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ABSTRACT
This study explores the way intermarriage between Palestinian women and their Jewish spouses occurs in a context where historical and structural inequalities underlie the relationship between the two groups, and the way these women negotiate their crossing of ethnic, religious and social borders under these circumstances. Studying Jewish-Palestinian intermarriage enhances our understanding of intermarriages between spouses who differ in ethnicity, religion and culture, and in which one spouse belongs to an indigenous—not immigrant—minority; it also enhances our understanding of the intersectionality of ethnicity, religion and gender in the context of intermarriage where gender relations are tightly controlled by society.Footnote1 Using in-depth interviews with ten Palestinian women married to Jewish men, the findings reveal that social change and educational expansion were the main factors underlying the appearance of ethno-mixed marriage among Palestinian women in Israel. Nevertheless, endogamy weakened among the selected group, where several social factors facilitated intermarriage. Negotiating spousal family relations was affected mainly by the way in which Israeli society defines, constructs, and perpetuates the ethnic and religious borders and the inclusionary-exclusionary relations with the Arab minority. This explains why, despite the social change taking place among Palestinians in Israel, very few of these types of marriages take place.
Notes
1. The terms Palestinian, Arab and Palestinian-Arab are used interchangeably in this paper. These terms refer to; Palestinian citizens living within the Green Line of Israel.
2. Abu-Baker, “Career women or working women? Change versus stability for young Palestinian women in Israel,” 85-88.
3. Rodríguez-García and Freedman, “Exploring the meaning of intermarriage”; Collet, “Mixed couples in France,” 61-64.
4. Werbner and Modood, Debating cultural hybridity: Multi-cultural identities and the politics of anti-racism, 10−15.
5. Collet, “Mixed couples in France,” 61-64.
6. Leach, “Caste and race: Comparative approaches,” 19.
7. Ibid., 17-22.
8. Gordon, Assimilation in American life, 60−80.
9. Merton, “Intermarriage and the social structure”; Rodriguez-Garcia, “Intermarriage and Integration Revisited.”
10. Wang, The rise of intermarriage.
11. Castles and Miller, The age of migration, 1-18.
12. Vertovec, Transnationalism, 53.
13. Dion and Dion, “Gender, immigrant generation, and ethno−cultural identity.”
14. Menz, “By Tenderness and Flattery’.”
15. McGrath, Illicit Love: Interracial Sex and Marriage in the United States and Australia, 294-95.
16. Stoler, “Making Empire Respectable: The politics of race and sexual morality in 20th-century colonial cultures.”
17. Stoler, “Making Empire Respectable: The politics of race and sexual morality in 20th-century colonial cultures.”
18. Rodríguez-García, “Mixed marriages and transnational families in the intercultural context,” 403-405.
19. Ibid.
20. Menz, “By Tenderness and Flattery’.”
21. Collet, “Mixed couples in France”, 64-65.
22. Abu-Baker, “Career women or working women?”, 88-92.
23. CPS, 2008.
24. For details about intermarriage between Jews and Arabs, see Abady, Citation1991; Abu-Rayya, Citation2000; Cohen, 1969; Racine and Dein, 2010; Hakak, a2015; Hakak, b2015.
25. Hakak, “Battling Against Interfaith Relations in Israel,” 1-3.
26. Weiner-Levy, “The flag bearers,” 218.
27. Halabi, “The Faith, the Honor of Women, the Land: The Druze Women in Israel,” 427-430.
28. Kalmijn, “Intermarriage and homogamy.”
29. Kalmijn, “Intermarriage and homogamy”; Schoen and Cheng, “Partner choice and the differential retreat from marriage.”
30. Kalmijn, “Intermarriage and homogamy: Causes, patterns and trends”; Lee and Edmonston, “New Marriages, New Families,” 6.
