Women Wage Peace is a broad grassroots movement, the largest in the country, that was founded in the summer of 2014 following Operation Protective Edge. The movement has tens of thousands of members from the right, the center and the left of the political spectrum, Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, from the center of the country and the periphery, women from kibbutzim and from settlements, all of whom are united in a demand for a mutually binding non-violent accord, agreeable to both sides. Members of the movement from all over the country initiate and organize diverse and creative activities on a regional and national level within the framework of 50 regional teams and 12 professional national teams: Strategy, Strategic Partnerships, Strategic Communication, Digital, Government Engagement, Reaching out to Palestinian and International Women, Projects, Diversity, Budget, Training, National Coordinators, and Logistics. We spoke to Hamutal Gouri, one of the women in the group. Here's their story.
Could
you tell us about the origins of Women Wage Peace?
Women Wage Peace is a grass-roots movement
of over 30,000 women in Israel. When I speak about the movement, I am speaking
on behalf of so many sisters. It was established in 2014, at the end of summer,
after the last war in Gaza – called Operation Protective Edge. It was a very
difficult summer - women in our country were no longer willing to sit alone and
despair about their children on the front. One woman had the idea of a peace
movement for a mutually binding peace agreement, and at least forty or fifty
women in her immediate circles agreed with a resounding yes. From a group of
forty or fifty, we quickly grew and the message brought many more, since it was
so compelling and inspiring for women across the country.
From
forty to thirty thousand, that’s a lot of diversity and dynamics coming
together. What are some of the principles that ground you in your work?
We started by articulating several key
principles which guide us. We are a political movement, but a non-partisan one.
We want to be very inclusive of women from all the different communities and
different political affiliations. And so women from the left, centre and right;
Jewish and Arab; religious and non-observant, of different ages, from all the
different geographical communities and so on, are included. We also make it a
point to only speak for, and we do not speak against. We are actively working
to create a new language, and a new political discourse that is based on
non-violent communication, radical listening, compassion, hope and faith in the
power of women and their knowledge to make a difference and to bring about positive
change. We are a flat, grass-roots, non-hierarchical and non-personal movement in
the sense that it is not about having one charismatic leader, but really about
the collective leadership of hundreds of thousands of women around the country.
You
have quite a diverse membership – could you talk a little bit about that?
As someone working in the feminist field
for over fifteen years now, I am amazed at how powerful this movement has
become. As a feminist activist and professional, I know that mobilizing people
to act for social change is not an easy task. I'm glad this movement allowed
people to start witnessing how much strength there is in putting women in
charge of social change. Throughout the years, we’ve focused on leadership,
activism and women being in the centre of social change. The most beautiful
thing about Women Wage Peace for me is to see women discovering their agency,
as they come into activism and coming into their leadership. This is just so
beautiful. There is so much to be achieved through the active participation and
engagement of women from all walks of society. In 3.5 years, we have grown to
from several dozens to more than 33,000 members in the country. We have around
70 local and regional coordinators from the North to the South and we are actively
working to constantly engage women, and men, in the movement. It is a women-led
movement, but 20% of our membership is men. We do not exclude men. Women are
the leaders and men are more than welcome to join us as allies and support our
efforts, but it is women-led. We were inspired by the UN Security Council
Resolution 1325. When it comes to promoting women’s political participation and
women’s engagement in peacebuilding, we are really standing on the shoulders of
giants, from the previous generation and the current generation, in Israel and
globally.
As a
political but non-partisan initiative, how do you reconcile divergent views and
channel them towards coexistence?
It is a labour of love. It is not easy, and
requires commitment to pluralism and inclusion as a part of the movement’s DNA.
This is true around the world – political affiliations are part of people’s
identities. When you seek to create a collective identity that is based on the
principles of pluralism and inclusion, it means we all have to be able to
listen very differently and react very differently to political opinions very
different from our own. It is difficult. I can tell you that personally, I went
through such a meaningful and transformative process of really being able to
not just to listen, but to listen with passion, respect and appreciation, and
to see the value in that. I think this is the key – to learn to appreciate the
value of different political opinions, and to see diversity and plurality of
opinions as a gift rather than as an obstacle. I think that what we are seeing
is that our commitment, the fact that we are not giving up no matter how
challenging it may be, we remain steadfastly committed to pluralism, diversity,
inclusion and intersectionality, we see how we grow not just in numbers, but
how we grow in power and in impact. People are looking at us and noticing that
we are different. There is something special about creating a politically inclusive
women’s peace movement. I think that this commitment to creating a new
language, based on very deep principles of no shaming, no blaming and being
able to develop a shared consciousness of reconciliation and mutual
understanding – it is a very deep political process.
Does
Women Wage Peace include Palestinian women as part of the collective? How do
they engage?
Women Wage Peace is based in Israel and is
an Israeli movement. Our major task is to influence public opinion and policy
makers in Israeil. However, we do have strategic partnerships with Palestinian women
leaders and peacebuilders. We are a volunteer movment, but we also have several
professional teams that handle different responsibilities – one of which is a
dedicated team working on strategic collaborations with Palestinian women
leaders. We have events around the year, and one mega event – the last one took
place in October this year. We had around 2,500 Palestinian women coming in to
participate.
What
are some of the major challenges you’ve encountered in your work?
One structural challenge remains that women
have been systematically excluded from conversations in peace and security. We
have to create a serious cultural shift and promote the concept that women can
be experts on issues of peace and
security and that they do deserve a place at the negotiation table. Security is
perceived rather narrowly in Israel, as being confined to the military lens. We
try to get people talking about their kinds of security – such as civil
security. There is a lot of perspective needed on ground, and that can come
only if we actually include more women’s voices. It is quite a big shift, in
itself. A second challenge is that there is a need to reignite the hope for
peace in the region. People want peace on both sides – no one wants a life in
strife. People want to raise their kids and live with their families in peace.
When you ask people if they want peace, they all say they do. But scratch
deeper and ask them if they think it can be achieved, and they will all tell
you that they don’t think it is possible. When people tell us that they’ve
tried peace and it hasn’t worked, we tell them that we’ve all also tried war
and it hasn’t worked – and so, we can afford to give peace a chance. Israel has
made and kept peace accords with Egypt and Jordan – in fact, on the eve of the
signing of the accord with Egypt, most people didn’t believe it would happen.
Reigniting hope is a big challenge. Another challenge we've encountered in the
first years of our work was that few people took us seriously. We, the women of
the movement, were not sure that they would take us seriously. I am so happy
that we have overcome this.
Do
you foresee an inclusion of a strategy for justice, as well? Since Sustainable
Peace can be built on the foundations of justice, how will this operate?
A few years ago, if you were to talk to
people about the idea of working for reconciliation before a political
agreement was in place, most peo ple would resist and tell you that it wouldn’t
be possible. But now, that is changing. More conversation and commitment has
entered the picture, and more people are working towards justice. We follow a
no-blaming and no-shaming approach, so our goal is to create a scenario where
we take responsibility for our lives and actions. A lot of healing does need to
happen, and it is here that the role of women is key. We need to shift from a
consciousness of victimhood and revenge to a consciousness of agency and reconciliation.