Gender, Popular Culture and Aftermath of Armed Resistance in Palestinian Camps in Jordan

Through a focus on the experiences of refugee women political activists in the period between the 1990s and 2000s, this article examines the ways in which gender norms and symbolic cultural practices are repurposed to reflect the interests of secular and Islamic nationalist groups. It looks at the overall implications of this on the ethos and trajectories of Palestinian resistance, investigating how the lionization of the masculinist Palestinian figure—in either a secular or religious sense—has immured refugees and deprived them of popular cultural means of contributing to liberation. The article argues that, in long liberation struggles that counter imperialist ideology, the configuration of liberation based a masculinist nationalism undermine alternative means of resistance and the appearance of long-practised, local level protests. Indeed, a context with the potential for revolution dramatically turned not only against women but towards the antithesis of its ethos.