Meeting Palestinian & Israeli women peace activists

FRANCE 24 English

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00:00 week in the 51% France 24's Women's Show. Annette Young talks to courageous Palestinian

00:06 and Israeli women peacemakers and asks, are their voices being heard? Are we hearing their

00:12 voices? Are they even audible among the sound of the bombs?

00:18 It is indeed a very grim time, Shona, for those women activists, as you can appreciate.

00:24 But if anything, there is an urgency in their voice that I have never heard before, keeping

00:28 in mind I am a former Middle East correspondent and was there for many years. So when I reached

00:34 out to them, the message very much is it's now or never, not just for the region, but

00:39 for the whole world as such, because obviously this conflict is very much in danger of broadening

00:46 out and we could see direct involvement from the US and Iran, and that indeed would be

00:53 something of high risk. So to give a little bit of context, however,

01:00 before October 7th attacks by Hamas, both sides, as in both peace activists on the Palestinian

01:06 and the Israeli side, were very, very demoralised, primarily because of a far-right government

01:12 in Israel, which was doing as much as it could to expand settlement in the occupied West

01:18 Bank and also targeting people even on their own side. Anyone who was declared to be a

01:24 peacenik, as they say in Hebrew, was seen as a traitor and as somebody who was naive.

01:31 Of course, now we're in a situation where we've witnessed the most horrific, brutal

01:35 attack by Hamas and in response, no surprise, the Israelis have responded with this incredible,

01:42 massive aerial bombardment. So this is why they're all saying now is the time more than

01:48 ever. We literally have to apply the handbrake because we don't want to be in a position

01:53 where the rest of the world finds themselves dragged into a regional war.

01:58 But the other thing I want to mention here is about the role of women as peace activists.

02:02 And funnily enough, just recently the UN Women had released a report which showed that the

02:07 reality is that, no surprise, women remain largely sidelined from peace negotiations.

02:13 And while women participate in many UN-led peace processes, their actual numbers are

02:19 around 16 per cent. And in recent years, that figure has been dropping. So again, not a

02:27 good sign at a crucial time when women's voices should indeed be heard.

02:31 And I imagine that these Palestinian women peace activists and these Israeli women peace

02:35 activists, that they're working together in concert, that they have kind of joint actions

02:40 that they're taking. How are they getting their voices heard? How are they, are they

02:45 social media? How are they, how are they getting that across?

02:47 I just want to say something. The problem is at the moment, because of the nature of

02:51 the environment, they're not so much working jointly together. Normally they do and they

02:55 certainly are to a lesser degree at the moment for obvious reasons. But this was a question

03:00 I wanted to ask them and this is what I did. I said, you know, how do you get people to

03:05 listen to you at moments like this? Let's take a listen to what the two women had to

03:08 tell me.

03:09 Where to from here? We seem to be standing on a precipice. Instead of seeing so much

03:16 doom, how do you convince people around you that this is the time to apply the handbrake

03:22 and seek a peace agreement?

03:25 I think it's really important for us to start communicating more that the fact that more

03:31 than 50 years of under occupation, more than 15 years of siege is only going to bring us

03:38 more war and more violence on both sides. And actually we're seeing civilians on both

03:44 sides paying the highest price and people are starting to realise that this cannot continue.

03:50 How do we bring them more to this recognition? I think that we need to seriously consider

03:57 how we're going to end the occupation and how is our voice going to be heard at the

04:02 different governments as well. There is an opportunity right now, but we need to go back

04:08 to the basic humanisation of one another. Unfortunately, throughout the media, we have

04:13 seen a lot of dehumanisation of one another, a lot of hatred and hate speech going on.

04:20 And we need to find media outlets where this voice, the third voice of not being pro-Palestinian

04:26 or pro-Israeli, just being pro-peace and pro-humanity is not actually being heard. And we need it

04:33 to be heard in different media channels and outlets as well.

04:36 Yael, your final thoughts?

04:39 So I first of all, completely agree with Yvonne. The last part of her answer is exactly what

04:47 I believe, what I think. It's not either pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, it's pro-peace. And we need

04:53 to be together in this. I take inspiration and hope from other conflicts in the history

05:00 in other regions of the world, like Northern Ireland, like Liberia, where bloody deeds

05:06 and horrific actions were taken. And women from both sides managed to unite and persistently

05:15 demand peace negotiations, and they succeeded. So I am hopeful with this. We need the media,

05:23 we need international support, we need the support of Israeli and Palestinian leaders

05:29 and opinion makers. Join us. Join the mothers who call for peace and begin negotiations,

05:38 because we cannot live on like this. We all deserve peace in this region.

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