It seems like in Israel, after October 7, saying you believe in peace is like saying you believe in aliens. But it hasn’t always been this way.
In the 1990s, massive crowds lined the streets of Tel Aviv to celebrate a new era of peace. Israeli and Palestinian leaders signed historic agreements, shook hands, and even shared a Nobel Prize. But the promised peace never materialized.
Every negotiation since has exploded, sometimes literally. Today, two-thirds of Israelis believe that peace with the Palestinians is impossible. Are they right? Is the Israeli-Palestinian peace process doomed?
For Unpacked host Yirmiyahu Danzig, peace is an article of faith, a prophetic aspiration. But prophetic aspirations unfortunately don’t follow a human timeline. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that peace will come in our lifetimes, no matter how fervently we work toward it.
“In my darkest moments, I worry that things will get much worse before they get better,” Danzig explained. He moved back to Israel when he was 19, right as Palestinian youth had launched a wave of stabbing attacks that was terrorizing the country.
“It was a grim welcome home,” Danzig said. “But I knew firsthand that it didn’t have to be that way. I’d grown up watching my grandfather model coexistence in a Jewish state. He lived his life in both Hebrew and Arabic, building a home that was open to everyone. That was the world I wanted for myself. I knew it was possible. I just didn’t know how.”
When Danzig returned to Israel, the peace camp was already in decline. Israeli leftists were jumping ship, leaving a tiny core of activists who seemed increasingly out of touch with the average citizen.
“In the ’90s, the Israeli left really takes on peace as its kind of identity. Those who opposed it opposed it intensely, and those who supported it supported it passionately,” Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur explained. “But then, the Second Intifada begins, almost 140 suicide bombings in three years, many of them by the peace partners, by Fatah.”
Fatah is the Palestinian political party that signed the Oslo Accords. It was supposed to be the moderates within Palestinian society. But less than 10 years after Oslo, Fatah was sending men strapped with explosives to blow themselves up in Israeli markets, buses, and cafes.
“Israelis started asking themselves, ‘Was there ever an actual peace? Was there any peace on offer, or was this just tactical and empty and not real?'” Rettig Gur added.
When Danzig sought out the leaders of peace advocacy groups, hoping to be energized and inspired, he just became more frustrated. “These old-school activists seemed totally disconnected from your average Israeli or Palestinian. They sketched out a gorgeous future of peace and prosperity, but neglected to provide a map to this destination or demonstrate a complete grasp of the obstacles to this peace and prosperity.”
Instead, Danzig chose a different path, building connections, bridges, and friendships and conducting healthy debates.
“I learned Arabic. I made friends in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. I used my platform to showcase both sides of our story. Because I believe deeply that Israelis and Palestinians are family, born of the same land, children of the same God. I don’t think either one of us needs to give up on our history, our identity, or character to honor the other. It’s not a zero-sum game. There’s room for all of us,” he explained.
Then came October 7, and for many, it felt like a fatal blow to the prospect of peace. But some activists continue to fight. They’re a minority, and they’ll be the first to tell you they don’t have all the answers. But they have energy and hope. They don’t all agree, and no one has a perfect solution, but these are dreamers from across the political spectrum who continue to show up and dream.
Israeli activist and entrepreneur Maoz Inon has more reason than anyone to give in to despair. His parents were among the first victims of the October 7 attacks. When asked if he hates Hamas, he replied, “Now, I hate no one. I’m practicing radical forgiveness. I have no hate. I’m not mad. I’m not angry about anyone. I will speak in dialogue with anyone willing to speak in dialogue with me. My only mission and my only goal is to make peace.”
Inon has every reason to be angry or hateful, to say peace is impossible. However, he has chosen the opposite path, and he says he’s not alone.
Inon spoke about the People’s Peace Summit, held in Jerusalem in May 2025. “[There were] more than 60 civil society organizations, Jewish and Arab, Palestinians, Israelis, international support [for] two days; the biggest peace rally the Middle East has seen, I don’t know for how many decades.” Inon added that he met with a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews and they’re forming a new group called Haredim L’Shalom (Haredim for Peace).
