DUBAI – Women play a key role in developing the relations between Israel and Gulf States, agreed several women in influential diplomatic roles in the region on a panel at The Jerusalem Post and Khaleej Times Global Investment Forum on Wednesday.
"The involvement of women is really important,” Canadian Ambassador to the UAE Marcy Grossman said. “Including women at the table in this region is so important...Women have an opportunity to create more peace and more security. Women are natural peacemakers.
“Sarah and Hagar are part of the Abraham Accords,” Grossman said, referring to Abraham’s wives who are the fathers of the Jewish and Arab peoples, respectively.
Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum touted the work of the Gulf Israel Women’s Forum, which she started soon after the Abraham Accords were announced last August.
“We built a women’s organization that would form deep bonds and networks across the whole Gulf, an infrastructure for sustaining peace,” she stated.
Hassan-Nahoum said that many people are surprised that women play such a major role and hold senior positions in the UAE.
“The biggest misconception is about women. Women here essentially run the show,” she said, pointing to the centrality of the family structure in Emirati culture.
Grossman said that she thought it was very bold of her government to send her to the UAE in 2018, because she is a woman and Jewish, and she was uncertain she would be accepted, but she was, and there have been milestones of acceptance in the ensuing years.
Bahraini diplomat Houda Nonoo spoke of her experience as a Jewish woman, whose family moved from Iraq to Bahrain in the 1880s.
“It was always known that we were Jewish and it was never a problem for anyone,” she said.
When she was ambassador to the US, Nonoo recounted, many asked her how Bahrain could have appointed a Jewish woman to that role, but in Bahrain it was a non-issue.
“I used to tell people that Jews originated from” the Middle East, she said. “We are all Bahrainis. We all have the same opportunities.”