Women for Israel's Tomorrow () also known as Women in Green (Hebrew: ) is an Israeli nonprofit organization established in 1993 by Ruth and Michael Matar in response to the Oslo Accords. The organization is currently led by Nadia Matar and Yehudit Katsover.
Organization
Founded in 1993, the organization is a grassroots movement of both women and men, religious and non-religious. Their slogan is "unified in their love of, dedication for, and faithfulness to the Land of Israel." The group is a registered non-profit organisation and is not affiliated with any political party. It has gained public support in Israel and abroad.
The more familiar name of the movement, Women in Green, is based on the green hats that the activists wore during public demonstrations held against the Oslo Accords. The green hats symbolise the group's opposition to restoring the Green Line. "The Land of Israel for the People of Israel" is an unofficial motto that has been adopted by the movement since its founding.
According to the website, the movement is "dedicated to safeguarding our G-d-given Biblical homeland. We act out of the belief in the central role of the Land of Israel to the future of the Jewish People. 'Eretz Yisrael L'Am Yisrael' – 'the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel' is our motto." Women in Green opposes a two-state solution, strongly opposes the return of land captured in the Six-Day War of 1967, and strongly supports Israeli settlement of those territories, which it proposes should be annexed. Women in Green also opposed Israeli military withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.
Activities
The Oz veGaon Nature Preserve
In June 2014, on the same night it became known that the three abducted teens, Gilad Shaer, Eyal Yifrach, and Naftali Frenkel had been murdered – members of Women in Green, together with settlers of the Westbank and with the support of the Gush Etzion Council, ascended to Abu Suda Forest, above the Gush Etzion Junction, only dozens of meters from the site of the abduction. There they established a nature preserve in memory of the youths –The Oz veGaon (Gilad Eyal and Naftali) Nature Preserve. The location has become an active tourism-educational site where visitors come from the entire country. Every Friday the Women in Green movement holds lectures, workshops and cultural events at the site.
During the first two years of the nature preserve's establishment, approximately 30,000 youths came to help prepare the site. They participated in removing rocks, thistles, and weeds, and were instructed in self-defense. The parents of the abducted youths come often to the preserve, as well as politicians and public figures who support the site's development as a place of education, cultural events, family recreation and camping.
The Sovereignty Campaign
In recent years the movement has branched out to include The Sovereignty Campaign, a broad public relations campaign calling for the application of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. The campaign was born in 2011 in response to what came to feel like a Sisyphean effort, continuously climbing and descending hill after hill, with no foreseeable end in sight. This caused the movement's leaders to see the necessity of branching out from the arena of settlement activity to the arena of diplomacy in order to protect Judea and Samaria. They no longer believed it was enough to merely say "'No' to a Palestinian state". The nationalist movement had to initiate its own plan of action. This sentiment gave rise to the Sovereignty Campaign: Israeli Sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.
The Sovereignty Journal
This currently ongoing Sovereignty Campaign features billboards, conferences, lectures, parlor meetings, publication of manifestos, and the production of the Sovereignty Journal, of which hundreds of thousands of copies are distributed in Hebrew and in English. The Sovereignty Journal includes articles, reports and interviews with political and public figures who call for implementing the vision of sovereignty as Israel's political vision.