A brief record of efforts by WILPF to further peaceful solutions of the conflict in the Middle East

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) has been concerned with the question of Palestine since the early twenties. Alert to the explosive nature of a situation in which two peoples, belonging to different religions, were struggling for a new future in a land under the mandate of a foreign power, WILPF members began to establish links with women in Palestine seeking peaceful ways of sharing one land.

Over the years, WILPF has dispatched numerous international missions to the region and, since the early 1950s, has had working groups or standing committees on the Middle East conflict to promote understanding, mobilize public opinion and lobby for changes of government policies that would lead to peace in the region. With the same aims national sections, in particular the US and Swedish sections, have organized and funded many activities, such as tours of women’s groups from their countries to the Middle East region and inviting Jewish and Palestinian women to their countries to speak from a shared platform. At meetings and through local and national media, sections provided information and also concrete assistance for the realization of some of the projects of the WILPF Middle East sections.

What follows is a brief overview of WILPF’s efforts to further peace in the Middle East. It includes also a brief record of activities of the Swedish and US sections because of their specific involvement in these efforts.

Growing tension and fear of open conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine engaged the attention of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the 1920s. Britain’s policy of duality by acknowledging the Jewish right to a homeland in Palestine (1917 Balfour declaration) and at the same time kindling and strengthening the national aspirations of the Palestinians was bound to bring trouble to the area. Concerned by the growing rift, WILPF decided to send a mission to Palestine. It was partly realized in 1930, when Elisabeth Waern-Brugge, a prominent WILPF member from Sweden, agreed to go to Palestine with the intention of forming WILPF groups in which Jewish and Arab women could meet and work in co-operation with one another.

Although a Jewish WILPF group existed already in Tel Aviv, Ms Waern-Brugge decided that Jerusalem was the city in which to begin her efforts. She succeeded in bringing Jews and Christian Arabs to meet togethe but was unable to persuade Moslem women to take part. She was disappointed later when the Christian Arab women, who had attended meetings with Jewish members in Tel Aviv, decided not to become part of the group. She succeeded however in forming a WILPF group of Moslem women in Ramallah.

The deepening feeling of mistrust of the Arabs toward the Jews, and the inability generally of Moslem women to act independently of their husbands, made co-operation among the women of the different religious beliefs impossible at the time. This was a disappointment to WILPF, but it did not diminish its concern over the developments in Palestine and the Middle East as a whole.

Elisabeth Waern-Brugge’s mission, while only partially successful, was the beginning of an intimate involvement by WILPF in seeking a peaceful solution to the conflict in the region. Seminars were organized to inform and be informed of what was happening in the region and to seek ways to help bring about co-operation between the two peoples destined to share the same land.

The genocide against the Jews in Hitler’s Germany, the migration of Jews to Palestine, the UN decision to partition the land, the Arabs’ refusal to accept the decision, and their war against Israel created new problems and dangers for the region and the world.

In line with its tradition of sending fact-finding missions to conflict areas, WILPF, in 1954, again discussed the possibility to send a mission to the Middle East. Two years later, Madeline Bouchereau, an active WILPF member whose husband was Haitian Counsel in Hamburg, set off on the mission. She visited seven countries between 4 April and 4 June 1958: Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Jerusalem (Jordan). The purpose of her mission, as she wrote in her report, was "to meet with both public and private persons and to listen with understanding to the problems, the prejudices, and the longings of the people there." She saw the mission as "an opportunity to see conditions personally and to talk face to face with people of differing opinions and backgrounds" in order to help WILPF "in its understanding of the urgent problems of the area."

Madeline Boucherau submitted a detailed report of what she did and whom she met to help her understand the issues that seemed to be particularly pressing ones in the countries she visited. In Egypt, for example, her interest centred on economic issues, whereas in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, she put social and political problems at the top of her enquiry. Having been told much about Israel’s poor treatment of its Palestinian population during her visit in the Arab countries, she paid particular attention to this issue when visiting Israel. She believed that "the world will judge the good faith of Israel by the way its Arab citizens are treated". She concluded her report of the mission with an outline of "trends to be taken into consideration in analyzing the situation:

The ongoing discussions within WILPF, and the dialogue that had begun between WILPF members and Arab women in the region led to the establishment of a WILPF section in Lebanon in 1962.

Catherine Foster, in her history of WILPF, Women for All Seasons, (University of Georgia Press), writes on page 29: "Bouchereau’s first-hand experiences with the oppression of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel as in other parts of the region prompted her to point out to other members the extent of the Jewish-Arab conflict – a mere foreshadowing of the controversy over this topic which continued in WILPF for years to come. The League had and still has a sizable Jewish membership; for Jewish and also non-Jewish members, memories of the experiences of Hitler’s fascism were very deep. That fact, together with little personal knowledge of Arabs as a people, made League members loath to be too critical of Israel at that time. A decade later, some of their views had evolved, however, and by the mid-1960s, WILPF would begin to study seriously the problems of the Middle East and to question its manner of relating to them."

