The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

In the mid-’70s, Yasser Arafat and the PLO slowly moved towards accepting
a two-state solution. Some PLO representatives in Europe
started secret contacts with Israelis and diaspora Jews; they were assassinated
by Palestinian extremists. One of those meetings took place
in our home, between Issam Sartawi (1935-1983), an envoy of Arafat
and Arie “Lova” Eliav (1921-2010), who had been a general secretary of
the then Israeli socialist party, the Mapai. Sartawi was killed in 1983.
In 1985, I became the president of the Secular Jewish Centre in Brussels.
In December 1987, the First Intifada started. In March 1988, we
organized a public conference “Give Peace a Chance” in Brussels, with
prominent Israelis and Palestinians. It was the first public encounter be -
tween Israelis and Palestinians.
In December 1988 an international Jewish feminist conference took
place in Jerusalem. One of the speakers was the leader of the “Mothers
of the Plaza de Mayo” in Buenos Aires, Renée Epelbaum. Her three
sons had disappeared during the dictatorship. She told about the struggle
of the mothers to find out about their children. It was a very emotion -
al moment; many women in the room in the Jerusalem hotel were
crying.
Considering the fact that the Intifada was taking place only a few hundred
meters from where we were, we discussed it and came to the
conclusion that we could use the experience of the women of Buenos
Aires to bring Israeli and Palestinian women together. It was obvious
that Brussels was the best place to organize such an encounter. It
wasn’t easy to get the project accepted, because some of the members
of the board of the CCLJ believed that a women’s encounter would be
too emotional and not political.
In May 1989, the conference “Give Peace a Chance – Women speak
out” was organized with a series of public panels. The first day was
awful. The Palestinian women spoke about their suffering. In the afternoon
of the second day Suad Amiry, a Palestinian, said: “So far we have
only listened to the suffering – but we want to try something else, we
want to look at the future. I know, I will never go back to Jaffa, but you
Israeli women will not stay in Hebron.” This was the breakthrough and
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