The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

activities, particularly during the long, hot summer months. …The games
give Gazan kids a chance to have fun and a sense of normality, in an environment
which is anything but normal.” (Report, p. 231)
The main basic activities initiated by UNRWA can be seen as the resist -
ance of the people of Gaza against the destruction of their condition of
life. Ghada Al Jadba concludes with the following:
“As the blockade enters its fifth year, the summer games for Gaza’s
children also enter their fifth year. Those children have proved to the
world that inside all of this despair and darkness, they still can play and
laugh. They will never be broken. They blocked the blockade by enjoying
their freedom. They are the centre of our investments, so we invest in
them – in their education and their health. They are the future, by believ -
ing in peace, love and hope. They believe in limiting the imposed blockade
only to the land, the air and the sea, but not to their minds and hearts.”
(Report, p. 233)
Israel
The conflict, from my point of view, is a political national struggle
be tween two national movements, who wish to exercise their fulfilment
of aspirations over one land. (Molly Malekar, Report, p. 188)
Molly Malekar’s report explores the attempts of peace building between
Israel and Palestine, and provides insight into the efforts of the Israeli
peace movement, and particularly the Israeli women’s movement, to
work against the occupation policies of the Israeli government, and to
build cooperative projects and strategies together with Palestinian
groups.
In her view, the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is as follows:
“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a political conflict directly connected
to and born alongside the rise of the national aspirations of the Jews for
an emancipation of the Jewish collective in the territory of the historic
biblical land of Israel.“ (Report, p. 173). With the foundation of the
State of Israel, the division of Jerusalem and the victory of the Israeli
troops against the Arabs in 1948, the conflict that has continued to this
day took shape. With the victory in the war of 1967 and the occupation
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