'The most basic threat. . . to Israeli and Palestinian women is. . . the occupation': Enduring Strategies and Shifting Tactics of Israeli and Palestinian Feminist Peace NGOs in the Post-9/11 World

Abstract

This essay examines the ways in which the aftermath of 9/11 structured the discursive and material tactics of the Jerusalem Link, a feminist peace partnership between the Israeli nongovernmental organization (NGO) Bat Shalom and the Palestinian NGO Jerusalem Center for Women (JCW). A Bat Shalom statement for International Women's Day 2002, published in an anthology of feminist responses to 9/11, makes no explicit reference to 9/11 or its international consequences, though it may be seen as a plea to the international community not to forget the Palestine/Israel conflict in the post-9/11 agenda. The International Women's Day statement by the Jerusalem Link in 2003 explicitly links the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq with the two organizations' fears of an increase in harsh measures against the Palestinians by the Israeli government. In the time leading up to the invasion of Iraq, the Jerusalem Link established a phone network between Israeli women and Palestinian women to try to document any attempt by the Israeli military to expel Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. As 9/11 created new international realities, these organizations added new tactics to their overall strategy of linking their rhetorics and actions into the unfolding agendas of the United States and the international community.