Women try to break political silence on Occupation
Thousands of women from the Women Wage Peace movement demonstrate outside the Israeli parliament, March 4, 2015 Photo by Miriam Alster/Flash90
After decades of conflict, Israeli women say ‘enough’
By AFP / Ma’an news
March 18, 2015
JERUSALEM — As Israel readies for a general election, the issue of peace with the Palestinians has been noticeably absent from debate. But a group of women is seeking to change that.
Braving intermittent rain to stand for hours outside Israel’s parliament building in Jerusalem this week, thousands of women, young and old, religious and secular, Arab and Jewish, chanted and waved placards, demanding a solution to the conflict be found, or at least discussed, by politicians.
The Women Wage Peace organization, formed after a devastating summer war in the Gaza Strip that killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians and 73 people on the Israeli side, are hoping their voice will be heard as Israelis go to the polls on March 17.
“We’re the only non-partisan organization which is working on the ground to bring new hope for peace, and bust the myth that there is no one we can talk to about it,” says Michal Shimar, a founder of the group.
Women Wage Peace counts some 7,000 members, all female, and another 15,000 supporters mostly active on social media, Shimar says.
The group’s aim is to push the next government, whichever that is, to resume peace talks with Palestinians and come to a final agreement that will end decades of often bloody conflict.
At Wednesday’s rally, voters chanted: “We will vote for a peace deal,” and “We choose life.”
Speakers slammed the right wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the July-August military campaign against Gaza militants.
“We’ve suffered through enough wars,” one speaker shouted.
“Among us are women who will raise the next generation of soldiers who will be forced to go to war. It’s enough!”
Taboo topic
Netanyahu’s Likud party and rivals the centre-left Zionist Union are taking centre stage in electioneering.
Campaigning in Israel is dominated by personal attacks on the prime minister, accusations over rising living costs and security against perceived threats of a nuclear Iran and militants on the Syria frontier.
But little is ever said on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and the Palestinian question.
The last round of negotiations broke down in April after nine months, despite concerted efforts by the United States to reach an agreement for the two sides to live in peace.
Mutual recriminations abounded, and the collapse of talks centered on Netanyahu’s government continuing to build Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, a move the international community repeatedly slammed.
Another government under Netanyahu, who is predicted to win the election for a fourth term, is unlikely to press for peace, with members of the current cabinet opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.
But even Netanyahu’s rival in the Zionist Union, Isaac Herzog, has avoided the topic, despite being in favor of a two-state solution, insisting instead it would be up to the Palestinians as to whether peace can be achieved.
‘War against youth’
As an independent organization, Women Wage Peace does not say who it would rather see as prime minister, but simply insists whoever is in office seriously address the Palestinian conflict.
It hopes its grassroots approach, by organizing debate and conferences throughout Israel, will help bring that about.
“During the war, I promised myself that my son would not be killed in combat,” says Lili Weisberger, a member of the group whose 21-year-old son survived fighting in Gaza during his military service.
“I decided I would take action so this nightmare could never recur,” and joined the organization.
Women Wage Peace has condemned the “militarization of society” in Israel, where Jewish teenagers, after leaving school, are required to do military service — three years for men, two for women — that often sends them into combat zones.
“I don’t want to see anymore of this war against the youth, with 18 or 20-year-old Israeli soldiers on one side and Palestinian children on the other,” says Amal Rihan, a mother-of-four and Arabic teacher living near Tel Aviv.
“The only solution is to reach a peace deal.”
Members of Women Wage Peace gather in the capital from across the country to protest stalled peace negotiations, March 4, 2015. Photo by Marc Israel Sellem, JPost
Israel election: New women’s group demands candidates address the issue of peace
The movement was started by several women driven to despair by last summer’s conflict in Gaza
By Ben Lynfield, The Independent
March 09, 2015
JERUSALEM –With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting that there is no Palestinian partner ready to create it, and his challenger, Isaac Herzog, choosing what he says very carefully, the word shalom, or peace, has been largely absent during the campaigning for the Israeli general election to be held next Tuesday.
But a new and growing grass-roots organisation, Women Wage Peace, which counts thousands of members from all over Israel, is struggling to push peace on to the agenda. It is calling on voters to choose candidates who will work towards a peace agreement with the Palestinians, which it thinks is both possible and essential.
“We want to change the dialogue, to have a more hopeful dialogue putting peace at the top of our priority list because we believe it’s not just a geopolitical necessity. It’s an internal necessity for Israel,” said Yael Elad, chief financial officer at a Tel Aviv venture capital fund, who is the group’s spokeswoman. “For Israel to achieve social, educational and health-related targets, we have to have a peace agreement in place,” she added.
The movement was started by several women driven to despair by last summer’s conflict in Gaza. The 50-day conflict left more than 2,000 Palestinians dead, the vast majority of them civilians, and thousands more injured. On the Israeli side, more than 60 soldiers lost their lives, as well as a number of civilians.
The group has taken off through parlour meetings and social media. Its activists have shifted into high gear for the election, fanning out at some 40 street junctions every Friday to press the message to voters. And almost every evening, Women Wage Peace’s “election patrols” attend candidates’ speeches, lobbying voters and challenging the candidates to voice their views about a peace agreement.
They have their work cut out for them in a society in which peace became a dirty word after the unravelling of the 1993 Oslo Agreement and subsequent Palestinian suicide bombings, seen by Israelis as proof that there was no partner to create peace. Mr Herzog, the leader of the Israeli Labour Party, believes that speaking of peace harms his election prospects and prefers to use the word “separation’’ when talking about what he has in mind with the Palestinians.
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But Women Waging Peace knows that something must be done, and it rejects the no-partner view espoused by the current government. “If we make an effort there will be someone to talk to. We have to try,’’ said Maayan Sharvit-Elyasim, a steering committee member and mother of a 20-year-old soldier. If Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland could settle their differences after hundreds of years of conflict, surely Israelis and Palestinians can do the same, she asserts.
Three thousand women from the group rallied near Israel’s parliament on Wednesday against Mr Netanyahu’s speech to the United States Congress on Tuesday. The women say they want to keep the focus on the Palestinian issue, not Mr Netanyahu’s favourite subject of Iran and the nuclear deal that a number of world powers are trying to broker, which was the theme that formed the bulk of his address. Some of those on the march sang the “Song of Peace”, the anthem Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sang on a 1995 peace rally minutes before he was assassinated.
The women in the group say they are not willing to stand by and leave Israel’s discourse to those with a militaristic world view. “We see that every time there is a conflict: the television stations get filled with former generals, and women are never there,’’ Ms Elad said.
“They disappear completely when it comes to discussing these issues. We are demanding to be involved. The first thing that we bring to the discussion is that the army isn’t our point of reference. Our point of reference is our lives and our kids’ lives and their future.’’
The group’s real work will start after the election, Ms Elad says, when it becomes clear who will be in charge. “It will be time for us to rally and be in their faces day in and day out. I can imagine standing in front of their homes every morning. We have 7,000 women who can do this. We want to make sure they wake in the morning and go to bed in the evening thinking about how to bring this conflict to an end.”