Three days before the land they inhabit roared again, hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli women They shouted enough for the umpteenth time. They are more united than it seems. On October 4, 72 hours after Hamas broke into the communities of southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, and the Hebrew Army responded with a war that has engulfed the Gaza Strip, they met. They laughed, they talked, they hugged. “It’s incredible because seems from another life“she acknowledges in surprise. Judith Gilbertfrom the Israeli organization Women for Peace (Women Wage Peace), from Jerusalem. A few checkpoints further south, in the city of Belenthe palestinian Marwa Hammadfrom the sister association Women of the Sun (Women of the Sun), echoes the same memory. But so much death and destruction has made them stronger.
“We live in this land and we are not going to leave, and they live on this land and they are not going to leave, so the solution is to find the place where we can live together,” says Hammad. From different contexts, but irremediably connected and separated only by dozens kilometers and an extensive wall, thousands of Palestinian and Israeli women are aware of the need to meet and talk. It is imperative to escape from the heartbreak and pain caused by the fellow citizens of the colleagues who sit on the other side of the table to prevent it from happening again. “It’s not that we are a pacifist movement””, Gilbert states calmly. “What we come to say is that if we have to reach an armed conflict, it should really be after have turned upside down every stone to find a solution,” he adds.
“War only brings more war”
Now, with more than 20,000 deaths between both sides in two and a half months of open war, the urgency to find it is evident. “After seven [en referencia al trágico 7 de octubre]we are clearer than ever that we must continue; Many were wrong but we were not wrong when we said that this will be resolved with a political agreement and not with war,” Gilbert explains to EL PERIÓDICO. “None of us wants to lose our family and wants to live in peace and dignity, because war only brings more war“, agrees Hammad. There are thousands of women with the same demand. With almost a decade of experience, the Israeli Women for Peace brings together the most massive grassroots movement in Israel with 50,000 members. The Palestinian Sun Women, in just three years of existence, have managed to bring together some 3,000 brave men. Before the war, they had about 300 members in Gaza.
“Working with our Palestinian colleagues is more important than ever to break one of the psychological barriers largest in Israel that denounces that [en el lado palestino] there is no partner to talk to“Gilbert remarks from a café in Jerusalem. “Our partner is these 3,000 Palestinian women who want the same thing as us: simply May your children liveand this will be achieved through political agreements and not military operations,” he says. Furthermore, as the chilling death tolls in the Gaza Strip indicate, it is not only their children who perish, but themselves. Therefore, like the main victims of any armed conflict, they demand a seat at that negotiating table that the Israeli and Palestinian leaders do not seem willing to start dusting off.
Feminize decision making
With almost a century of conflict over the same land, still to be resolved, these women They demand that they be allowed to speak. After endless and fruitless attempts to build peace, they believe that the time has come to give a chance to different looks. “This would be a huge change in our community, but we have already seen how far we can go by removing women and every time a war starts we are the ones we pay the highest price” Hammad explains to this newspaper from his office in the Bethlehem offices. “For women, the main thing is not the borders or where the dividing line will pass, but what life is going to be like the day after,” Gilbert defends. To achieve this, “decision-making must be feminized, the preservation of human life must be highlighted before any armed conflict,” he adds.
That is why, in their speeches, they talk about education, health, culture, art, music, sustainability, sports. In a territory soaked in blood For different generations, his words overflow with hope and confidence in a better tomorrow. Perhaps utopian, but they work to make utopia a reality. “Women have that ability to look beyond and to think about the care of human life above all; “we give birth, we understand,” says this Argentine-Israeli who lived in Barcelona for 20 years. Since October 7, Women for Peace and Women of the Sun have been dedicated to “mutual care” each other. When a month after the massacre, it was confirmed that one of the founders of the Israeli movement, Vivian Silver, had been murdered by Hamas, they all joined in the same cry. The first since seven.
Love for life
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“For us as Palestinians, There is no option to just sit and cry.“says Hammad. The trickle of deaths has not stopped for a moment in the almost 80 days of war. In the Gaza Strip, they number in the thousands, and in the occupied West Bank, in the hundreds. “The separation of the two communities for the apartheid wall has made many Palestinian women not know who the Israelis are, they only link them with the soldiers who come to their homes to arrest their children,” explains the co-founder of Mujeres del Sol. In their meetings, like that oasis on October 4, the first step is to get to know each other. Some end up sharing tragedies and tears with complete strangers. Not all of them They are mothers but they are united by irrepressible love for life.
With peace and the sun as their flag, Israeli and Palestinian women are united in this fight. “I am less about attaching myself to the earth and stones, and more about creating a prosperous life for the people who inhabit it; in the end everyone wants the same thing and wishing for it by saying that the other doesn’t have it doesn’t make any sense because if the other doesn’t have it, I’m not going to have it,” Gilbert defends. “Israel will not have peace until the Palestinians have peaceand vice versa,” she concludes. Her simple demand is to start talking, talking until there is nothing left to say, because it is life, so ephemeral on this land, that is at stake. “As a Palestinian woman, I will be devastated if I lose to my children, but just like any other mother in the world, so we don’t want anyone to feel that way,” summarizes Hammad.