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Simona Sharoni

Abstract

A careful examination of women’s involvement in peacebuilding and conflict transformation in Israel and Palestine provides a unique perspective on key turning points in the history of the conflict in the past two and one-half decades, since the first Palestinian uprising, knows as the Intifada. The article analyzes the changes in modes of organizing, as well as in the broader vision and key strategies of women’s organizing, mostly at the grassroots level, on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli divide. By exposing the gendered dimensions of the conflict, women activists have began to transform the cultures of their respective collectivities, ensuring that gender and other inequalities and oppressions are not overlooked. Notwithstanding the challenges facing women in both communities, the article concludes that the women who have been working for justice and peace in the region constitute a critical mass that will not only impact the nature of conflict transformation but will also be instrumental in envisioning post-conflict realities.

Author Biography

Simona Sharoni is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Chair of the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. She is the author of Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women’s Resistance, (Syracuse University Press, 1995). Her research and writing included a comparative analysis of gender dynamics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the North of Ireland as well as a critical examination of militarization and especially the interplay between political violence and violence against women. Her current work is on the ethics and politics of solidarity as a feminist practice as reflected in struggles for justice and peace around the world, especially as they apply to the struggle for Palestinian self-determination and a just and lasting peace in Palestine and Israel.

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