Amal Elsana Alh'jooj – författare

At birth it was only Amal's father who looked at her and said "I see hope in her face. I want to call her 'Amal'- meaning 'Hope'- in the hope that Allah will give us boys after her." The fifth daughter in a patriarchal society and an indigenous Bedouin in a Jewish state, Amal Elsana came into this world fighting for her right to exist. Today she is a key shaper of public opinion on Israel's marginalized minorities.Hope is a Woman's Name tells of Amal's journey navigating interweaving systems of power and oppression - the patriarchal and the nationalist - in her fight for justice and equality. As a shepherd at the age of 5, she led her flock across the green mountains of Laqiya, her village in the Negev in southern Israel, and later ran literacy classes for the women in her tribe in her early teens, the beginning of a lifelong career organizing people to promote policy change for Israel's Bedouin, a minority within the Palestinian minority. She later established economic empowerment programs for marginalized women, helping to found an Arab-Jewish school, and creating organizations to promote shared society. Where others come up against obstacles, Amal builds bridges; not by sacrificing her identity, but by embracing it. Each thread of her identity - Bedouin, Arab, woman, feminist, Palestinian and Israeli - is woven into the tent of her life, a tent where no one is left out in the sun.

The fifth daughter in a patriarchal society, and an indigenous Bedouin in Israel, Amal came into this world fighting for her voice to be heard in a community that did not prize girls. At birth it was only her father who looked at her and said "I see hope in her face. I want to call her Amal [hope] in the hope that Allah will give us boys after her." Five brothers were indeed to follow.Hope is a Woman''s Name is a rare look at Bedouin life from the even rarer perspective of a Bedouin girl. Amal challenged authority from birth, slowly learning where her community''s boundaries lay and how to navigate them.As a shepherd at the age of 6, Amal led her flock of sheep across the green mountains of Laqiya, her village in the Negev in southern Israel. Given such responsibility, though rarely recognition, Amal came to understand her community and forge her skills as a leader.Aged 13 and frustrated by the constraints put on her education as a girl, Amal set up literacy classes for the adult women in her village. She aimed to teach them not only how to read, but to value education itself: "I wanted them to taste an education so that they would never again deprive their daughters of one." This was the beginning of a lifelong career initiating projects that would help create change for the Bedouin – a minority within Israel''s Palestinian minority – and for their women in particular. She established economic empowerment programmes for marginalized women, helped found an Arab-Jewish school, and created organizations to promote shared society.At every turn she had to face the challenges of tradition – as well as the prejudices of Israeli society – to create new possibilities that would allow women to empower themselves.Amal has learnt to embrace every aspect of her complicated identity – Bedouin, Arab, woman, Palestinian and Israeli citizen – to help create social change, build bridges with other communities and inspire hope.Hope is a Woman''s Name is an intimate portrayal of a little-known culture and its strengths, values, morals and boundaries. It is a rare and moving story.

This second edition of Palestinian Activism in Israel deepens the exploration of Bedouin women’s leadership in the Naqab through the intergenerational activist biographies of three women from the Al-Sana lineage. Building on the first edition’s focus on Amal Al-Sana Alh’jooj, a pioneering Palestinian Bedouin activist, this volume weaves together the narratives of her mother, Hajar Al-Sana, and grandmother, Rukiya Al-Sana, to examine the everyday practices of female political agency in this Bedouin society. It traces how three generations of women navigated patriarchy and colonialism during the Nakba and the Siyag Reservation to the Intifadas and the aftermath of the Prawer Plan. Situated amid gender, identity, community, and tribal belonging, the book describes the lived experiences of Naqab Bedouin women’s steadfastness (sumud) and survival. Through empirical research and anthropological description, it highlights the intersectionalities and complexity of their activism(s) and calls for rethinking the multigenerational experiences of Palestinian women in the Middle East through the perspectives of the activists themselves.