Travel to Palestine April 28 – May 8 2017

The purpose of my trip was to prepare the Conference “Gender and Sharīʿah in Muslim Legal Theory and Practice: the case of Israel and Palestine” , October 12-14 2017 in Göttingen and to deliver the invitation to high ranking persons personally to, for example,  the Head of Personal Status Prosecutor’s Office Sumoud al-Damiri. She is one of the few female Sharia judges in the West Bank. The current and the former Qāḍī al-Quḍāt were invited too, as well as Prof. Ali Sartawi from Nablus University. He had been part of the committee drafting a new Palestinian Family Law which should in future replace the 1976 Jordanian Personal Status Law which is applied at the moment in the West Bank. Furthermore, contact was established to the colleagues of the Law and Sharia faculties of al-Quds University /East Jerusalem. The University of Göttingen currently prepares a “Memorandum of Understanding” with this university and contacts are made with colleagues from different faculties, especially the law and the Sharia faculty. At Hebron University Prof. Mutaz M. Qafisheh, Dean of the College of Law and Political Science, was very interested in the project as was Prof. Loai Ghazwan from the Sharia faculty. Prof. Ghazwan will be invited to take part in the conference also.

In addition, some preparations were made for a longer field research which hopefully will take place in winter 2017/18 or in spring 2018 at the latest and which will be the last necessary research before finalizing the monograph “Gender and law in Palestine” which will be published as an outcome of the HERA –project “Uses of the past” by Prof. Dr. Irene Schneider.