“Shalom (peace) is not a political agenda. It’s not left or right. Shalom is within each one of us,” Inon said.
Maoz genuinely believes that the first step towards peace is recognizing just how much we have in common. Rula Daood agrees.
As the national co-director of Standing Together, Israel’s largest grassroots Jewish-Arab peace movement, Daood dedicates a significant amount of time to community organizing. Her work is based on the radical idea that, at the end of the day, Israelis and Palestinians are fundamentally just people.
“We are a grassroots movement of both Jews and Palestinians who live inside of Israel. Our theory of change is very simple and very basic. We do believe that most of the people living in here want the same things. If you will put a bunch of people in one room, you will ask, ‘Do you want to live in safety?’ all of the people who are sitting in the same room will raise their hand. And if you will ask them, ‘Do you wanna live in a place where you have good salary?’ all of them will raise their hands. And if you ask them, ‘Do you want to live in a place where you have peace and security?’ all of them will raise their hands.”
All of that is an effective starting point, but it’s hard to ignore the elephant in the room: What about people who don’t want the same things? People who have committed themselves to wrecking every single opportunity for peace. People who firmly believe that the other side must be destroyed. People who are religious extremists.
Dr. Yehuda Yemini, an expert in intercultural negotiation and Israel-West relations, has a different view of the situation. Yemini is not a peace activist. He began his career in the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and currently spends his days negotiating with the Palestinian Authority over infrastructure and water rights.
Like Maoz, he’s Jewish. Like Daood, he’s fluent in Arabic. But unlike both of them, he believes this conflict is deeply rooted in religion.
“It’s a mistake to treat the Palestinians as the only enemies in this conflict or the only side in this conflict. It’s really incorrect,” Yemini explained. “This is a conflict that involves every Muslim in the entire world. According to Islam, until today, the Jews have a very specific role in the world. They’re meant to be a subjugated people. This means that Jews cannot establish a state, they cannot establish autonomy, they cannot rule themselves or any other nation. Muslims all over the world see the State of Israel, a Jewish state, as an anomaly that runs counter to Islam and the Quran.”
Yemini pointed to the anti-Jewish riots of the 1920s and 1930s, the religious rhetoric that Palestinian and other Arab leaders have used to inflame tensions, and to the fact that the Palestinian cause has become an international rallying cry for Muslims worldwide. He’s not alone in that perspective.
Danzig argues, however, that we’re not serving anyone by making sweeping statements about the world’s two billion Muslims, most of whom would be very surprised to hear that they have a religious obligation to get rid of the Jewish people. Instead, he says, it is a subset of radical Islamists like Hamas or Hezbollah or the Islamic Republic of Iran, who see the conflict in starkly religious terms.
“To the Israeli mind, Hamas isn’t fighting against occupation. It isn’t fighting for Palestinian rights. There are theocrats who themselves don’t give Palestinians freedom under their own rule. So for the huge majority of Israeli Jews, probably 80% of Israeli Jews share this narrative,” Rettig Gur explained.
Even the most peace-loving Israelis will admit that this narrative leaves little room to maneuver. It’s more or less impossible to reason with religious extremists who believe that destroying you is their sacred duty.
Hamas doesn’t want to talk; the terrorist movement’s made that abundantly clear. But consider this. Hamas may not always be in power, and governments can enact significant changes. Just a couple of decades ago, Saudi newspapers were publishing anti-Jewish blood libels, Saudi textbooks were once full of antisemitic propaganda that described all Jews as treacherous and cited “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as a reputable historical source. But just a few years ago, the Saudi government removed most, though not all, of these antisemitic tropes. And normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia now isn’t a question of if, but a question of when.
Things can change, things have changed, and that is what many Israelis are holding onto.
Manuela Rotstein, a member of Women Wage Peace, explains that “We need to find a way of living together, recognizing the other, the rights of the other, the pain of the other, and find together a dignified future.”
“The Arab countries are ready. This is something that today is possible. It wasn’t possible before. Today it is possible,” Rotstein added.
But what do you do with a group like Hamas, which has proven very unwilling to change its direction? And what do you do to show Jews and Israelis that the problem isn’t with Islam, per se, but a twisted Islamist version of it?
