Hopes for Peacebuilding in Israel and Palestine: Activists Reflect in Karuna Center Zoom Event

Watch a recording of the event covered here.

On Wednesday, July 17, the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding—an international organization rooted in Amherst—hosted a 90-minute talk over Zoom about the hopes and challenges of sustaining joint peace work among Palestinians and Israelis. More than 100 people tuned in to hear activists from Combatants for Peace and Healing Across the Divides discuss how they work for peace in such a difficult context: the attack on October 7, the mass atrocities in Gaza, and the escalating violence.

Moderated by Karuna’s Executive Director, Polly Byers, the event was part of Karuna’s 30^th anniversary celebrations this year. Karuna has worked in Israel and Palestine during various times since the late 1990s, and the organization’s founder, Paula Green, collaborated with Combatants for Peace from 2013-2017.

Sulaiman (Souli) Khatib joined the July 17 discussion from Bethlehem, in the West Bank. As a Palestinian coming from an activist family, he explained, “I started my activism as a child.” After he was arrested at age 14, he spent 10 years in Israeli jails where he discovered the power of nonviolence through hunger strikes to improve living conditions. “For me, nonviolence became ideology,” he reflected, “and also, finding partners in what we call the ‘other side’ and turning the ‘other’ into a friend.”

Souli went on to co-found the Combatants for Peace (CfP) movement with former soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces and other Palestinian activists who, like him, had participated in the violent struggle. Combatants for Peace defines itself as a grassroots movement, “committed to joint nonviolence since our inception,” of “Israelis and Palestinians, working together to end the occupation and bring peace, equality and freedom to our homeland.” 

Iris Gur, an Israeli activist in CfP, recounted a very different life story: “I was born and raised in a small city called Netanya in Israel. I never in my life had any connection with Palestinian people, though Netanya is only 14 kilometers from a Palestinian city.” Iris grew up the child of a Holocaust survivor in what she described as a Zionist family with a history of military service, where she was taught “Israel is the only land for the Jewish people, a small country surrounded by enemies.”

But when Iris’ daughter met a Palestinian student for the first time, while studying abroad in high school, everything started to change. Her daughter refused to serve in the army and was sentenced to military prison, and Iris, though initially upset, became curious and went on tours with peace organizations to learn about Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories. She said of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians: “I saw the evil. I saw the crimes. And when you see it, you can’t go back. It’s impossible to go back to your old life.”

Joining the discussion from Northampton was Norbert Goldfield, a medical doctor and founder of Healing Across the Divides. The organization funds and provides technical advice to community groups in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza that are working to improve the health of Palestinians and marginalized Israelis. He explained the impact of community health on the peace process: “Healthcare is very political, but you don’t ever use the word politics. If you improve health in a community manner, you are improving the whole community, also the politics of that community—we bring the groups together.”

When the discussion turned to the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023 and war in Gaza since, Souli and Iris openly discussed the challenges of maintaining their joint activism while under attack from the “other” side. Some Israeli members of Combatants for Peace were killed on October 7, and many of their Israeli activists know someone who was killed or taken hostage. Gazan CfP activists’ family members have been killed by Israeli bombs, and their homes demolished. Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has also increased.

Both Iris and Souli recalled their first Zoom meetings with their counterparts in CfP, in the days following the October attack. Iris recalled her first meeting with her Palestinian colleague, Sahel: “I started by saying, ‘I hate you all.’ I don’t know what happened to me. But Sahel was amazing, and he held me.” Souli also reflected talking with his Israeli CfP co-founders: “I heard the depression and the anger, the willingness to go to the tanks again—and they heard my heart saying how, in the first scenes, I was happy to see somebody broke the siege on Gaza and then I went through shame when I saw them attacking civilians.”

“We walked through the pain together, holding each other, talking openly about everything,” Iris reflected. Souli added: “it’s really easy to speak about dialogue in comfortable times, about values of love, forgiveness, togetherness, and friendship. The real thing is when it’s not comfortable. And this is one of those times when things are not comfortable—for none of us.”

Souli and Iris had a moment of dialogue in real time when responding to Polly’s question about the role of the international community. Iris initially said not to “choose a side,” noting the shared humanity of all people suffering from the violence in the region. Souli explained he saw things a bit differently. While he wanted to “have a space for people from all sides,” he said, “we’re not living equally in our homeland.” After a mutually respectful exchange, Iris reflected: “I have tears in my eyes now, because I know that these demonstrations with the flags and the keffiyehs, and the students: it was important. It is important. Because you cannot ignore the situation anymore.”

Norbert emphasized that no matter what happens in the broader conflict, Americans can make a positive impact by supporting peacebuilding at the community level. “It is Israelis and Palestinians who will make the peace. If Trump gets elected, there’s no question that there will be an attempt to annex the West Bank and resettle Gaza. The United States never plays a positive role. What we can do at Healing Across the Divides is to engage with as many Americans as possible to support community health initiatives.”

Iris added that political activism is vital: “We are all hostages by extreme and fascist politics everywhere. It’s not only in Israel. Without the money and the weapons of the United States, neither Israel nor the Palestinians can continue the war. So you can demand your leaders to shut the tap—don’t send money and don’t send weapons all over.”

All three panelists felt that October 7 was a turning point from which there is no going back; the reality of the occupation and conflict can no longer be ignored. “I want to make one thing clear,” Norbert said. “We will not give up! I was in the West Bank and in Israel, in March, meeting with grantees. These grantees don’t give up. They’re actually redoubling their efforts.” He gave the example of a group of Jewish and Palestinian women in Jerusalem who have strengthened their joint work on reproductive rights.

Souli added: “We don’t have the privilege to lose hope.” He reflected on the state of their movement: “I have to say, as an activist, as a Palestinian, somehow, I also feel excited, despite the pain—I feel excited for the awareness, the awakening energy happening in the world. For me, it’s about something deeper in many places, that people want to see a system change. I believe we should strengthen our solidarity with each other.

“I don’t believe Combatants for Peace can make change alone. That’s why we’re working to create a coalition of different groups, locally and globally, that agree on certain values for collective liberation. What happened between October 7 and now shows that managing the conflict is not going to work. It’s proven our point that there is no military solution for our cause. Many people are joining us now, and are speaking to us from all sides, saying the same: Palestinians are here. They’re not going to leave, no matter what. Israelis are here. That’s it. We have to find a way to live next to each other.”

This event was co-sponsored by the Tikkun Olam Committee of the Jewish Community of Amherst, Hopping Tree Sangha, and Critical Connections.

You can learn more about Combatants for Peace by visiting their website, cfpeace.org, or become involved through American Friends of Combatants for Peace, afcfp.org. You can find ways to work with Healing Across the Divides at healingdivides.org. For more information about Karuna Center for Peacebuilding and upcoming events, visit karunacenter.org.