The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

Israeli peace movement is a weak, currently vanishingly small minority
in Israel, which is ignored by its own public opinion and by the majority
of its own people. Publicly prominent personalities who make a commitment
to the peace process are often subjected to attacks and insults.
By contrast, the representatives of the Palestinian side who are prepared
for civil society cooperation always also represent the collective interests
of the Palestinian people. This reverse asymmetry is, in the difficult process
of understanding between Palestinian and Israeli peace forces, impossible
to overlook. On the other hand, the small peace projects, the
participation of Israeli-Jewish activists in protests, and the cooperation
between women of both sides represents a peace dividend in time of
violence and war – a peace dividend which depends on the hope for
peace, and refuses to abandon this hope.
The history of the Middle East conflict is marked by the effects of colonialism
just as much as by the effects of the rule of the Nazi regime in
Europe and the extermination of European Jewry. The colonial power
Great Britain initially supported the settlement of Jewish immigrants,
and then ended it during World War II, during a time of the greatest existential
emergency of European Jews. In 1948, it supported a two-state
solution, and then vanished from the scene under pressure from the
Jew ish uprising. In 1948, after the murder of six million European Jews
by the Nazis, no western country could dare to fight against the founding
of the state of Israel.
We must not forget the experience of the survivors who were able to
flee that inferno: virtually no country in the world had been prepared to
accept them without conditions, and many refugees did not succeed in
finding a safe haven, since they had to wait too long for a visa, or had
no chance of getting one in the first place. Without a doubt, Israeli policy
cannot be understood without the background of this collective Jewish
trauma.
Psychological warfare is being carried out by it both sides with extreme
precision:
The Palestinian reaction to the expulsion from their country has from
the start targeted this trauma of the Jewish population: first, as a threat
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