women, living in a predominantly patriarchal society. In order to tackle the question of liberation of Palestine and Palestinians, we need to hear all accords to achieve a liberated society both from within and beyond.

As you demonstrate, women have been central to struggles for Palestinian liberation, not “episodic or seasonal” but involved in the entire process of resistance. What are some of the ways popular narratives about Palestinian resistance miss the contributions of women?

More often than not, women in the historic narrative and in the liberation nationalist movement narrative are depicted as the enablers—the mother/sister/wife of the resistance fighters. Such a depiction is problematic because it reduces women to bodies or entities that only exist because of the men in their lives. What about women who stand on their own, who have enabled generations of resistance through education, through their medical degrees and contributions to healthcare, through literature that has documented the realities for all but also from a woman’s perspective that radiated resistance, dignity and intellect?

You mention that you reject a lens of “victimhood.” You acknowledge how your ancestral lands have been confiscated by Israel, that you continue to live under occupation, have your right of movement severely restricted, and yet you are not primarily a victim but a fighter for the dignity and agency of Palestinians and Palestinian women. Can you explain the difference here between these two concepts?

I have always rejected the victimhood narrative as it takes away one’s own agency and power. While we Palestinians live under military occupation and have historically and continue to live in a reality where our fundamental human rights are taken away from us, if we only define ourselves within that victimhood narrative that is imposed on us, how will we be able to project our own narrative of resistance, our culture, our traditions? Our sumud, our perseverance, is distinctly Palestinian and that by itself is something that sheds light on how Palestinian people have a history with the land and view the land as their ancestors. Our land is more than a mere possession; it fosters a sense of connectivity not only due to its geography, but because it embodies a place where people are deeply rooted, understand their identity, and remain steadfast regardless of the challenges they encounter.

What are some of the key white saviour narratives you see play out in discussions regarding Palestinian liberation, especially in relation to longer term political “solutions” to Israeli occupation and apartheid?

"Our land is more than a mere possession; it fosters a sense of connectivity not only due to its geography, but because it embodies a place where people are deeply rooted, understand their identity, and remain steadfast regardless of the challenges they encounter."

I feel there are many problematic white saviour narratives that are propelled on us as Palestinians and that aim to water down the justice quest into any solution offered to Palestinians—major ones, like the whole self determination narrative that does not recognise the Palestinian people as able to govern themselves and build their own state on the land. But a more subtle one, one that I think is especially important to talk about nowadays, is the threshold of suffering. Every time we Palestinians talk to Western people about our realities and explain the day to day suffering—like the lack of freedom of movement, the inability to predict anything, how instability is thus reflected on all aspects of one’s life—there is this kind of glorification of how much we are able to tolerate, that no other (white) person can perhaps take.

It’s this kind of normalisation of our abnormal reality and suffering that is really problematic, that in their minds “these Palestinian people” can suffer more than any other people because they have always lived through that suffering and can tolerate it more than the rest of us. I remember a clear incident once I was speaking in a conference about growing up under military occupation in Bethlehem where we were surrounded by an 8 metre high apartheid wall and how my movement was always monitored. I was then asked by a white woman whether I ever felt safe growing up and do I finally feel safe now living outside of Palestine. While that might seem like a legitimate question, to me, it was an infuriating question as it projected not only a sense of privilege from this Western woman towards a non-Western woman, it projected how it is because of their Western definition of security that enables and funds Israel to build this tech-savy military system and 8 meter concrete wall around the West Bank that takes away my security. So I really find it problematic, when there is a sense of acceptance and normalising of suffering without defining the root causes of such suffering that has been historically unleashed on the Palestinian people.

Christians, of course, have a particular relation to “salvation” narratives, one which has been co-opted by Western Christians who imagine it is their task to “save” peoples of the Majority World. How do you see this play out within Christian responses to and conversations to justice issues in the West? 

In the context of Palestine, the Bible is weaponised to give legitimacy to the military occupation and to the ethnic cleansing and annihilation of the Palestinian people. A Western Christian theology has been instrumental in the making and in the implementation of the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinians are witnessing. A theology that speaks of a land with no people, a theology that presents God as a real estate agent promising the land to the chosen people, a theology which divides people into camps and chooses to “other” Palestinians and deem their mere existence as problematic. This theology really deems the Palestinians as a justified collateral damage in a larger eschatological definition of  “salvation.” That is a deep-seated ambiguity that is more than simply an intellectual issue but rooted in the spirit of colonialist racist ideology and theology in the church that we as Christians should all fight and dismantle.

 When we met last year in August, it was just under two months from the beginning of the so-called “War on Gaza.” Since then, many in the West have become more aware of the Palestinian struggle for justice and of the rank injustices of Israeli conflict, occupation, and genocide. What are some of the problems with understanding the “beginning” of this violence on 7 October?

“In order to tackle the question of liberation of Palestine and Palestinians, we need to hear all accords to achieve a liberated society both from within and beyond.”

I think since October, many people around the world have really woken up to wanting to understand the root causes of what is happening in Palestine in general and in Gaza in particular right now. On the other hand, many have thought that this all happened in vacuum and it was really the “beginning.” There are lots of problematic understandings of what is happening in Gaza right now. To begin with, there is this deep fundamental acceptance and consensus of violence, violence that is only permitted to be unleashed on non-Western people, on the “other,” by those who claim democracy and humanity. In addition to that, the association that violence is “usually” happening in the Middle East, have given this narrative the okay stamp to go further and have really desensitised the people prior to October. So when oppressed people do dare to react to decades-old siege and oppression that they have endured, they are immediately confronted with Western condemnation and dehumanisation.

Today if one was to analyse how the Western world views issues of native people resisting, one can see how biased and racist it has been and continues to be. That objectivity is only a possession of white people, and the judgment of Asian/African/Arab people remains regarded with subjectivity. While people are annihilated, the West is debating what lukewarm watered down terms should we use to describe the massacres and murders of whole blood lines and cities. In stead of calling for a cessation of fire, a whole lexicon is put in place to justify the normalised, century-old, Zionist-racist acts against the Palestinians. More often than not, the Palestinian resistance acts are labelled as “violence” and as “terrorism,” while Israel’s colonial bombings are referred to as “retaliation,” justified by “Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Who are some of the women in your community which inspire you?

I have been influenced by the writings of May Ziadeh, Laila Abu Lughod, Ghada Karmi, but I continue to be in awe of all the women in Gaza right now, whose lives are constantly being threatened but them choosing to provide life sustaining acts to all those around them, in the medical field, in journalism, and in the overall communities that are being continuously bombed and annihilated. It is all those women who provide roots and anchors amidst this attempted annihilation.

Are there any final things you would like to say to our community based here in New Zealand? 

I would urge people in New Zealand to keep pushing on their government and people in power to advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people, to Boycott Divest and Sanction Israel, to be in costly solidarity before its too late. I think it’s important to be reminded that these scenes coming out of Gaza aren’t normal and shouldn’t be normal to any human being in any part of the world. People should never be desensitised to what’s happening in Gaza right now, because this is a litmus test to our humanity. Our collective humanity is at stake if we allow this to keep happening.  

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You can read more of Muna’s work in the forthcoming Awake, Emerging and Connected from SCM Press. For more resources on this topic, check out our reflections and resource list from last week’s event.