Sisterhood of Hamas

In Jabaliya, I am accompanied by Sister Maha, head of women's affairs for the Jabaliya Islamic Society, and Sister Samah, the vivacious, 24-year-old head of the local Young Muslim Women's Association. The women routinely call each other "sister" and it feels quite familiar to me to do so too. Their large head scarves, drawn in tight around their faces with no wisp of hair showing, and their plain-colored, shapeless, full-length coats make them look eerily similar to the wimpled Anglican nuns I once studied under.

We look in on a meeting of the Islamic Society's (women) social workers as they discuss the cases of some of the 800 fatherless children whom they help support. "Yes," says Sister Maha, "some of these kids' fathers were our fighters who were killed, or who died in martyrdom operations [suicide bombings]. But some are children whose fathers just died, or were killed by the Israelis."

We also visit a family where two brothers had died in suicide bombings, and a woman whose husband has been in an Israeli jail since 1991. Sister Maha makes these kinds of home visits frequently. As we enter each home, she carefully peels off the black cotton gloves that, in a mark of particular piety, she always wears when she's in the street. To mark the end of the visit, she starts putting them on again.

When we visit the prisoner's wife, Sister Samah and Sister Maha each use our hostess's prayer rug to say their noon prayers. Each perform the kneeling, bowing and low-voiced praying of the ritual in an unself-conscious way in one part of the room, while the rest of us continue our conversation a few feet away.

At the preschool, Sister Asmahan, the tall, impressively articulate director, sits with us in her office to talk about the program. She says that she and her team provide four hours of preschool education to 160 children each day. She brings out a pile of notebooks and shows me how the teachers, without a copier, painstakingly create fun and engaging workbooks for the kids. The bright, well-decorated classrooms and the activities attest to the technical excellence of the program and the strong preparation of the teachers.

We talk mainly about the school, but Sister Asmahan also wants to talk about politics. She tells me firmly that all the Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return to the homes their forefathers had left, or been forced to leave, in 1948. "And the Jews who are there now should go back to where they came from," she says.

This is one of seven preschools run by the Islamic Society in Jabaliya. These preschools are important in preparing children to enter schools the United Nations runs for the refugees who make up 75 percent of the Gaza Strip's 1.4 million people. The Islamic preschools, where the average class size is around 24, educate children ages 4 and 5. The U.N.'s schools do not take children in until age 6 -- and there, the average class size is 50. If a child has not learned to read and write before getting into the U.N'.s classrooms, there is little chance she will a get a chance to do so there.

The day before my tour of Jabaliya, I sat down in a corner of a busy office in the Gaza "satellite" seat of the Palestinian parliament with two of the six women legislators who were elected on the Hamas list. Most of these women are professionals; three are from Gaza and three from the West Bank.

Jamila Shanty is a robust, good-natured woman with a well-defined, expressive face who bustles into our meeting toting a large, tattered briefcase. Formerly a professor of psychology and philosophy at Gaza Islamic University, she relishes her new role in the parliament where, she tells me, she hopes to sit on the political and legal-affairs committees.

"We need to strengthen our internal front and restore some discipline to Palestinian society," she says of Hamas' imminent priorities. "We must not give Israel the chance to come in here and bomb. We had an ambitious election platform that we now need to implement. Our economy is very difficult, our social conditions are very difficult. So many things need to be done! And we need to protect this project. Everyone is asking us about recognizing Israel. But this is not our focus right now."

In describing how she became involved in Hamas-related activities, Shanty says she was inspired mainly by Sheik Ahmed Yassin. In 1973, Yassin founded the key Hamas precursor organization -- the Gaza-based "Islamic Center," which focused on educational and social-work activities -- and then, in 1987, Hamas itself. He was one of many Hamas leaders assassinated in 2004.

"Sheikh Yassin always paid such a lot of attention to women's affairs!" Shanty says. "He made sure the mosques all provided enough space for the women to pray in, and that they offered lectures and other activities for women. He told us that the work we do in our homes is important because it has real political value. But he also strongly encouraged women to become engaged in causes outside the home. Whenever he visited a mosque he would make sure to have a meeting with the women there, and he would urge all the women to finish their education and contribute what they could to society. He was an example not just to Palestinians but all Muslims."

As we talk, we are joined by Shanty's controversial colleague, Mariam Farhat. Farhat is a pale-faced, demure, older woman who is the mother of three young men who engaged (and lost their lives) in suicide operations against Israelis, killing maybe 10 Israelis in total. I ask her how she feels about her sons' activities. She says she had encouraged the young men to sign up for the "martyrdom operations."

"Even though I'm a mother and I love them so much, still there is a priority which is to fight for our rights," she says. "So though it was painful when they died, still I also felt happy because I am convinced both that they went to heaven and would have a life so much better than our life here, and that their sacrifice helped our Muslim cause. Anyway, how do American mothers feel when they send their boys off to fight and perhaps die as they launch attack operations in Iraq -- or Israeli mothers when they send their sons against us here?"

Farhat's firm, if demurely stated, defiance of Israeli power has made her famous in Palestinian society. Hamas' politically savvy campaign managers even put her face -- along with those of Ahmed Yassin and a couple of other well-known Hamas male leaders -- onto the main election posters the party used in the election. A woman of insistent piety, she spends some time during our interview trying to convert me to Islam, saying that because she loves me she wants to "save me from the fire." I resist her entreaties.

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