The biggest peace event of the past few years in Israel received a lukewarm reception from the media and evasive responses from the country’s ministers and most of the Knesset members invited to participate. Organized by Women Wage Peace, the March of Peace left Rosh HaNikra, on the border with Lebanon, on Oct. 4, and ended about two weeks later, on Oct. 19, with a rally outside the prime minister’s residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem. At that final event, thousands of Israeli and Palestinian women, all dressed in white, demanded a diplomatic agreement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

They marched the length of Israel in 15 days, pausing to hold a series of events intended to send the message that peace is not the exclusive purview of the left and that there is a partner on the other side. The women represented the Israeli left, center and right as well as Palestinians. Some were religious, and others were secular. They had been preparing for this event for the past two years, since the founding of their movement right after Operation Protective Edge.

Despite the intensity of the experience for the women who participated, most Israelis, even those who support a diplomatic agreement, chose to remain at home. It is doubtful that they even heard about the march in the first place.

The two major factors that should have drawn public interest remained indifferent, to put it mildly, leaving some of the women participating with bad tastes in their mouths. The first was the media, which offered very limited coverage of the march and the inspirational events that accompanied it. The organizers were initially excited that thousands of Palestinian women had joined them to deliver their message and that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gboyee of Liberia came to offer her support. In the end, however, they were disappointed when they realized how hard it would be for them to break through the established media’s firewall. Even on social media, most of the people who followed the event were from the peace camp or were people who tend to focus on relations with Palestinians on a day-to-day basis.