Women for Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green)

Women in Green describes itself as a grassroots movement opposing the Oslo process and territorial division, and it campaigns for Jerusalem to remain Israel's undivided and exclusive capital.[4] It opposes sharing Jerusalem with the PLO and advocates Jewish settlement and life in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and Gaza.[4]

The movement opposes withdrawal from the territories and negotiations to establish a Palestinian state. It regards settlements as an asset to Israeli security and operates alongside official settler organizations.[2]

Women in Green also advocates annexation of Judea and Samaria and continued Jewish settlement there.[5] Its stated positions therefore connect territorial sovereignty and settlement with arguments about Jewish national rights and Israeli security.[2][5]

Women for Israel's Tomorrow was established in 1993 following the first Oslo agreements, in opposition to the Oslo Accords and the proposed creation of a Palestinian state under the Palestinian Authority in Israeli-controlled territory.[1][6] The nickname Women in Green arose from a campaign against returning to the Green Line, during which members wore distinctive green hats.[7]

Published accounts differ over the movement's founders. The Times of Israel and Maariv identify Ruth and Michael Matar as its founders.[6][7] A study of American immigrant activism also identifies American-born Israeli Eve Harow as one of the founders.[1] A 2019 Ynet article instead credits later leaders Yehudit Katzover and Nadia Matar.[8]

The movement had an overwhelmingly American membership and style and was formed as a right-wing counterpart to Women in Black, a left-leaning anti-occupation movement that was also strongly influenced by American immigrants.[1] Harow said that leaving familiar surroundings “takes get-up-and-go” and added, “in order to prove that we did the right thing, we have to help Israel be the best it can.”[1]

From its early years, the group sought to counter portrayals of Oslo opponents as settlers or right-wing fanatics by presenting mothers, housewives, and career women who could articulate their position to Israeli and international audiences.[6]

During the Oslo protest period of the early-to-mid 1990s, Women in Green directed much of its energy toward American Jews and the foreign press. Leader Ruth Matar said the group aimed to shift American Jewish opinion by emphasizing what she called “the undemocratic nature of the Labor (then Rabin) government.”[1] The organization distributed newsletters, photographs, and videotapes documenting what it alleged was police brutality against its members and other efforts to suppress its activities.[1] Among its most striking tactics was plastering posters around Israel depicting Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin wearing a traditional Arab kefiya; the group later reused the same poster format to oppose policies of Benjamin Netanyahu.[1]

The group made early and extensive use of the Internet, operating a website that distributed information about Israel and the peace process to English-speaking audiences abroad.[1] Chapters in major North American cities provided financial and political support for its agenda.[1] A leading Israeli newspaper called Women in Green “the most authentic and exciting popular resistance movement to have arisen here (in Israel) in the last few years.”[9]

The group's June 1997 archive reports that it organized solidarity bus tours to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. A late-May trip brought three busloads of participants to Yitzhar, Itamar, and Ma'aleh Levonah, where they planted a tree beside Yitzhar and named it “Yitzhak Mordechai.”[4] The organization also announced educational tours to Joseph's Tomb near Shechem, Elon Moreh, and ancient Shilo, presenting them as a way to connect participants with Jewish history and contemporary Jewish communities.[4]

In June 1997, Women in Green petitioned Israel's High Court against a Jerusalem concert and march advertised under the theme “Sharing Jerusalem: Two Capitals for Two States.” The organization reported that the concert was canceled following its petition and public campaign, while the court rejected its petition concerning the march—an outcome it described as “half-a-victory.”[4]

One of Women in Green's most prominent initiatives is its annual walk around the walls of Jerusalem's Old City on the eve of Tisha B'Av, when Jews commemorate the destruction of the Temple.[1] The organization states that Ruth and Michael Matar learned in 1994 of an older custom of walking the walls that night and that the movement revived it as an expression of longing for Jerusalem and loyalty to the city.[10]

