Yesterday in Ha’aretz, Mr. Robert Serry (the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s personal representative to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority) called on the Israeli government to engage women leaders and civil society organizations in peace negotiations.

Mr. Serry writes “this is not about tokenism of identity politics”; but what I read is “this is not about feminism”. And true enough, it isn’t. Feminism is about a holistic approach to social and political analysis. It is also about political power for women, not about simple presence at the table, at any price. Representation is a tool for achieving this political power, but it is not an objective in itself, isolated from all social and political contexts.

I am outraged by the complicity of the international community in this disaster of “Peace Talks”. I understand it is good for one’s career to mention that Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks took place. But it seems very few people in official positions care that these “Peace Talks” are being manipulated and abused in the service of the occupation. These talks are not only useless – they cause real damage. People in Israel/Palestine understand perfectly well that “peace talks” – as a concept and as an institution – are an irrelevant political manipulation. Together with the radically anti-democratic processes in Israel, this abuse of peace talks guarantees that in the next elections, the public  will elect a government even more right-wing and fascist. One can imagine how this government will approach “Peace Talks” and what will be on its agenda.

If Mr. Serry looked for a moment at what is happening in the Israeli society, he would understand that the instruments developed for gender equality in conflicts are inaccessible and de-facto irrelevant for women who are not part of the military establishment and who are part of the opposition – an opposition which is currently threatened with political persecution and is being rapidly outlawed. We are excluded from use of these instruments,be it for our campaigning in support of universal jurisdiction, for our solidarity with the Palestinian civil society in their call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, or simply for being a Palestinian.

Achieving real, inclusive gender equality in a political system that more often than not resembles a military junta is an illusion. This illusion comes at our expense.

All this doesn’t go to say I do not appreciate the efforts of organizations like IWC and Itach-Maaki to ensure representation for women. But it is our shared responsibility to ensure that we have the capacity to identify where “peace tables” are there to cover the blood.

So rather than invite us to wait at the negotiating table,  people concerned with gender equality are welcome to take immediate action to protect women that are putting their lives and their bodies on the line for justice and peace. A few examples:

▪    Take a stand for Knesset Member Haneen Zoabi and demand that all her parliamentary privileges are restored. Preferably with an apology.
▪    Mobilize international pressure to block Knesset bills criminalizing universal jurisdiction, and make sure that tools of universal jurisdiction are used to prosecute war criminals (even if they are Israeli or American) – including those who committed war crimes against women around the world.
▪    Block all attempts to criminalize non-violent and legitimate BDS actions (whether you like BDS or not is really not the point – people should not go to prison because of it).
▪    Demand that the Israeli army will stop its brutal violence at the Israeli-Palestinian and all other demonstrations in the West Bank – this is important to have women at the peace table, but prior to that let’s make sure that they are not being teargassed or shot with live bullets.

I can see some readers reach for their keyboard to type comment and inquire whether I have an alternative for peace negotiations, which are of course problematic etc. etc? Well yes, I do! Peace negotiations accompanied by accountability for violations of human rights and international law. How about that? In the meantime, expecting decent women to wait tables where (alleged but also untrialed) war criminals are sipping freshly squeezed juices, is simply unfair.

Inna Michaeli is the Development Coordinator for the Coalition of Women for Peace (Israel), completing M.A. in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.