Gender, Conflict, Israel and Palestine: Gender in Peace Negotiations

President Clinton and Yasser Arafat, then-Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

“If we’d had women at Camp David,” Bill Clinton later rued, “we’d have an agreement.”

There’s one thing that almost all negotiations between Israel and Palestine have had in common: a relative lack of women at the table.

It’s important not to neglect the important contributions several women have made to the much-maligned peace process. Dr. Hanan Ashrawi was a key player on the Palestinian team at the 1991 Madrid Conference as official spokesperson. Her prominence prompted the Israelis to summon their own female negotiator, Sarah Doron.

But by 1993, as talks towards the Oslo Accords progressed, it was clear that women would largely be limited to backseat roles.

One senior Palestinian negotiator at Oslo justified women’s exclusion by privately suggesting that the decisions taken were “too serious and monumental” for women to be involved as lead negotiators.

On the Israeli side, there was a clear divide: almost all the primary negotiators were men, while women were limited to the role of secretary, assistant or junior adviser.

Women’s lack of representation at the negotiating table has endured through the 20th and into the 21st century.

L to R: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Barack Obama, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

That raises two questions: (1) Why? And (2), does it matter?

Perhaps “cultural” or social norms play a role.

In both societies and economies, patriarchal structures exist that discriminate against women. Women are less likely to work. Those women who do work are less likely to occupy senior roles and less likely to receive fair pay. Women are less likely to enjoy their fundamental human rights.

These social or cultural norms have ramifications for many walks of life in both Israel and Palestine. But discrimination against women in the military and political spheres in particular has resulted in fewer women being picked to lead or join negotiating teams.

There’s mandatory military conscription for women in Israel, but they’re much less likely than men to serve in combat positions. The perception endures that men are the “real” soldiers.

But cultural norms aren’t the only factor at play here. Politics is also to blame. (Side note: When isn’t it?)

In trying to understand women’s marginalization from peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine, Espanioli and Sachs found that the perpetuation of the conflict itself has pushed “gender” off the table.

The conflict and the occupation are all-consuming. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it defines political competition and discourse in Palestine and Israel alike. And while both parties remain at diplomatic and military loggerheads, these scholars argue that “gender” issues continue to be pushed aside.

Any discourse that detracts from the main objective for each party is seen as an unhelpful distraction, somehow of secondary importance: How can we talk about gender now when we should be focusing all our efforts on securing our borders?; How can we talk about gender now when we should be focusing all our efforts on ending the occupation?

I’m clear about the answer to the second question. Does it matter? Yes. But maybe not only for the obvious reasons.

 

Let’s start with a basic principle, inherently normative in nature: public sector institutions should reflect the populations they serve. As well as representing the population’s interests, values and priorities, civil servants should accurately represent the demographic diversity of those societies — ethnic diversity, religious diversity, gender diversity and more.

The same should go for government delegations sent to peace negotiations.

Some might make the same argument but in utilitarian terms. Countless studies have shown that businesses that effectively leverage diversity — including gender diversity — do better in a multitude of ways. They’re more profitable, they’re more fulfilling places to work, and they’re more likely to retain talented staff.

It’s been claimed that women are inherently more peaceful than men. This utilitarian argument would therefore predict that having more women sat at the negotiating table would increase the likelihood of success at the next stage of the peace process between Palestine and Israel.

I resist essentialist arguments: That any one group of people exhibits any particular strength or deficiency based on any given biological trait they bear: like the gender they identify with, or the color of their skin. And since there’s evidence for and against the idea that women are more inherently peaceful than men, I’m not going to try to make any conclusions about that.

The more important conversation is about how to make gender front and center in future negotiations between Israel and Palestine.

That starts with having greater diversity in the two parties’ negotiating teams, but it certainly doesn’t end there.

The conflict and the occupation have profoundly different effects on men and women. And when peace processes fail to integrate women, peace agreements fail to address these differential gendered effects.

Those issues might include the impact of the occupation on girls’ access to education; how women’s sexual and reproductive health rights are threatened; how women’s economic opportunities are particularly constrained.

