Palestinian and Israeli activists in pursuit of peace

An Israeli and his Palestinian colleague have urged a London audience to “open the gates and build bridges” as part of their mission to achieve peace between the two nations.

Speaking to a packed JW3 crowd, Maoz Inon and Abu Aziz Sarah launched their new book, The Future is Peace, in which the pair outline possible peace initiatives to solve the apparently intractable conflict.

Both men have suffered bereavement at the hands of the other’s community. Inon lost both his parents in the Hamas attacks of October 2023, while Abu Sarah was just nine when his older brother died from internal injuries, after being released from an Israeli jail.

In a discussion moderated by Gabrielle Rifkind, the two men, who had met briefly in 2014, spoke about their re-connection after 7 October, when Abu Sarah messaged Inon and sent his sympathy to him and others who had lost friends and family members in the attack.

The pair have worked together in the long months since 7 October, travelling the world and spreading their message of achievable peace hurdles. In 2024, they met Pope Francis in Verona during the Arena of Peace event, and subsequently have met Pope Leo. Both popes encouraged Inon and Abu Sarah in their mission. And — also in Verona — in  January this year, they jointly ran with the Olympic torch, the first Israeli and Palestinian to do so — at the request of the mayor and bishop of the Italian city.

But neither man is naïve. Abu Sarah said that although he had realised that “vengeance is not the only path”, he knew it was important for both sides to talk to each other and understand “the real problems” that Israeli and Palestinians faced.

Abu Sarah recalled that growing up “the only Israelis I knew were soldiers and settlers”, and noted that “peacemaking can’t always be comfortable.”

He did not, however, go as far as Inon, who said he would be ready to have a closed room for negotiation which would include people as far apart as “Hamas and [the far-right Israeli politician Itamar] Ben-Gvir.”

Inon and Abu Sarah operate from a non-profit organisation they have set up called InterAct, and were keen to emphasise the importance of working with other peace activists in a widespread coalition, a model which they encouraged British Jews to emulate.

As an example, Abu Sarah spoke of Jerusalem Day, a yearly celebration of the 1967 unification of the city which, he said, “has become the worst day in the world to be a Palestinian.” But the peace group Standing Together had gradually been assembling volunteers to help protect East Jerusalem Arabs, and traders in the Old City, from the violence which had become the norm on this anniversary. This year, he said, more than 600 Israeli Jews had come to help.

Inon said that there was now a sharing of resources among numbers of peace groups; he called for an alliance in Britain in combating anti-Muslim and anti-Jews hate together.