Women’s Peacebuilding

Abstract

Chapter 1 provides an ethnography and analysis of women’s peacebuilding initiatives in Palestine, tracking the ways in which the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the liberal Women, Peace and Security agenda was interpreted and implemented there. After the Oslo Accords, foreign donors but also some scholarly analysts have displayed a peculiar fascination with peacebuilding initiatives between Palestinian and Israelis. Such joint peace initiatives often are legitimized in the international community with reference to the UNSCR 1325, but they have become few and lack social support and impact in Palestine. Countering liberal approaches to peace, politics, and the public sphere, including Habermas’s notion of ideal speech, this chapter argues that joint Palestinian and Israeli women’s peacebuilding in fact constitutes an attempt to discipline rather than to strengthen women’s political activism in Palestine.