Women's organizing in conflict zones: A case study of two Israeli women's protest movements

This project on the politics of women's protest in Israel aims to shed light on some of the complex circumstances surrounding women's organizing in zones of conflict. The research is based on a case study and extensive fieldwork of two women's movements in Israel, the Jerusalem Link and Women for Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green). The Jerusalem Link is a group of Israeli and Palestinian women cross-nationally organizing for peace. Women in Green, on the other hand, is a group of Jewish Israeli women in the national-religious camp in Israel that opposes the peace process and supports Jewish settlement in disputed territory.; The aim of the project is to investigate the distinct structures of a zone of conflict as "sites of resistance" (Marchand & Runyan, 1996), in which women contest established norms and practices, and act as potential agents of social change within conditions of armed international conflict. The focus therefore, is on the complex interplay of gendered structures and women's agency in zones of conflict. However, the women's movements under consideration represent women who have chosen to act outside the mainstream political spectrum. I argue that independence increases women's gender consciousness and awareness of their particular interests as women, as a result of the absence of constraints related to political authority and male bureaucratic decision making. In this way, women on the margins critically challenge, and potentially destabilize, conventional political boundaries, although women positioned on opposite ends of the political spectrum also contest the gendered symbols associated with representations of women in the nation.; Israel is a particularly valuable case study for women's organizing because it is at once a dynamic industrialized democracy where a broad range of interests compete for power. Israeli women (Jewish) have always participated in the political process having been conscripted in the Israeli military since the establishment of statehood and given their wide range of opportunities to express political dissent. However, Israel is also a state embroiled in armed conflict. The experience of over fifty years of protracted warfare has established key gender boundaries that domesticate women during warfare and limit their opportunities for feminist activism. With a strong national security agenda, militarized, masculine norms and codes of conduct prevail over specific social groups, such as women. Women become represented as appendages of men and reproducers of the nation and its cultural continuity during times of crisis (Yuval-Davis). Therefore, while the democratic foundation of Israel encourages women to contribute to the political process (mobilization), the militarized nature of the state discourages women from challenging the patriarchal nature of that process (marginalization). This mobilization/marginalization phenomenon is the key background against which women's agency, diversity, and contestation on the margins in Israel are investigated.