On her way to school, fourteen-year-old Tamam stopped to speak to me. Pointing to her battered backpack, she asked me what I thought she carried on her back. I was somewhat bewildered by her question, so she answered me herself: ‘Do you think I carry only books in my pack? I carry the burdens of the Palestinian people.’ I relate this brief and multilayered exchange with a young girl because, it seems to me, it epitomizes where we must begin any discussion of ‘women and nation’ in Palestine. It is also critical to remember that in this instance the ‘nation’ is, as of yet, a concept only; it does not materially exist as such. Additionally, what Tamam's comment reveals is that in the case of Palestine we need to reprogramme our thinking on what it means to ‘build a nation’ and of what such a ‘nation’ might consist.

The history of the region is perhaps an all too familiar and almost tedious case study of marking, as on an imaginary map, a ‘nation’ and then an attempt to articulate a corresponding ‘nationhood’ through actual geographic borders and boundaries.