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R E C E N T L Y

Drama Queen Candidates
Back-stabbing, ankle-biting sluts ... and the women who loved them
(02/25/98)

Wild Thing
By Polly Shulman
Love and justice: Two teenage novels
(02/24/98)

Baby hunger
A cynical hipster finds herself dragged inexorably down the dark tunnel of maternal longing by a goofy-faced toddler
(02/23/98)

Dreams of Bill
Monica Lewinsky wasn't the only woman in America getting hot and bothered about the President
(02/20/98)

Second thoughts
By Sallie Tisdale
Pondering the distance that separates women in my life
(02/19/98)

ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

BY JONATHAN BRODER | Call them the Three Wise Women. Claudette Habash is a Palestinian Christian. Nahla Asali is a Palestinian Muslim. Michal Shohat is an Israeli Jew. They are all residents of Jerusalem, and all have traveled far bearing a gift: a rare example of alliance and respect between Arabs and Jews and a paradigm for the peace they so desperately seek.

As Israeli and Palestinian officials blame each other for the collapse of the Middle East peace process, these three remarkable women toured the United States recently to speak out for the silent majority of Israelis and Palestinians who are fed up with all the political wrangling and simply want to live side-by-side in peace. They're hoping that by talking frankly about the conflict and by describing the ways it twists ordinary lives, they can educate Americans and create grass-roots pressure on the Clinton administration to play a more active role as peacemaker.

"As women, we humanize the conflict by talking about everyday life, everyday suffering. We see it from a different perspective than the politicians," says Asali, a 58-year-old professor of English literature at Bir Zeit University, a few miles north of Jerusalem.

"Women are more sensitive and more creative than men," adds the 44-year-old Shohat, a left-wing member of the Jerusalem City Council. "We bring life. We don't take it. That's what we bring to the process."

Though they live only five minutes from one another in Jerusalem, the women met for the first time only days before they traveled to the United States last month for their tour, sponsored by Partners for Peace, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that promotes Middle East peace. And though they came from opposite sides of a psychological barrier that divides Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, they soon realized that they had more in common -- as women, mothers and peace activists -- than the tired old prejudices that have kept them apart.

"What we have in common is our genuine interest in peace for our city and our region, peace for the Palestinians and peace for the Israelis," says Habash, 57, who runs Caritas, a Catholic relief agency in Jerusalem. "We all believe that there must be two states, a Palestinian state and an Israeli state, with Jerusalem as an open and shared city."

"I don't know what Jerusalem's final status will be at the end of the peace process," says Shohat. "Maybe it will be an international city. But what I do know is that if there's going to be peace, we have to take into account the different nationalities and religions that are in the city."

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