Open letter to the President of the Italian Republic
We are “Women on the road to peace”, a network of women who personally share
the urgency of asking for an end to wars and massacres committed on the bodies of the most fragile. Each feels that they cannot remain indifferent and the need to express their condemnation of the old and new genocides taking place in the world and, moreover, the massacre of the Palestinian people.
For months, in the main public places of the cities where each one lives and can take action in common with others, the “Women on the road to peace”, without identifying logos, symbols or flags of belonging, have been promoting the CEASE FIRE with a message written on the body; motionless and silent, dressed in black, with a white rag tied to their arm.
Each takes up the baton of two pacifist and feminist associations: Woman Wage Peace ,
Israeli and Women of the Sun , Palestinian, who jointly ask for an end to the cyclical
bloodshed and a just and dignified life for Palestinian and Israeli boys and girls,
because “Every mother, Jewish and Arab, gives birth to her children to see them grow and flourish and not to bury them.” Started by women from Brescia, the practice is involving “Women on the road to peace” in around 200 municipalities in various provinces and regions.
We address you as citizens, in the spirit and in respect of the Italian Constitution, which repudiates war as a tool for resolving conflicts:
– so that your voice dominates that of the many Italian and European political parties and institutions, which while calling for the end of the conflicts, maintain and increase the supply of weapons to belligerent countries;
– so that it is revealed that the crazy arms race, while it is resulting in enormous profits for the manufacturing lobbies, is producing a depletion of the resources intended for health, education and the good
life of citizens and endangers their safety;
– so that the Italian, European and international authorities take immediate action to stop the bombings and the Israeli invasion in the territory of Gaza, to allow the passage of aid to the Palestinian population under siege, to restore funding to UNRWA, to put an end to the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe;
– to put a stop to the manipulation of information and the media campaign that
justifies Israel’s retaliation against the entire population of Gaza, as a response to the atrocities committed by Hamas in the terrorist attack of 7 October 2023. As you well know, in In just over seven months the Israeli government has killed 35,000 Palestinians and injured 77,000, 70 percent of them women and children. In Gaza it destroyed 221 thousand homes, leaving one million people homeless ,almost half the population; obliterated civil infrastructure including electricity, water and sewerage; destroyed the health system and killed 400 health workers; it destroyed all twelve universities and 56 schools, damaging hundreds more, leaving 625 thousand students without education. It has blocked humanitarian aid, creating conditions in which the entire population risks famine and death from starvation.
We ask you to urge politics and diplomacy, which have been absent for too long, to act to put an end to the Israeli military occupation and the apartheid regime against the Palestinian population, since justice is an essential condition for peace, while for
over seventy For years, Israeli colonization constitutes a violation of human rights and international law, as authoritative Israeli citizens and diaspora Jews also remind us. War is not a solution, but an unstoppable engine of hatred.
Women have revealed that violence and war are the outcome of a system of relations of domination that has its roots in the relationship between genders. With their capacity for mediation, women demonstrate that violence is not humanity’s destiny.
We ask you to share our appeal with the government bodies, Parliament and
political forces. We thank you for your attention.
Pesaro, 23 May 2024
Le Donne in Cammino per la Pace scrivono a Mattarella
