How Can Israelis and Palestinians Achieve Peace?
During the early morning hours of October 7, 2023, a horrifying massacre took place where the Palestinian Sunni Islamist group Hamas led a surprise attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, sea, and air, firing barrages of rockets towards the southern and central parts of the country. The fighting continues and countless people are dying on both sides. One of the largest targets were the children in Gaza. Debates continued concerning whether there should there be a ceasefire and the issue of humanitarian aid. Was this genocide of the Palestinian people? Many voices expressed the horror of the brutality that was taking place on both the Israeli and Palestinian people.
One such person, Rula Daood, the Palestinian Israeli co-director of Standing Together, a progressive grassroots movement that mobilizes people around issues of peace, equity, and social justice, passionately said, “There is no other way but forward.” They told us that this war would crush Hamas. They told us that it would bring the hostages home. But none of this has happened. The hostages continue to die. Those that came back, came back as part of a deal. Hamas is only growing stronger. It’s Gazan lives being crushed: children, women, men, innocent people whose homes were destroyed and who have nothing to eat.
Tens of thousands of people living near the border lived through a horrifying massacre on October 7, lost family and friends, and now they don’t know when they will be able to return home. How is any of this good for any of us? For the good of those who live here? How much more blood will be spilled before we understand that this war is crushing all of us? How many people will die before we understand that this is not the way to get security? How many homes will be destroyed? How many dreams abandoned before we understand that there will be no hope on one side of the border if there is no hope on the other? That the fate of Israelis and Palestinians is intertwined. That we will all live in peace and freedom — or that none of us will.
How can Israelis and Palestinians achieve peace? Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian peacemaker and Maoz Inon, an Israeli peacemaker share a touching story of friendship and how they choose reconciliation over revenge. What brought them together was a belief in a better future and, through finding shared values, they built a coalition of Israeli and Palestinian citizens whose intention is creating a path of hope and peace.
On October 7 Inon lost his parents during the massacre, along with many of his childhood friends, their parents, and their children. Inon was drowning in an ocean of grief and pain. At night he visited this horror in his dream state. In one particular dream he saw humanity crying with him. Tears were streaming down faces washing over wounded bodies until the tears healed the bodies and washed the blood from the ground purifying the land. What emerged from the ground was a path, a path to peace. When Inon woke up he immediately knew that this was the path he needed to take, a path of reconciliation and not revenge.
Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah met only once before October 7, yet Abu Sarah sent a message offering condolences when hearing that Inon’s parents were killed. In a response that surprised Abu Sarah, Inon said he was mourning not only the death of his parents — he was crying for the people of Gaza who were also losing lives. Inon didn’t want what happened to be justification for anyone to take revenge, understanding that it was easier to be angry than to not want to justify war.
Abu Sarah had a different story of pain and sorrow. His brother Tayseer was killed by an Israeli soldier when he was only nineteen years old. Abu Sarah, ten at the time, was angry and bitter, only wanting revenge. It was eight years later when Abu Aziz went to study Hebrew with Jewish immigrants to Israel that he realized that he could make choices regardless of what other people do, and, through being angry and hateful, Abu Aziz would only become a slave to the person who killed his brother.
Abu Sarah has worked in 70 countries, and he’s discovered that the causes of conflict are the same. It’s the lack of recognition, a lack of willingness to understand each other’s historical narrative or listen to one another deeply with respect, and not having a shared vision for the future. The other issue is that people are divided because they cannot talk and have conversations with one another.
All of us need to learn from each other, to not be afraid to ask the hard questions, and to be honest and willing to listen. What Inon learned from speaking with Palestinians is that we must forgive for the past, forgive the present, but we cannot and should not forgive for the future. We need to work to make the future a better future. Inon speaks of the gap, since the beginning of the Zionist movement and the Palestinian national movement, with the war they have been waging on each other becoming wider and wider, with their stories so very far apart. And according to Inon, a miracle can happen where the stories meet in the future; they will be based on reconciliation and recognition, where all will feel safe, secure, and equal.
People may hear the word “forgiveness” yet think: How can you lose people you love and not be angry? No one is saying to abandon your anger. Anger can be a teacher, telling us that something must change, either within ourselves or outside of ourselves. Anger is real — yet we must be very careful not to let our anger turn into hate, blinded by the need for revenge.
What is being asked of us is to have moral courage, hope, and the ability to envision a better future. If we come with the mindset of seeing the world not through the eyes of anger or fear but with willingness to see things differently, a new story can be written. If we recognize there are people on all sides of the divide who want to live normal lives in harmony, together we can build a narrative that includes reconciling with one another so that all people can live in peace.