It must be mentioned here that there were always members, Jewish and non-Jewish, who shared the views expressed by Dorothy Warner of Great Britain, when introducing the discussion on the Palestine/Israel conflict at the meeting of the International Executive Committee in 1948: "Personally, I am against partition – it seems to me to represent a negation of the general trends of progressive development. To think that partition is a solution of the Palestine problem is, I fear, to take a dangerously short view of the question. That it appeared as the way out to those in authority is an example of the chain of error set up by an initial mistake. But the State of Israel does exist...It has been recognized by the two greatest world powers and today such a fact cannot be ignored. Somehow or other perhaps we can find a way of persuading the Arabs not that the Jews have a "right" to the state of Israel but that it would be politically wise to accept the creation of a Jewish state as one act – and it must be one of several – which will tend to promote, however slowly, a more peaceful state of affairs in the Middle East".

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s WILPF meetings provided the verbal battleground on which the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was played out within the organization. It took a long time to succeed in establishing a dialogue between the members of the Lebanese and Israeli sections and to cool the emotions of participating members from outside the Middle East. Walkouts from meetings were not uncommon at that time.

In 1964, WILPF established a peace research consultative group convened by Johanne Reutz Gjermoe (Norway), with Elise Boulding (USA) as chair and Ingrid Eide (Norway), Fujiko Isono (Japan), Sushila Nayar (India) and Sheila Young (Canada) as members. Johanne Reutz Gjermoe was also WILPF’s Middle East rapporteur and had initiated a dialogue (by correspondence) which involved members of the Israeli and Lebanese sections. The collection of the contributions was submitted for discussion to the 1969 International Executive Committee.

Johanne Reutz Gjermoe and Ingrid Lindström, at the invitation of the President of the Palestine Arab Women’s League and with the support of the Nobel Committee, visited Lebanon, Israel and Jordan in the first part of 1967. They returned only a few days before the eruption of the ‘six-day war’ which changed the Middle East map very considerably. In her report to the International Executive Committee later that year, Reutz Gjermoe put forward the following points on which she thought WILPF could agree:

In the early 1970s, the longtime president of the Israeli section retired due to poor health. The person who took over knew little about WILPF and membership dropped. It also became evident that the mailings from the section had little to do with WILPF policies and peace efforts but much to do with the promotion of Israeli government policies and actions.

Johanne Reutz Gjermoe retired as Middle East Rapporteur, leaving a vacuum in WILPF’s Middle East work. Meanwhile the situation in Lebanon had become tense, and Israeli policies toward the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories were severely repressive with increasing expulsions of Palestinians to Lebanon, bulldozing homes and practising other forms of collective punishment, arbitrary detention and torture, confiscating Arab land and accelerating the building of settlements around Jerusalem and throughout the Occupied Territories. These acts caused not only severe suffering to the Palestinians, they fuelled resentment and hatred and increased the already highly tense relations in the region.

At the insistence of the Lebanese section, a small WILPF delegation, composed of Libby Frank, chair of the US section’s Middle East Committee, and Edith Ballantyne, WILPF’s Secretary General, went to Lebanon, Syria and Israel in April 1975. The mission resulted in a number of recommendations, including the suspension of the Israeli section on grounds that it did not function in accordance with WILPF objectives and programme, and the adoption of a forward-looking statement on the attainment of peace in the Middle East.

The report of the mission and the recommendations made were discussed and adopted at the meeting of the International Executive Committee held in the same year in Germany. Although the statement of policy has been amended several times in light of political developments in the region, it remains WILPF’s basic positionr on the Israel/Palestine conflict.

(adopted by the women’s dialogue, May 1991)

Women share a vision of freedom and equality which is born out of our common struggle against discrimination, oppression and subjugation of any type, be it on the basis of gender, religion or nationality.

We, Palestinian, Israeli and international women, declare our commitment to a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 ("Territories for Peace"): two states, Israel and Palestine co-existing peacefully within secure and recognized boundaries.

To this end, we support negotiations between the Government of Israel and the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the PLO. We believe that women have a special responsibility in signalling the urgent need for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, in the absence of which the vicious cycle of violence will accelerate. We firmly believe that women can play a unique role in facilitating dialogue between the two peoples in an effort to remove obstacles to reconciliation. We call for an end to the building, funding and expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

In their first meeting following the Gulf war, women from Israel, Palestine and thirteen other countries met in Geneva from May 13-15 in order to discuss the peaceful resolution of the conflict and to propose concrete steps toward advancing a peace process.

During the two days of workshops and meetings, the major topics of discussion were:

International strategies for the implementation of U.N. resolutions on Palestine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We believe that there is an urgent need to take active steps to lobby the U.N. as well as their respective governments for the immediate implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions which call for a withdrawal of Israel from territories it occupied in 1967 in exchange for peace.

