Fathiya Rheime took part in socialist politics as a student at the Palestinian Bir Zeit University, but said she never became involved in Palestinian politics, which were then controlled by men. The only other woman to serve as a Palestinian mayor was appointed to the job in the 1980s before the Palestinian Authority was created.
Rheime said she was encouraged to seek public office by her husband, Majdi Rheime, who has served three years of an eight-year sentence in a Palestinian jail for his role in the assassination of the Israeli tourism minister.
Fathiya Barghouti Rheime is the first Palestinian woman to be elected mayor.
(Molly Moore -- The Washington Post)
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In the West Bank elections, Fathiya Rheime benefited from the support of her own and her husband's large extended clans. She is from the same tribe as Mustafa Barghouti, who failed in his independent bid to become Palestinian Authority president, and Marwan Barghouti, the popular jailed Palestinian leader.
Even so, the more traditional members of the community considered it inappropriate for a young mother to hold political office. But Rheime said she ran for election "to banish the idea that our society is a male society." Her children, especially her daughter, relish the idea of their mom as mayor, said Rheime, who has a soft voice, gentle laugh and luminous green eyes.
After little more than a week running a municipality with 29 employees, Rheime, who has a degree in Arabic literature, said, "I feel like I'm under the microscope; everybody is watching and waiting. I need to work harder than a man to prove myself in society."
Two blocks from the squat, cream-colored limestone municipal building at the main intersection of Beit Rima, where a green Hamas flag flutters from a soaring white minaret and small stores hug the street corners, many residents seemed enthusiastic about their local political phenomenon.
"We are happy for her, although we voted for men," said Zarifa Abdul Hadi, who described her age as "more than 60" as she adjusted a flowing white scarf around a face as wrinkled as a walnut shell.
Ahmed Fahdel, 16 and still too young to vote, offered a common view in an electorate disillusioned with the bloated, feuding political bureaucracy of the Fatah movement that Arafat left behind. "We have tried men," said the teenager with gelled black hair. "Now it's time to try women."
