The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

was no way to work with partners who justified the Israeli attack. And
the attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, which left nine Turkish crew members
dead, raised tensions still further.
On top of these polarizing events, a general fatigue about the entrenched
conflict had afflicted the group. The women involved had been fighting
for a cause they considered just, but then they came to see that the
conflict was moving in the opposite direction.
All along, throughout the more than twenty years of common activities
for a just peace, the relations between the Palestinian and the Israeli
woman activists were in effect based on asymmetrical conditions, due
to the huge differences in the daily lives of women in the two societies.
Some considerations about the Middle East conflict
The Middle East conflict is not comparable with the other cases in terms
of international ramifications and the development of violence within it,
even if certain aspects are certainly similar. It shows, in all its phases,
how dramatically the international community can repeatedly fail, and
how mutual disillusionment over unfulfilled hopes for peace can again
and again lead to the escalation of violence. The spiral of violence and
cynicism shows a degree of negative creativity that never fails to shock.
The main issue in the conflict is the struggle for land, and state autonomy.
In the background however, both sides are continually mythologizing
history and using religion as legitimation. It also seems that both
sides understand each other’s wounds perfectly well, and know best to
direct their attacks.
Unlike the other cases of war and conflict examined in our project, the
Middle East conflict has been going on for over sixty years, with no solution
in sight. Another difference from the other cases is that here, we
are dealing with a peace movement on both sides, so that we have here,
in terms of the cooperation in the framework of our project, a reverse
asymmetry: while in real life, the superior power of Israel and the factual
inferiority and weakness of the Palestinian side is evident, the relation -
ship in the cooperation between the Israeli peace movement and those
Palestinian groups willing to cooperate with it is exactly reversed: the
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