ARE THE WRONG PEOPLE TRYING TO SOLVE THE MIDDLE EAST CRISIS?
By Esther Addley Esther Addley meets a group of campaigners with a simple, radical idea – include women in the peace talks September 15, 2003 (The Guardian) Shortly before 10am, UK time, last Saturday, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, resigned. In his four months in the job, Abbas had signed the roadmap document, the latest initiative in the attempt to bring peace to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. But in the past month, like all of its predecessors, the plan had begun to fray and disintegrate in the face of violence, chaos and bitter recrimination. Abbas’s despairing departure suggested that yet another Middle East “peace process” was about to trundle into the buffers. Thirty-six hours later, a group of five women arrived in Britain on a peace delegation from the Middle East. As such, their timing could scarcely have been worse. Yet, as they see it, the very fact of their coming is in itself cause for optimism. Two of the women are Jewish Israelis, two a
