At a time of increased tension in the Middle East, a group of leading American Jewish women and their Palestinian American counterparts traveled together to Israel to take a fresh look at a region with which they were already quite familiar.
The trip was unique in that the women were all members of The Dialogue Project, a group of largely mainstream American Jewish and Palestinian women who have been meeting periodically over the past few years to discuss the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The Jewish participants included current and former officials of major organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council. The Palestinians included officials from the National Association of Arab Americans and the Union of Palestinian American Women.
Among the participants were Blu Greenberg, Orthodox Jewish feminist and author; Judith Stern Peck of New York’s UJA/Federation; Judith Obermayer, member of the AJCommittee Board of Governors; Letty Cottin Pogrebin, co-chair of Americans for Peace Now and a member of AJCongress’ Women’s Equality Commission; and Gail Pressberg, president-designate of Americans for Peace Now.
WANT TO HELP PROMOTE PEACE PROCESS
The women sought, through their trip, to gain new perspectives and learn how they could promote the Middle East peace process.
The 15-member delegation met with both Israelis and Palestinians, including Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, Israeli Minister of Education Shulamit Aloni, Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini and Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh.
In addition, they visited refugee camps and private homes.
Reena Bernards, who served as a facilitator, or discussion coordinator, for the group, said the trip reinforced the women’s views that the “primary issue is the need for negotiations.”
Participant Jacqueline Levine, a former chair of NJCRAC who is currently vice president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, said that for her, the trip “reinforced the need to encourage the peacemakers,” especially the Palestinians, who should be urged to “set aside the deportations.”
Levine was referring to the expulsion by Israel last month of 415 Moslem fundamentalists in response to increased violence in the country.
“I really feel very optimistic” about the chances for peace, Levine said, “despite the deportations.”
While the Jewish and Palestinian women often had different perspectives on the conflict, both during their discussions over the past few years and on the trip itself, Bernards felt the trip resulted in “people’s views” coming “closer together.”
Bernards, who is a trainer in multicultural dialogue, said that participants got “a sense of the obstacles to the peace process,” including the deportations.
The group is preparing reports on their trip, to “get the message across,” said Esther Leah Ritz, a former president of both the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and the Jewish Welfare Board, and a former member of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency.
Levine said she had “an obligation,” considering her contacts within the organized Jewish community, “to try to spread the whole idea around” and encourage dialogue “on the lay or volunteer level.”
She said she thought it was “very important” for the Palestinian women to have visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and to have talked to Israelis working to achieve peace, and for the Jewish women to have seen the refugee camps in Gaza.
“A lot of new insights were gained into the other side, and our own side as well,” said Rhonda Zaharna, a Palestinian American who is a professor of communications at American University in Washington.
Zaharna said that, normally, she does not “interact with Israelis, except Israeli soldiers.”
But on this trip, she said, she had “the chance to hear the perspective of Israeli soldiers.”
The encounter that had “the greatest impact” on her, she said, was “hearing the mothers of the Israeli soldiers.”
Some of the participants said they felt that, as women, they have a special way of looking at the situation in the Middle East. While men tend to see the conflict as a matter of security issues, water issues and the military balance, Zaharna said, women tend to see “the underlying issues that perpetuate this conflict. The fears on both sides are incredible.
“One side is wearing a mask of security, the other a mask of heroism,” Zaharna said, and this represents a “projection of each others’ fears.”
She added that “without addressing the underlying issues,” the current situation will only perpetuate itself.
Ritz said that while men tend to see “the events of the moment as an impediment,” women can “look beyond” those impediments and work around them.
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