At Tel Aviv confab, Israel’s embattled peace camp seeks to revive itself post-Oct. 7
Bringing together Jewish and Arab activists under slogan ‘only peace can bring security,’ event features historian Yuval Noah Harari and Hadash chair Ayman Odeh as keynote speakers
In perhaps the most impressive display of numbers for the Israeli left since the October 7 Hamas attack, thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv’s Yad Eliyahu neighborhood on Monday evening for a conference demanding a hostage deal and end to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
“The Time Has Come” event, held at Menora Mivtachim Arena, brought together all corners of Israel’s beleaguered left ranging from older, established groups like Peace Now to more recently founded movements such as Standing Together.
Israel’s peace camp has been in sharp decline for years now, and its struggle to regain prominence in the political sphere has only become more difficult since since the start of the war on October 7, when the Hamas terror group stormed southern Israeli communities, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, 120 of whom remain in Gaza.
But after nearly nine months of war, the enduring bloc convened to reaffirm its basic premise following October 7 — only a negotiated political resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that ensures equality for both peoples can prevent another massacre.
The conference struck a somber yet hopeful tone, with bereaved families who lost loved ones on October 7 speaking early on at the event.
Maoz Inon, whose parents were murdered in their home in Netiv Ha’asara on October 7, told the crowd that the pain of losing his family only strengthened his desire for peace.
“To save myself, I embarked on a journey, on the path of peace and reconciliation. We create hope together by envisioning a common future, and working to make it a reality,” he said.
Generational divide
Many speakers nostalgically harked back to Israel under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin, the golden age of the peace camp, as proof that a political solution between Israelis and Palestinians is still possible.
Alluding to the Rabin years, Labor MK Naama Lazimi told an emotional crowd that she was born into “a family that believes in peace, in days when we all had this hope.”
“We were part of a generation that was promised a different future,” she said, but expressed worry that the younger generations of Israelis, markedly more right-wing than their parents and grandparents, have never been exposed to the possibility of peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Today we are parents to children to whom nobody promises a different future. Nobody talks about peace with them, an entire generation of children that may grow up without the ability to imagine a different life,” she lamented.
MK Ayman Odeh, the chairman of the far-left Hadash party, echoed a similar sentiment in an impassioned speech, bringing many older members of the audience close to tears.
“Most of us here still remember the days when public opinion here in Israel was different. In the 1990s, support for peace was loud and widespread. It is our duty to rebuild that faith and declare that peace is possible!” he exclaimed to the crowd.
The shattered status quo
Yanal Jbareen, a Palestinian journalist from Jerusalem who, earlier this year, covered a conference of the religious right promoting the Jewish resettling of Gaza, told the audience that he conceived of Monday’s conference as a firm rejection of Israel’s ultranationalists.
“Against all this, it is the time to unite — Arabs and Jews,” he said. “Despair is no action plan, peace is the word.”
Yona Roseman, an 18-year-old activist who volunteers with Mesarvot, a network of Israeli draft refusers, painted a similar picture to Jbareen and described the peace rally as “an attempt to create a united, ideologically vast camp in a very grand and publicized manner.”
While almost a third of Prime Minister’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet attended the right-wing conference in Jerusalem, only a handful of current Knesset members were present on Monday night, a testament to the current weakness of the Israeli left.
Despite their uphill battle, many in the peace camp believe that the shattering of the “status quo” on October 7 only strengthens the left-wing case. Hadash MK Ofer Cassif described this status quo as the notion that “the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people can be managed.”
“It cannot be managed, it should be eliminated,” Cassif told The Times of Israel on Monday, harshly criticizing the right-wing vision of the so-called “day after” in Gaza. “There is no total victory, it’s a sham. They [the Israeli right] think that this is a zero-sum game, that Israel must win and that necessitates the elimination of the Palestinians.”
Instead, he proposed that Jews and Palestinians are bound up in a single collective fate.
“What I’m saying is that it’s either a win-win situations — both peoples win; or a lose-lose situation — both peoples lose. The win-win situation comes from here,” Cassif continued, referring to the peace conference.
Linking each speech to the next was consistent pushback against the notion that supporting peace between Israelis and Palestinians is inherently naive. Between speakers, organizers even screened a brief video for the crowd listing hostile conflicts that have ended with a political agreement — South Africa, Northern Ireland and Rwanda.
Odeh went further back in time, remarking that just a century ago, Europe found itself between two world wars.
“This month we are watching the Euro games, a thrilling soccer tournament of teams of countries from that continent that in just the previous century fought world wars, were sworn to destroy each other,” Odeh said. “And now we’re all waiting for the big game between Germany and France, and this doesn’t even seem extraordinary to us. We deserve this too!”
The internationally renowned Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari brought a more cynical air to the conference, criticizing the irredentism that dominates both Israeli and Palestinian political culture.
“The bitter truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that each side fears the other is trying to annihilate it, and both sides are right,” he said.
But he still managed to end on a hopeful note.
“It’s true, we have tried to make peace in the past, and we weren’t good at it. So what? We also haven’t been very successful in making war, which doesn’t prevent us from trying again and again. All these wars have led us into an abyss. The time has come to make peace,” he said.
