The following excerpts are from a speech given at the Dead Sea on Oct 4th by Dr. Yael Braudo-Bahat, WWP’s co-director.
“Today is the culmination of joint efforts between WWP and WOS that began two years ago. Until now we have been building the infrastructure needed to support this first shared initiative, The Mothers’ Call. Now we are excited to establish an Israeli-
Palestinian women’s task force with the support of women from around the world. We are ready to change existing reality by strengthening partnerships, expanding circles of connection and cooperation, holding major events together in public spaces, and demanding with a united voice that our leaders stop the cycle of bloodshed and return to the negotiating table.
We’ve learned that there’s no substitute for face-to-face encounters where we
can really get to know one another. Thus we intend to expand our outreach to a
variety of Israeli audiences so they can learn about Palestinian peace activities
and Palestinian audiences can learn about Israeli initiatives.”
We also intend to put to use our recently completed Map of Opportunities for
Peace based on interviews with over one hundred experts from various fields,
which includes three arenas for action:
– building public support for a shift toward ending the conflict through a
proactive civil society
– creating the perceptual changes that will take us from managing the
conflict to ending it
– applying cutting-edge knowledge from the fields of education, religion,
science, economics, and the arts, and to translate them into concrete
projects. These projects are meant to help our two peoples to make the
transition to a conceptual infrastructure for an eventual political agreement,
instead of preserving the more comfortable status quo.
Today we are launching another significant project together called Women
Building Bridges: Israelis and Palestinians Growing Peace from the Ground Up,
which will include leadership training in peace activism through a track for women
religious leaders and a track for climate activists. In creating the Map of
Opportunities for Peace mentioned above, we learned that both religious and
climate concerns are strong motivators for seeking peace. Participants in these
trainings will be expected to expand the number of peace supporters in the
communities and organizations they serve and to initiate joint Israeli-Palestinian
actions.
To those of you who have come from other parts of the world, I ask on behalf of
both our movements that you help us spread the word, getting every woman you
know to sign the Mothers’ Call and helping us change reality itself.’
