While books on Palestine have proliferated, few, until recently, examined women and gender in any depth. Since the 1980s, gender studies have begun to redress the asymmetries in our knowledge of Palestinian society, particularly the processes structuring relations between gender and nationalism (Fleischmann 2003, Hasso 1998, Sharoni 1995). Following the creation of the State of Israel, around 800,000 Palestinians were displaced. The majority of refugees were from rural areas and ended up in refu…