Because there are two truths at play here, the first is that Hamas is made up of extremists whose radical version of Islam leaves no room to negotiate. The second is that Islam might still play a role in bridging the chasm between Israelis and Palestinians. No one knows this better than Rabbi Yakov Nagen, who’s been involved in peace work and interfaith dialogue for more than 20 years.
Nagen genuinely believes that if religion is part of the problem, it should also be part of the solution.
“I have a profound respect for Islam. I’ve studied it for many years, and I feel that, if Islamic identity has been weaponized against the Jewish people, we must speak the truth of Islam, the path of Islam,” Nagen said. “I teach at Yeshivat Otniel. Eight of my students have been killed since October 7. But I feel it’s necessary for Israel to realize that the world is bigger than this. I feel we are falling into the hands of evil enemies by assuming that they are the one and only authentic expression of their religion, of their peoples. And this empowers them. And the way to respond is to isolate them, to speak the truth that they are a perversion of their religions, and finding that we don’t have to be alone, that we have allies throughout the world, and stand together for the sake of Jews, Muslims, Israelis, and Palestinians.”
Nagen’s warning to Israelis is not to assume that Hamas speaks for everyone. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza do not live in a free society.
“We have pretty good polling on this for decades. A great many Palestinians desperately wanted the peace to work. Their ideological leadership, who never asks their opinion, was committed to not having it work,” Rettig Gur explained. “Not everybody, there were leaders in Fatah who were horrified at the Second Intifada and wrote against the Second Intifada.”
Daood notes as well that she is “a Palestinian citizen of Israel. I do vote for the Israeli Knesset. So I don’t really have an influence on the West Bank. But when I look at the leadership that we have right now, I see that some people in the West Bank, maybe also young people, are not very much satisfied with the leadership that they have. They view it as an old, corrupt leadership, and we see it even on social media. There has been, you know, a survey done in Gaza before October 7. More than 62% of the people said they don’t see Hamas as a leadership, and this was before the 7th of October.”
But Daood, like Haviv and like Yemini, also points out that Palestinian society is far more radical after October 7, which isn’t surprising considering the level of destruction in Gaza right now. Not to mention that many Palestinian children in both the West Bank and Gaza receive an education that is, to put it mildly, not entirely flattering to Jews.
“Those who know and have seen their textbooks, it is simply incitement and propaganda that the Nazis would have been proud of,” Yemini explained. “[There is a] use of the classic Christian antisemitism in its purest form.”
That’s why many Israelis say nothing will change without education, although that’s easier said than done. But the future could hold surprises, just like the past did.
“There were opinions among the Muslims that saw in the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel a realization of a Quranic prophecy that appears in Sura (chapter) 17, verse 104, where it is written that Allah, at the end of days, will gather the Jews,” Yemini noted. “More than 100 years ago, there were Muslims that believed that [Zionism] is the realization of a Quranic prophecy. There were even organizations that were established in order to collaborate with Christians, Muslims, and Jews to develop the land.”
Those moderate voices were eventually eliminated by extremist Islamist factions. But for a short time, they existed, which means they can exist again. In fact, they exist right now. Some of them are speaking out, while others remain hidden until it’s safe to go public. That day might come sooner than we think, as Hamas’ grip on Gaza continues to weaken. The weaker Hamas becomes, the greater the opportunity.
“We have a window of opportunity, because the Muslim world is also looking for solutions. If we take the last 100 years, history shows us that there has always been a Muslim power that fought against us. At this moment, Hezbollah has been disarmed, Hamas is on its way there too, and I believe Iran is also close as well. At this moment, there is no physical power that is coming to fight us. Therefore, we have an opportunity. If we encourage this approach in a meaningful way throughout the Muslim world, so that the Jews returning to Zion is aligned with the Quran, I would be very optimistic. I think that’s what will bring change and ultimately maybe peace.”
But behind all this energy and infectious hope lies a massive and impossible question. Sure, Israelis and Palestinians are just people like anyone else. Both sides need to strengthen their moderates and defeat their extremists, and both sides need the kind of visionary leaders who can inspire them to fight for a different future. But what does that future look like in a practical sense? What do we mean when we talk about peace?