31. Ibid.
32. Furtado, “Human capital and interethnic marriage decisions.”
33. Muttarak and Heath, “Who intermarries in Britain?” 275-278.
34. Schwartz and Mare, “Trends in educational assortative marriage from 194o to 2003.”
35. Wozniak, “Are College Graduates More Responsive to Distant Labor Market Opportunities?”, 945.
36. Schwartz and Mare, “Trends in educational assortative marriage from 194o to 2003.”
37. Muttarak and Heath, “Who intermarries in Britain?”, 275-278.
38. Sohoni, “Unsuitable Suitors.”
39. Ibid.
40. Al-Haj, “The Status of the Palestinians in Israel.”
41. Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, Citation2015.
42. Abu-Baker, “Career women or working women?”.
43. Khamaisi, “Urbanization and urbanism in the Arab settlements in Israel.”
44. Ibid.
45. Khattab and Miaari, “The Occupational mismatch amongst Palestinians and Jews in Israel,” 1-5.
46. Haidar, “Arabs in the Israeli labor force.”
47. Abu-Baker, “Gender policy in family and society among Palestinian citizens of Israel,” 456.
48. Sabbah-Karkabi and Stier, “The relations of education and age at marriage among Palestinian women in Israel.”
49. Lewin, “Marriage patterns among Palestinians in Israel,” 372-377.
50. Sabbah-Karkabi and Stier, “The relations of education and age at marriage among Palestinian women in Israel.”
51. Ibid.
52. Abu-Baker, “Gender policy in family and society among Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
53. Khattab and Miaari, “The Occupational mismatch amongst Palestinians and Jews in Israel.”
54. Ghanem, The Palestinian-Arab minority in Israel, 1948-2000.
55. Hakak, “The ‘Undesirable Relationships’ between Jewish Women and Arab Men,” 976-80.
56. Fogiel-Bijaoui, “Familism, postmodernity and the state.”
57. Triger,The Gendered Racial Formation, 481.
58. Racin and Dein, “Jewish-Arab couple relationships in Israel,” 278-282.
59. Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, Census data Citation2008.
60. Hakak, “The ‘Undesirable Relationships’ between Jewish Women and Arab Men.”
61. Pew Center, 2016.
62. Guttman Center’s Israeli Democracy Index (2016).
63. For details about intermarriage among Israeli Jews see Okun, “The Effects of Ethnicity and Educational Attainment on Jewish Marriage Patterns”; Benjamin and Barash, “‘He Thought I would be like My Mother’.”
64. For details about intermarriage between Jews and Arabs, see Abady, Citation1991; Abu-Rayya, 2000; Cohen, 1969.
65. For details about intermarriage between Jews and Arabs, see Racine and Dein, 2o1o; Hakak, a2015; Hakak, b2015.
66. Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, Census data Citation2008.
67. Hakak, “Battling Against Interfaith Relations in Israel,” 1-5.
68. Andreassen and Henningsen, Menneskeudstilling: Fremvisninger af eksotiske mennesker i Zoologisk Have og Tivoli. Tiderne Skifte, 2011.cited in Bancel, The Invention of Race: Scientific and Popular Representations, 2014.
69. Colter et. al, “Education and Racial Intermarriage in Brazil”, 273-78.
70. Kalmijan, “Intermarriage and homogamy.”
71. Abu-Baker, “Gender policy in family and society among Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
72. Arjona and Checa, “The marriage market in Spain,” 300−304.
73. Qian and Zhenchao, “Who intermarries?”.
74. Abu-Baker, “Gender policy in family and society among Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Maha Karkabi-Sabbah
Maha Karkabi-Sabbah is currently a post-doctor fellow at Ben-Gurion University and has recently finished her post-doctoral fellowship at Tel Aviv University, and at the Center for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London. She is also an associate researcher at The Center for Research and Study of the Family- University of Haifa. Her current works concentrate on family, gender, inequality, and Palestinian Society in Israel. She is the author of a number of articles on these themes in journals such as Studies in Family Planning, and Israeli Sociology (in Hebrew).