There can be no security without peace. Security must be built on mutual respect, on economic, human, social and cultural co-operation, and on respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The Middle East conflict can be resolved only through negotiations and the conclusion of peace treaties based on guaranteed security for all the parties involved. The accumulation of arms and military resources pose a threat to the security in the region. We therefore call for:

1. A limit on weapons transfers to the area.

2. All countries in the region to ratify the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Convention on Biological Weapons, and all future treaties and conventions banning weapons of mass destruction, such as the convention on chemical weapons. This will open the way to a region free of all weapons of mass destruction.

We recognize the harsh reality of human rights violations in the Occupied Territories. These result in the unacceptable reality of fear, humiliation, degradation, separation, exile, imprisonment, physical injury, and death.

We support the continuation and intensification of fact-finding delegations and observers, both from the international community and from Israeli and Palestinian groups and individuals, to highlight individual cases and disseminate information.

However, we also recognize that violations of human rights and other such actions are rooted in the non-recognition of the collective rights of the Palestinian people, and that further action is required to redress specific violations, to ensure international protection of the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories, and to move toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

We call upon:

1. The United Nations to implement Security Council Resolution 681.

2. The signatories of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) to convene a meeting at the request of the UN Secretary-General.

We resolve to work toward the establishment of:

1. An international network of women on issues of human rights, peace and "two peoples two states".

2. A permanent presence of women in the Occupied Territories, broadly representative of the international women’s movement.

We strongly condemn the arbitrary restriction of freedom of movement of Palestinians by the use of "Green ID Cards".

pied Territories.

We call for universities around the world to form twin school relationships with the universities in the Occupied Territories.

We express our concern about accelerated development and expansion of the settlements, taking advantage of the current mass wave of Soviet immigration.

We call for the observance of, and compliance with, the Geneva Conventions against population transfer.

We note with concern the economic and social consequences of the occupation on possibilities for future development.

We recognize that the immediate economic problems of the inhabitants of the Occupied Territories demand urgent solutions. Most urgent is the need to halt the confiscation of land and water resources.

We call for:

1. The establishment of an independent economic infrastructure in the Occupied Territories, to lay the groundwork for a Palestinian State.

2. Financial assistance from governments given to Israel should be matched by equal assistance to the Palestinians to develop their economic infrastructure.

3. Direct Palestinian trade with other nations.

4. Investment in the Occupied Territories by the international financial community.

5. Increased work opportunities for Palestinian women;

6. Direct aid, through international relief funds, to the Occupied Territories to be used for rebuilding destroyed homes, medical care, and for all costs incurred by detainees and their dependants in procuring legal assistance and welfare.

7. An end to the occupation, the major source of economic and social crisis for Israeli society and for Israeli women in particular.

We resolved that the Final Document of the conference be presented to the United Nations Secretary-General and to the International Committee of the Red Cross by the Conference Chairperson, Annie Marie Sundbom.

There were issues on which we did not reach agreement, and which we hope will be the subject of further discussion.

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Ever since the 15-year-long war in Lebanon ended in 1990, the Lebanese section had asked for an international WILPF delegation to see at first hand the situation in the country. A grant from the Swedish Foreign Office finally made this possible and a small delegation, including Edith Ballantyne, International President and convener of the WILPF Middle East Standing Committee; Kerstin Grebäck and Ingela Mårtensson of the Swedish section and members of the Standing Committee, visited Lebanon from 25 November to 3 December 1995. The main purpose of the mission was to learn about the situation of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and, more generally, about the impact the peace process had on the Lebanese people and the country’s economic reconstruction.

With the help of WILPF members, both Lebanese and Palestinians, and staff members of the UNICEF, UNRWA and UNDP offices there, the delegation was able to visit refugee camps in Beirut and other parts of the country, seeing for themselves the miserable conditions in which the Palestinians lived. The delegation also visited kindergartens, schools and clinics. Sixty per cent of UNRWA’s budget goes to education and the rest to health care and relief. But UNRWA could never do more than meet the most basic needs, and its purchasing power has been dwindling. The situation would be much worse were it not for the continuing support given by non-governmental organizations and very committed private donors. The delegation visited villages and met with the Prime Minister and other officials, and had long talks with a woman parliamentarian and with Palestinians having responsibilities in the camps. Below are extracts from the delegation’s report:

"The mission began in Beirut where more than a million of the country’s estimated population of three and a half million live. It must be one of the world’s largest construction sights. There were cranes everywhere, clearing away mountains of rubble or moving building materials for the construction of new hotels and high-rise buildings. Priority seems to be for rebuilding the country’s tourist and service industry ratherthan providing much needed housing for the people. The whole area along the water front and reaching inland, is taken over by a business coalition with government support, paying little in compensation to the former property owners. Buildings that survived the bombings are torn down, putting the small shopkeepers out of business and home, thereby adding to the internally displaced and poor people of which Beirut has many thousands. They include Lebanese and Palestinians driven from the South by the ongoing bombings by Israel of villages and towns, and the poor from the city’s camps as they lose space to the expanding area marked for the construction of more hotels and a vast recreation complex.