Are these activists fighting for a single binational state that is neither Jewish nor explicitly Palestinian? Are they still dreaming of the two-state solution? Are they envisioning a confederation arrangement? Every one of these activists and experts has their own answer, but more importantly, they’re flexible. No one had the answer, just lots of different ideas, each with its own pros and cons.
“To have two disconnected states, I think would be lose-lose for both sides,” Nagen explained. “I’ve written extensively about a play on the European Union, the Abrahamic Union, having a Jewish state, and then certainly a Palestinian political entity. We discussed how it’s defined, allowing a situation that there are open borders that Palestinians freely travel and enter all parts of what they see as their homeland, but [also] for Jews to continue living in Judea and Samaria, to find a way that all will feel connected to places that give their identity. And it would be a blessing for all of us.”
Daood said that for her, “If in 10, 20, 50 years, we will live in a one-state for all or I don’t know what kind of a name it will give us, I am fine by it, as long as people are fine by it.”
Though it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Israelis and Palestinians live in peace in a single state, Daood is making a much larger point. We cannot predict or preempt the future. Let’s remain open to all possibilities.
“The main thing that we need and must achieve is an understanding that all of us deserve the same things, which are freedom, independence, equality, you know, liberty for all of us. And once we reach that point, we can build upon what is the solution,” Daood emphasized.
No matter how they envisioned peace, nearly every person Unpacked spoke with pointed to the same story as evidence of what is possible: the story of two unlikely leaders making peace.
Egypt and Israel were once sworn enemies. Through the 1950s, Egypt funded infiltrators to sneak into Israel and wreak havoc. Hundreds of Israelis lost their lives this way. Radio Cairo broadcasted daily threats. Egypt was so much larger, more powerful, and better supplied than Israel that in 1967, Israeli citizens prepared for the war everyone knew was coming by digging 10,000 graves. That’s how intense the hostility was. That’s how great the fear was.
In 1973, on Yom Kippur, a new Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, launched a swift and decisive attack. This war was the most devastating surprise attack in all of Israeli history until October 7, 50 years later. More than 2,000 Israeli soldiers lost their lives, a staggering number for such a tiny country. Yet, just a few years later, Sadat said something surprising in a speech to his parliament: “I’m willing to go as far as Jerusalem.” From Jerusalem, the Israeli prime minister was listening, and he responded by saying, “Welcome.”
“Sadat came to the Knesset, and he had a speech, and he spoke about peace. To this day, the borders that you have between Egypt and the ones that you have between Israel and Jordan are the safest borders. And it is because there is peace,” Daood said.
Egypt and Israel had been the most bitter enemies, but Inon points out that peace sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. He noted that in Rwanda, a genocide occurred between two tribes within one nation.
“[This was a] genocide [with] one million casualties, a priest murdered with bare hands, a husband murdered his parents-in-law, students murdered their teacher and their class friends. And then after three months, with more than a million casualties and after a million cases of rape, they woke up from this psychotic nightmare they were in for three months, and they realized that the only way forward is to reconcile,” Inon said.
It’s a beautiful idea and an important moment in history. However, all these activists are overlooking an important part of the story. Things often get worse before they get better. Germany and Japan were brought to their knees before World War II could officially end. Rebels overran Rwanda’s genocidal regime, and many of the perpetrators and inciters fled. In 1973, the IDF completely surrounded the Egyptian Third Army, giving them no choice but to surrender.
In contrast, the war in Gaza seems to be operating under a different playbook. Despite massive damage and a spiraling body count, Hamas has not fled or surrendered, at least not yet. It’s hard to know where this is going.
Danzig noted that whenever he’s tempted to feel discouraged or hopeless, he thinks about Israel’s first prime minister. David Ben-Gurion was born before there even was an Israel. He lived through two World Wars, two foreign occupations, and the most systematized genocide in history. But he never gave up fighting for the Jewish homeland. Those efforts paid off eventually.
At 62 years old, he stood in the basement of the Tel Aviv Museum and spoke a Jewish state into being. Despite everything, that state is still standing. Because, as he famously said, “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.”
