on women. The headscarf was re-encoded as a
sign of women’s political commitment, and women
who did not wear it were defined as insufficiently
nationalist. One analyst interpreted the “intifada
™ijàb” as signifying not modesty or respect; it was,
rather, an indication of “the power of religious
groups to impose themselves by attacking secular-
ism and nationalism at their most vulnerable
points: over issues of women’s liberation” (Ham-
mami 1990, 26). In part as a response to growing
Islamism in Palestine, women activists reasserted
the link between the struggle for an independent
state with democratization and women’s rights, as
exemplified in the discussion of personal status law
during the 1998 Model Parliament. Some Islamists
tried to justify their rejection of the women activ-
ists’ demands in nationalist terms by accusing them
of being tools of imperialism and Zionism (Mogha-
dam 2003, 179–80). Since women’s military par-
ticipation in the resistance in the 1970s, a dominant
discourse has been that women’s liberation would
come through participation in the nationalist strug-
gle and that a focus on specifically women’s social
issues was a distraction from the national struggle.
And while leftist parties have mouthed support for
women’s issues, the dominant party, Fatah, has
never had an articulated ideology concerning
women, and their rhetoric reasserts women’s pri-
mary role as “the mainstay of the family and the
vessel of Palestinian culture” (Gluck 1995).
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south yemen and dhofar 657T. Thornhill, Making women talk. The interrogation of
Palestinian women security detainees by the Israeli
General Security Services, London 1992.Lori A. AllenSouth Yemen and DhofarDuring the latter part of the twentieth century, the
southern part of the Arabian Peninsula gave birth
to revolutionary movements which fully engaged
women but which left them with different out-
comes. While in southern Yemen women can still
enjoy most of the revolution’s fruits, in Dhofar, the
western province of Oman, the revolutionary move-
ment was crushed, leaving few accomplishments.
In South Yemen, demands for reforms for women
were raised first in Aden in the 1940s in pamphlets
issued among cultural circles comprised of men
from intellectual and commercial families. Aden
formed part of British India until 1937. After
Indian independence there were demands for free-
dom, the significant source of influence in Aden
coming from centers of Arab radicalism such as
Cairo and Beirut. Another influence was North
Yemeni resistance to the rule of the imams driven
by Arab nationalists, and the presence of exiles
from this movement in Aden.
Radicalism in Aden followed different roads. A
haven for labor migration from all over the penin-
sula, Aden harbored a strong trade union move-
ment and radical political parties. Women’s right to
education, their legal rights, and the freedom to dis-
card the ™ijàbwere on the agenda of the radical wing
of the independence movement. News and inspira-
tion came through Íawt al-≠Arab radio in Cairo and
the BBC Arabic service. At an early stage of the revo-
lution, the National Liberation Front in its National
Charter demanded women’s emancipation from
traditional roles and their subjugation to men.
Women’s societies began in 1951 when the Brit-
ish founded the Aden Women’s Club, a charity that
later became radical and, with local leaders, was
renamed the Arab Women’s Club. By the 1960s,
the Arab Women’s Club and its rival, the Aden
Women’s Association, each had 300 members. By
independence in 1967, women’s associations were
united in the General Union of Yemeni Women (see
Figure 5).
The revolution in South Yemen began in 1963
with the uprising in Radfàn, a mountainous area
north of Aden. Women participated in the armed
struggle and two women became famous fighters,
Khadìja al-£awshabì, a member of the ruling fam-
ily and martyred in the fight, and Da±ra. Other rural