Leaders from Palestine, Israel and the international community can’t afford to regard these gendered consequences of conflict as an afterthought, to be dealt with once settlement construction, incitement to violence and movement and trade restrictions are resolved. They are part of the problem, and must be part of the solution.

So while having greater gender diversity at the table doesn’t necessarily mean those negotiators will be inherently or biologically more inclined to peace, it might prevent these issues being left off the agenda.

Hanan Ashrawi once remarked that “gender does not constitute a structured role in negotiations [between Israel and Palestine.]” It must if future rounds of peace talks are to succeed.

Women as peacemakers: Activists share success stories at Harvard Kennedy School

Published in the Harvard Gazette

When three women, including Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, an alumna of Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), received the Nobel Peace Prize in October, it was more than just a testament to their work. The prize was also a clear signal to the many unheralded women around the world that their peace building efforts were not only noble but necessary.

Several such women from across Africa and the Middle East gathered at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Wednesday to share their stories and convey a similar message. “Why Women Won the Nobel Prize,” hosted by the Institute of Politics, the Center for Public Leadership, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and the Women and Public Policy Program at HKS, testified to the influence of women in peace efforts around the world.

The Nobel was just another example of the ways women leaders, both at the highest reaches of government and at the ground level, are “changing the whole security paradigm,” said moderator Swanee Hunt, Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy. “Right now, security, in most people’s minds, means bombs and bullets.”

Increasingly, however, leaders recognize a need for women’s participation throughout the entire peace process, from street-level protests to formal negotiations. President Obama, for example, recently signed an executive order on women, peace, and security that he hopes will provide “a comprehensive road map” to increasing female participation in peace building, Hunt noted.

Women bring “soft skills” to the negotiation table, said Orit Adato, a retired lieutenant general in the Israeli Defense Forces and former commissioner of the Israeli Prison Service. Those traits — “the ability to see the whole picture but at the same time to identify and give your attention to the details,” to contain situations and deal with them, and to balance priorities — are crucial to the peace process.

Samira Hamidi, director of the 5,000-member Afghan Women’s Network, noted that women, so often denied a role in peacemaking, are likely to show steadfast commitment to the process if given the chance — if only to prove to themselves and their families that their presence at the table is worthwhile.

In the summer of 2010, she recalled, at Afghanistan’s national peace jirga, three rockets hit just outside the tent where she and other delegates had gathered for an address by President Hamid Karzai. While many male delegates left to ensure their safety, the women remained on principle.
“Peace is too important,” Hamidi said. “It is dangerous, but we are proud of what we’re doing.”

Mossarat Qadeem, a Pakistani activist, discussed her work rehabilitating young men formerly of the Taliban and other radical militias. The work often involves getting the boys’ mothers to trust her to intervene.

“Those boys would dare not come to a woman like me,” she said. “The most difficult part is reintegration into their communities.”

In the world’s newest country, South Sudan, which gained its independence from Sudan in July after nearly 20 years of conflict, women leaders are hoping to turn “years of fear into opportunity and stability,” said Rebecca Joshua Okwaci, founder of Sudanese Women Empowerment for Peace. Women recognize the importance of building up civil society and individual rights to create long-lasting peace, she said.

Her years as a “freedom fighter” for South Sudan’s independence confer not power but a great responsibility to her fellow citizens, said Okwaci, who is now deputy minister for general education and instruction. The new government must repay the sacrifices the South Sudanese made for so many years to support the war.

“The same way their eggs were taken from them [during the war], it is time now for us to give them peace,” Okwaci said. “Their chickens were taken from them — now it is time to give them stability. Their goats were taken from them — it is time to give them independence, give them recognition, and give them hope.”

The evening, which ended with a call-and-response performance of a traditional Arabic song and impromptu dancing led by Okwaci, seemed to inspire those in attendance.

Those who follow conflict for a living “flirt a lot with cynicism, and I didn’t hear a note of that tonight,” said Jina Moore, a human rights journalist, during the question-and-answer session. “Which reminds me that cynicism is a luxury for people who think about conflict and not for people who are forced into living with it. For me that was very powerful.”

Women activists from conflict regions have been coming to Cambridge since 1999 as part of an annual conference supported by the Institute for Inclusive Security, a program of Hunt’s family foundation, Hunt Alternatives Fund.