According to the organization, police objected to the first renewed walk, but the High Court instructed them to permit it. Its 2018 announcement described that year's event as the 24th annual walk and listed a route including the Old City gates and Western Wall, with prayer, a reading of Lamentations, and historical explanations.[10] A study of the movement characterized the event as a social gathering for English-speakers and visitors, a political statement about Jewish rights in Jerusalem, one of Israel's largest annual political events, and a cornerstone of the group's public relations.[1]

In the summer of 2014, Women in Green established the Oz veGaon Nature Reserve near the Gush Etzion junction in memory of Gilad Shaer, Eyal Yifrach, and Naftali Fraenkel, three Israeli teenagers kidnapped and murdered by Arab terrorists that year.[3]

The reserve developed into a venue for Zionist education, tourism, lectures, and public events. In 2019, the Sovereignty Movement mobilized supporters to attend a lecture by Caroline Glick there after Combatants for Peace announced a protest concerning alleged annexation of Area C.[3]

Combatants for Peace alleged that an access path at the reserve crossed land belonging to the nearby village of Beit Ummar. The Sovereignty Movement disputed that allegation, maintaining that the path was an escape route on state land and had been opened after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the preserve.[3]

Ruth Matar served as the public face of Women in Green through its formative decades. She stopped working actively with the organization in 2005 for health reasons, after which her daughter-in-law Nadia Matar assumed its leadership.[6] Nadia Matar later co-chaired Women in Green with Yehudit Katzover.[6][10]

Following the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, Katzover and Matar shifted the organization's emphasis from street protest toward settlement activity, strategic land issues, and advocacy for Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.[7] In 2010, they founded the extra-parliamentary Sovereignty Movement to promote the application of Israeli law to Judea and Samaria; from 2013, it published a journal titled Sovereignty.[7]

Ynet described the Sovereignty Movement as a daughter movement of Women in Green, with Katzover and Matar as its leading figures.[8] The movement has held conferences and seminars, published a journal, campaigned for local candidates who supported sovereignty, and received approximately NIS 1.5 million from the Central Fund for Israel.[8]

In 2019, Katzover and Matar presented a plan called “Tama 100,” which they said had been in development for roughly two years and could be implemented by Israel's centenary.[11] The proposal called for Israeli sovereignty in Area C, increasing the Jewish majority in Area B through establishing and expanding settlements, and ultimately returning an Israeli presence to cities including Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, and Gaza.[11] Palestinians remaining under the plan would receive residency status rather than citizenship; its stated aims included opposing Palestinian statehood and encouraging Arab emigration.[11]

The plan cited a Geocartography survey of 500 Israeli citizens eligible to vote, which reportedly found that 73 percent opposed a Palestinian state and 85 percent supported Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.[11] Commanders for Israel's Security denounced the proposal as dangerous and argued that annexation would bring about the end of Israel as a Jewish state.[11]

Women in Green's significance lies partly in its combination of American-influenced grassroots methods with Israeli territorial politics. Its Internet outreach, foreign-media work, North American chapters, and annual Jerusalem walk gave it channels for reaching both Israeli and overseas audiences.[1]

The later Sovereignty Movement extended that model through conferences, seminars, journals, election-related campaigns, and outreach to Israeli political figures.[8] Together with projects such as Oz veGaon, this evolution linked the movement's protest-era activism to sustained advocacy for Israeli sovereignty and a physical presence in Judea and Samaria.[3][8]

A major legal controversy involving the organization arose in 2006, when Nadia Matar stood trial on a charge of insulting a public servant after sending a fax comparing Disengagement Authority chairman Yonatan Bassi to a Judenrat—a Jewish council whose leaders were forced by the Nazis to administer directives during the Holocaust.[12] The comparison stirred anger and controversy across the political spectrum. At the time of the Ynet report, the presiding judge had questioned the validity of the prosecution's case, and the state said it would consider his suggestion that the indictment might be revoked.[12]

In 2004, Women in Green mounted a campaign against Checkpoint Watch observers at Israeli checkpoints, distributing leaflets urging soldiers to complain to police if they believed the observers were harassing or threatening them.[13] Checkpoint Watch rejected the group's characterization of its activities, called the campaign foolish, and said that its organization had approximately 400 volunteers operating at checkpoints.[13]