RAMALLAH: A young Palestinian-American is the driving force behind a nascent #MeToo movement in this patriarchal corner of the world, selling T-shirts, hoodies and denim jackets with the slogan “Not Your Habibti (darling)” as a retort for catcalls and writing down women’s complaints from her perch in a West Bank square.

Yasmeen Mjalli wants to encourage Palestinian society to confront sexual harassment, a largely taboo subject.

“What I am doing is to start a conversation that people are really afraid to have,” said Mjalli as she put her merchandise on hangers in a clothing store.

The 21-year-old has faced backlash from conservatives and from some activists who say fighting Israel’s occupation is the priority for Palestinians.

Her parents, who grew up in a Palestinian farming town, immigrated to the United States and returned to the West Bank five years ago, weren’t pleased, either.

“To be able to have peace with them, I have to check my feminism at the door, which is very difficult because that’s really who I am,” said Mjalli, who moved to the West Bank last year, after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a degree in art history.

Mjalli and other activists say that starting a conversation about sexual harassment doesn’t mean copying the #MeToo movement in the United States, where victims are speaking out in growing numbers.

Cultural differences require a different approach.

Women across the Arab world have made strides towards equality, outnumbering men in many universities and joining the work force in growing numbers. Yet they struggle to break free from the constraints of patriarchy.

Traditional societies assign rigid gender roles, with men as guardians of their female relatives’ “honour” — effectively a ban on male-female friendships.

Rules are looser among urban elites. But even in Ramallah — the most liberal West Bank town with many Western-educated Palestinians and foreigners — women watch their step.

Women risk getting blamed if they complain, said Wafa Abdelrahman, who runs a closed Facebook group for female journalists. “The blame will be, ‘for sure, you did something wrong or you gave the wrong signal, the way you dress, the way you talk’,” she said.

University student Nadine Moussa, 22, said women know the trouble spots.

“I never ever walked in the city centre of Ramallah without being harassed verbally, but I don’t face that in the neighbourhoods,” she said, adding that her co-ed campus is relatively safe.

Palestinian police receive few complaints about street harassment, said spokesman Loay Irzeqat. He believes some women fear unintended consequences, such as male relatives attacking accused harassers.

Police mostly deal with online harassment, with about one-third of some 2,000 electronic crimes cases in 2017 revolving around men blackmailing women for sexual or financial gain, he said. Typically, extortionists threaten to publish photos deemed compromising, such as showing a traditional woman without her headscarf.

Women lack legal protection, despite improvements such as the establishment of a police sex crimes unit, said Amal Kreishe, founder of the Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development to which Mjalli donates some of her proceeds.