Gendering the Revolution: The Munadilat of the Palestinian Revolution in 1967–70

This paper argues that the munadilat—women strugglers—were central to the Palestinian revolution during its time in Jordan, not only through their engagement with and support for armed struggle but also through forms of revolutionary labor that reshaped social relations, gender norms, and political belonging. I focus on women’s committees affiliated with various Palestinian factions to reframe the Palestinian revolution in Jordan as a social process embedded in refugee camps, schools, homes, and streets. I show how women’s organizing produced new forms of revolutionary engagement and belonging alongside the rearticulation of masculinity and femininity.

I examine two key dimensions of women’s revolutionary work: organizing women in camps and cities, and mobilizing communities through education. I focus particularly on educators, who played a central role in shaping political and revolutionary consciousness among youth and broader communities while cultivating sumud—steadfastness—within them. Building on recent scholarship theorizing sumud as Palestinian praxis, particularly Lena Meari’s analysis of its intentional cultivation among Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons, I demonstrate how educators similarly cultivated sumud through pedagogical work in the classroom and community spaces, empowering communities to reimagine a liberated future and understand themselves as historical actors capable of transforming their reality. I conclude by assessing how this educational and organizing labor fundamentally reshaped social relations and political possibilities during the revolution’s years in Jordan.