Just days before conflict broke out between Hamas and the Israeli military, Palestinian and Israeli women joined forces to march for peace in Jerusalem and to call for female voices at the negotiating table. The march is organized by Israeli group Women Wage Peace and Palestinian group Women of the Sun.
Vivian Silver was a board member of top human rights group B’Tselem and has most recently been leading anti-occupation group Women Wage Peace, has gone missing following the Hamas attack.
Just days before conflict broke out between Hamas and the Israeli military, hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli women rallied in Jerusalem and the Dead Sea in the occupied West Bank calling for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Wednesday last week, the protesters chanted and held signs, symbolically dressed in white.
“We want peace,” chanted the demonstrators, many dressed in white and holding placards that read “Stop killing our children”.
“Our message is that we want our kids to be alive rather than dead,” Huda Abu Arqoub, a Palestinian activist and director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace NGO, told AFP as participants initially rallied in Jerusalem.
The protesters first rallied in Jerusalem, and then marched to the Dead Sea in the West Bank where they were joined by more demonstrators. Those who were present at the protest say that they want the conflict brought to an end through talks. However, participants say that many Palestinian women were unable to attend as they could not obtain authorization for entering Jerusalem from the West Bank.
The Alliance for Middle East Peace represents two women-led associations — Women Wage Peace and Women of the Sun — that organised Wednesday’s rally.
I feel very happy to be here and to feel that we, the Palestinian women, are not alone and there are many women who want to end the killings.
-Yasmeen Soud, a Palestinian from Bethlehem at the demonstration in Jerusalem.
Pascale Chen, a coordinator from Women Wage Peace, said they wanted the conflict to brought to an end through talks.
The objective is to issue a joint call from mothers, Israeli and Palestinian, to our two leaderships asking them to return to the negotiating table to finally arrive at a diplomatic accord.
-Pascale Chen
A few days after the women’s protest, the Hamas militant group launched an attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and wounded more than 2,700. Israel declared war and launched airstrikes on Gaza that have killed 1,055 people and wounded more than 5,000 so far.
Human Rights Watch warned of exacerbating the situation in Gaza, where conditions were already dire after 16 years of crushing restrictions.
Israeli authorities, the occupying power over Gaza under international law, have a duty to ensure that the basic needs of the population are met. Instead, they have since 2007 run Gaza as an “open air prison,” imposing sweeping restrictions on the movement of people and goods. In the wake of the weekend attacks, authorities are now closing those prison walls in further.
-Akshaya Kumar, Director of Crisis Advocacy, Human Rights Watch
Prominent Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver missing after attack
A longtime Israeli peace activist and former board member of Israel’s largest human rights organisation, B’Tselem, is missing following the shock Palestinian attack launched from the Gaza Strip.
Vivian Silver lives in Beeri, a kibbutz near the boundary between Israel and Gaza. On Saturday, it became a battleground, as hundreds of Palestinian fighters flooded into Israel by land, air and sea.
Around 800 Israelis have been confirmed killed by the ongoing assault, while Palestinian factions Hamas and Islamic Jihad say they have taken some 130 captive in Gaza.
Yonatan, her son, is leading efforts to find any information about her whereabouts.
“We haven’t heard from my mum since Saturday. We have turned to her Bedouin colleagues and contacts in the Negev, but no one knows if she was in fact kidnapped to Gaza,” he told Middle East Eye.