Thousands of women marched for peace in October 2016 as part of an event mobilized by Women Wage Peace. Women Wage Peace was organized after the 2014 incursion into Gaza by Israel. Israeli and Palestinian women, Arab and Jewish, marched together throughout the length of Israel and Palestine in a series of local marches over two weeks. They marched from Rosh Hanikra to the Dead Sea and through Jerusalem. Their website stated: “We will not stop until a political agreement, which will bring us, our children and grandchildren a safe future, is reached.”
Fadwa Shear from Ramallah said, “We cannot count on men to create peace. We will have to do it by ourselves.” The Women Wage Peace marchers were joined by Leymah Gbowee from Liberia who received the Nobel Peace Prize for her leadership of a movement of Christian and Muslim women whose engagement brought dramatic pressure to end the war in Liberia. Gbowee said, “Men try to demean women’s activism as if it isn’t important, as if it isn’t ‘the real stuff. But guns and bombs are not aimed only at men. Women suffer real pain — and we have real things to say. And women have the ability to come together and bridge our divides — and that is very real, very political and very powerful.”
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