Annual Report: Activity Summary of Coalition of Women for Peace
Israel-Palestine, June 2002 - May 2003
 
The Coalition has had an incredibly full program of activities over the past 12 months.  Some highlights:
 
Ø The Coalition held two powerful, public rallies – on December 27 and May 30 – calling for an end to the occupation.  Speakers from Palestine and Israel included women of stature as well as young and not-so-famous women.  In the May event, a 5-minute silent ‘lie-in’, accompanied by a moving lament in Arabic sung by a Palestinian woman, provided a very dramatic symbol of mourning for the victims on both sides.  Thanks to determined PR work, which broke through the wall of media silence, the second rally was covered by all the major Israeli media (TV, radio, and newspapers) and also received significant foreign press coverage, including the front page of Le Monde).

Ø During the election period in January, the Coalition printed and placed 5,000 posters with the message “Don’t vote for war!” throughout Israel – in the major cities and also many outlying towns.  The message used the image of the pioneer woman [halutza] to appeal to and empower women.  By including text in Hebrew and Arabic, we emphasized our desire for co-existence and friendship.  While the campaign could not, given the circumstances, turn around the election results, we did plant many seeds with its message.
 
Ø During the same period, the Coalition was an active member of a campaign to overturn an anti-democratic decision that banned two Arabs and one Arab party from running for election.  The decision was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court, possibly due in part to intense public pressure.
 
Ø The Coalition conducted an anti-racism campaign to combat threats to “transfer” Arab citizens out of Israel.  We printed several thousand stickers with the message “Transfer = War Crime” and pasted them over pro-transfer posters that had appeared throughout Israel.
 
Ø In cooperation with Pax Christi of Holland, the Peace Coalition of Israel, and Panorama of Palestine, a tri-lingual journal (Hebrew, Arabic, and Dutch) was produced as part of the May-June protest of 36 years of occupation.
 
Ø Together with 9 other organizations, the Coalition co-sponsored a campaign entitled “Don’t say: We didn’t know!”, to prevent the expulsion of Palestinian cave dwellers from their homes in the South Hebron Hills and, separately, to increase the amount of water allocated to the Bedouin in the Negev.
 
Ø Together with five ‘refusenik’ organizations, the Coalition co-sponsored the first rally of its kind in Israel in support of the women and men who refuse to serve in the occupied territories.
 
Ø The Coalition played a significant role in the joint Israeli-Palestinian Emergency Committee, established in March to prevent heightened human rights violations against Palestinians during the Iraq War.  This included the formation of monitoring teams from 26 Israeli organizations.
 
Ø The Coalition held several public education events – a panel discussion analyzing the Road Map, an evening in memory of Rachel Corrie, and (in July) a colloquium about a new Hebrew book highlighting several feminist peace activists in Israel.
 
Ø The Coalition is an active member of the Social Forum, which brings together several dozen peace and social justice organizations to support each other’s work.  As part of this Forum, the Coalition helped organize three demonstrations on the issues of the state budget, rights for the disabled, and pension rights.
 
Ø In October 2002, a Coalition representative addressed a full session of the UN Security Council in New York, advocating for the involvement of Israeli and Palestinian women in all negotiations for peace.
 
Ø The Coalition co-organized (together with 19 other Israeli organizations) two demonstrations in Tel-Aviv to protest the impending war against Iraq.
 
Ø The Coalition won some international prominence in August 2002, when a statement of solidarity sent to the survivors of Sabra and Shatilla was aired in the international media during the commemoration events in Lebanon marking 20 years to the massacre.
 
Ø The Coalition is currently engaged in a campaign to raise public awareness to the devastating effects of the “security wall” currently being constructed in the West Bank.  This has included a media-grabbing action in mid-Tel-Aviv, guided tours of the wall for Israelis, and placement of an ad, in conjunction with Ta’ayush, that explains the severity of the problem.
 
Ø In addition to the above, the Coalition has a long outreach internationally through an active website and e-mail list.  We also place articles in print media throughout the world and have cooperated in the production of 11 films about the peace efforts of women and women’s organizations in Israel – one such film was recently featured and rerun several times on Germany’s main TV channel.  We currently have projects in collaboration with Norwegian and Dutch peace organizations, in addition to our Palestinian allies.  And we coordinate an international network with over 150 peace groups across 5 continents, many of which respond with solidarity events when we hold major rallies in Israel.
 
Ø Important exposure for the Coalition’s vision of peace is gained in international conferences throughout the world.  In the past year, Coalition representatives attended conferences in Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, Mexico, Norway, and Sri Lanka.  A Coalition woman was also honored for her peace work – jointly with a Palestinian woman – with the award of two major prizes in Germany: the Bremen Solidarity Award and the PEN Prize for peace.
 
Ø Urgent Action:  The Coalition remains flexible enough to respond to events on the ground as they unfold.  We continued our nonviolent resistance to closure and home demolitions – confronting bulldozers on more than one occasion – and participated actively in the olive harvest of the fall in an effort to reduce settler violence against Palestinians.  We also donated over 3 tons of food for infants in response to to a request from the women of a Palestinian village.
 
Ø Finally (and not surprisingly), a session to counter burnout was held in April.
 
As a result of these and other activities, the Coalition has managed to sustain the voice for a just peace and an end to human rights violations throughout this difficult period, and has also empowered grassroots women – thrusting more women into leadership roles and giving voice to women’s needs and concerns in Israeli society.