“If We’d Had Women, We’d Have an Agreement”

Gender and Peace-Making in Israel-Palestine

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, passed in 2000, called for the mainstream involvement of women in conflict resolution and management. The Resolution intended to promote equal participation in peace processes, from which women had previously often been glaringly absent. This essay will focus on the peace-building processes of the 1990s – the decade preceding the passing of Resolution 1325 – in relation to the Israel-Palestine conflict, where there was only limited women’s representation. Drawing on scholarly discourse surrounding the role of women in peace-making and peace-keeping, this essay will trace the involvement of women in Israel-Palestine negotiations of the 1990s, considering their participation, impact and legacy.In order to thoroughly assess the role of female negotiators and peace builders in the Palestine-Israel context, it is worthwhile to understand the importance of such involvement. Female involvement in conflict resolution and management is credited with doing more than just adding perspectives on women’s issues. Instead, it contributes a sense of pluralism to negotiations, highlighting issues such as education and healthcare. In conflict resolution talks in the struggles in Guatemala, Northern Ireland and Darfur, the presence of leading female negotiators “elevated topics of inclusion, equality, and rights.”[1] By disestablishing otherwise exclusive ‘boys clubs’ of (male) military personnel and senior political figures, peace negotiations often consider a broader range of societal needs. Engaging with women as equals to men in any peace building processes contributes different perspectives.Neither are women peripheral to conflict and its consequences. Women and children are the primary victims of modern conflicts, rather than the predominantly male combatants.[2] Despite being excluded from decision-making, women suffer for the choices of their male counterparts. This makes it important to engage with women as credible negotiators for conflict resolution.Some discourse makes a distinction between women participating in conflict resolution as agents of masculine-dominated governments and female negotiators actively representing women as a constituency. According to Leila Hilal, a former legal adviser to Palestinian negotiators, women can only make a significant difference as participants in peace-making if they attend as voices for women and their concerns, instead of just engaging, without gendered contributions, in male-dominated discussions.[3] This is relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations of the 1990s, and to whether the few women involved – discussed below – were autonomous political actors or merely spokespeople for masculine governments.The peace processes of the 1990s are the most significant and most hopeful period of active negotiation between Israel and Palestine, and came in the aftermath of the “triumphantly masculine” First Intifada.[4] It is in this context that the limited female involvement in peace processes must be understood. In the first serious peace talks between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel, which took place in Madrid in 1991, women were active players and highly visible.[5] Indeed, the official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation was the academic and activist Hanan Ashrawi. She was a core adviser and a speechwriter for the delegation, and suggested afterwards that “as a woman I certainly brought my gender approach and awareness to the talks.”[6] (As a resident of East Jerusalem, she had previously been prevented from being a core negotiator by Israel.) The global media attention given to Ashrawi and her role in the Palestinian team is credited with the urgent summoning of parliamentarian Sarah Doron to join the Israeli lead negotiators, whose ranks were previously conspicuously lacking women.[7] There have as of yet been no assessments of Doron’s individual contributions as a female to the 1991 negotiations.It was at the beginning of the 1990s that Palestinian female activists began articulating a women’s agenda to be included as part of the broader struggle for a Palestinian state. This echoed the historical engagement between women’s movements and national liberation; as early as the 1930s and 1940s, the Palestinian national struggle was adopted as a priority in the global feminist movement for liberation and emancipation. The efforts of female activists in the early 1990s culminated in a technical team on women’s issues that advised and informed Palestinian negotiators in the discussions following the Madrid Conference.[8] At this stage, it seemed as though women were to be included as key participants in the peace building process between Israel and Palestine.However, by 1993 and the negotiations towards the Oslo Peace Accords, women had retreated from the tables of power. Some have attributed this to the fact that negotiating power was transferred to the Palestinian Authority, which lacked the representative diversity of the PLO. Hanan Ashrawi, who had led two years earlier in Madrid, suggested that women were being excluded because the decision-making was too serious and monumental to be the realm of women.[9] More generally, the Palestinian Authority governance structure solidified traditional patriarchal hierarchies, impeding women’s advancement in all fields of politics including international negotiations. The exclusion of women from core negotiating roles was equally present in the Israeli team. Sarai Aharoni of Hebrew University suggests there was a gendered division of labour, placing Israeli men as primary negotiators and women in supporting roles, including as secretaries, assistants and junior advisers.[10] Women on both sides of the conflict were, and continue to be, relegated to the domestic sphere as reproducers of the nation. They were to secure the future of the country through bearing children, whereas men would conduct the high level negotiations.[11] In both Palestine and Israel, motherhood was glorified, with feminine Palestinian heroism embodied by being Um al-Shaheed – the ‘mother of the martyr.’[12] Valerie Pouzol also suggests that the vocal nature of women’s peace groups in the early 1990s contributed to their marginalisation in the 1993 negotiations, arguing that the “tendency to deviate from nationalist loyalties” saw female-driven peace groups and their priorities sidelined from international dialogue by the male leadership and strictly nationalist priorities.[13]In 2000, at the Camp David talks convened by President Bill Clinton, there were no female negotiators or technical advisers invited to participate. Although the talks ended with a famous handshake broadcast across the world, there was no meaningful agreement towards resolving the conflict and the Second Intifada broke out later that year.