Fighting on 2 Fronts: <i> Intifada </i> and Sexism : Palestinians: Longtime activist takes on both Yasser Arafat and wife-beaters in the occupied territories.

JABALIYA CAMP, Israeli-Occupied Gaza Strip — At 42, Nama Haloul wears her scars like medals won in the Palestinians’ long fight for freedom--and as inspirations for the tough political struggle she sees ahead.

Her right hand is plastic, installed by Israeli doctors when they amputated the mangled remains of her own after an attempt to bomb an Israeli army camp here more than 21 years ago. She extended it without a flinch to greet a recent visitor at her refugee home.

Her left eye is glass--hers was destroyed, she explained, by dozens of brutal interrogations during the 14 years she spent as a convicted terrorist in Israeli prisons.

Her face is creased, her hair gone gray--the premature aging of a committed women’s rights activist who is fighting as hard now against her own leaders as she did against the Israeli army that has occupied her native Gaza Strip for more than two decades.

Without even a trace of bitterness, Haloul--whose entire family now consists of just two adopted orphans of the Palestinian intifada (uprising)--reflected on the past, present and future of the struggle for a now-emerging Palestinian entity.

She has come to symbolize that fight for many Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied lands since her release two months ago from an Israeli military jail.

“I don’t believe I made a great sacrifice,” Haloul said. “I must do much more. At this time, the need is greater than ever before.”

But Haloul is more than a symbol. She is emblematic of the character of potential leaders who are emerging around a shared hope to help shape the autonomous Palestinian government to which Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat agreed, beginning in Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho.

As negotiators for Arafat and Rabin continue to haggle over implementation of that agreement--months after their historic signing ceremony in Washington in September--Haloul has established herself as an outspoken, articulate critic of a process of nation-creation that many Palestinians fear is flawed.

At the heart of that criticism is Arafat himself.

“I am most worried now that our new government will be a dictatorship and not a democracy,” Haloul said.

“What I feel now is the impression that Mr. Arafat is giving to many people here that he will be a dictator,” she said. “I respect him. I am not against him. But he is taking so many decisions by himself, without listening to or considering the ideas of many who have fought so hard for what we are about to achieve.”

Haloul uses herself as a prime example. She petitioned Arafat after her release from prison to head a government department for women’s affairs in Gaza. Haloul established the Union of Women Workers there more than a decade ago and has since used it as a powerful vehicle to defend and promote women’s rights.

Arafat refused. Instead, he gave the post to the wife of a prominent member of his Fatah faction in Gaza, a doctor with little experience in the Palestinian women’s movement.

“I am against the way Mr. Arafat works, but I am not against him,” Haloul repeated, adding she has appealed the appointment and remains hopeful that Arafat will reconsider. “These are difficult times. We must be careful with our words and our deeds. We don’t want to go the way of Islamic dictatorship, either.”

Haloul said her campaign for a democratic Palestine is a struggle on two fronts. Of the two, she said that it is the fundamentalist Islamic groups, which enjoy wide popular support in Gaza, that pose the tougher challenge for the women of Palestine.

“There is a big difference between Arafat and Hamas,” Haloul said, referring to the Palestinians’ largest Islamic movement. “Arafat at least thinks it will be a democratic country. Maybe he is starting wrongly. But the people will demand democracy. And he promised democracy.

“Hamas is different,” she said. “What has Hamas done for the Palestinian woman? When they needed her, they used her. They put her on the street to throw bombs and stones. When they get independence, they will order her to sit at home. If we go the way of these bad habits and closed minds, we will go back a hundred years. Is this what we fought for all these many years?”

For Haloul, Palestinian women have suffered most through the decades of Israeli occupation and the six-year Palestinian intifada.

“The women suffered much more than the men. Why, you ask?” Haloul said. “It was like this: When a clash would take place with the Israelis, the men sent the women to throw stones and fight. It wasn’t because the men did not want to fight but because the soldiers would hesitate to shoot the women. Instead, they beat them.

“And in our society, the woman is stronger against these beatings than the man,” she added. “She is used to it. It is now in our culture that women are beaten by their husbands. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women have complained to our women’s union about this. And these are the wives of well-educated men.”

Dr. Eyad Sarraj, a psychiatrist in Gaza, confirmed that wife-beating has become widespread in the occupied territories. It is, he said, a direct result of occupation.

“A victim identifies with his attacker,” he asserted. “Here, most of the men have been beaten by soldiers, and that’s why many of them go home and beat their wives or their children.”

Haloul said she has had not personally experienced spousal abuse; she never married. She never had time.

“The only reason I am not married is because of my work,” she said. “I have given all my life to my work, and to my adopted children.”

With such sacrifices behind her and challenges ahead, Haloul still smiled broadly and nodded when asked whether she remains optimistic about the future.

“Yes, for sure,” she said. “Of course I want a democratic state, and I want a democratic voice. I want all my people back here from exile. I want all other prisoners released. And I want full rights for women.

“But if the Israelis leave here as promised,” she said, “this will be the beginning for us. We will be rid of the occupation that has left us with so many of these problems. And we will be left with the strength it has given us--especially our women, who fought, who raised her children, who lost her children.

“We are waiting a long time for this. We are patient. And we have learned how to fight.”