The months because the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023 have been terrible for Israeli peace activists. As the country unites behind the war effort, critics they were arrested and condemned by opponents who say the attacks showed how misled the peace movement is.
But in the eyes of activists, the terrible violence of October 7 and Israel’s radical military response only confirm the urgency of the situation. Vivian Silver, who for ten years led Women Wage Peace, an Israeli-Palestinian solidarity group, was one of several peace activists murdered that day. “If we want to have a future here, we must make the conflict a thing of the past,” her son Yonatan Zeigen he wrote in the op-ed after her death.
In other words, for some activists, October 7 merely underscored the urgency of their cause. However, the peace movement has always been diverse and often fragmented. In fact, there are many movements, each with its own definition of peace. How researcher of religion, ethics and politicsI traced how the divergent accounts of Israel’s founding come together different visions of justice.
“Peace Camp”
The Israeli demographic most associated with the “peace camp” is predominantly Israeli Ashkenazi Jews, which suggests they arrive from communities in Central and Eastern Europe. They are also typically secular, meaning they don’t strictly follow traditional Jewish religious law.
But even inside this larger camp, there are divergent perceptions of justice, shaped by how people understand the foundation causes of conflict. Did it really start in 1917 when British Lord he promised a home for the Jews? In 1948, with the Israeli War of Independence – which the Palestinians experienced because the Nakba, their “catastrophe”? Or perhaps crucial date is 1967, when Israel occupied the Golan Heights, east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip?
For probably the most part, that is the “peace camp” that “Israel proper” consists of. land throughout the Green Line”, established in the armistice agreements at the top of the 1948 war. The Green Line doesn’t include territories occupied by Israel because the end of the war in 1967, which most of the peace camp considers morally fallacious occupation.
More broadly, their vision is predicated on preserving Israel as a democracy with a Jewish majority. This requires the creation of a sovereign Palestinian nation-state in the occupied territories.
An outstanding example of a secular group accepting the Green Line as a peace premise Is the once strong Peace Now movement, created in 1978 by Israeli veterans. They argue, appealing to human rights and international law, that a continued occupation will threaten Israel’s character as a Jewish democracy.
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…and his dissidents
However, because the starting of Zionism, other Jews have questioned the movement’s primary goal of establishing a Jewish-majority state, given a reality in which other groups of people, other than Jews, already lived in historic Palestine. For example, Brit Shalom groupfounded in 1926 by European Jewish intellectuals, he imagined a binational state this could include equality for non-Jewish Palestinian communities.
According to Brit Shalom, the commitment to democratic principles was contrary to the ambition to create a majority Jewish state, which, in accordance with them, was to expel the Palestinians and preventing their return.
Other contemporary secular groups, composed primarily of Jewish Israelis, also oppose the Green Line as a basis for peacebuilding. Zochrot e.g, highlights the 1948 Nakba as the foundation cause of the conflict. That’s why they support Palestinian refugees right to returnwhich is central to the Palestinian concept of justice.
Fred Csasznik/“The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem” via Wikimedia Commons
Other critics of the mainstream peace movement criticized it for ignoring it the fight for social justice for non-Shekenazi Jews in Israelreminiscent of Arab Jews or “Mizrahim” and Ethiopian Jews, or linking these issues to the experiences of Palestinians.
Palestinian voices
Continuous expansion Israeli settlements in the West Bank undermined the Green Line as a basis for peace. This actual annexation, as many analysts call itmakes it increasingly unlikely that “peace” could mean the lives of most Israelis inside this line and most Palestinians beyond it.
However, with the erosion of the Green Line, various organizations are again emphasizing a binational vision of one state or two states united in a confederation. Compared to the “mainstream” peace camp, some of these groups have a larger Palestinian representation, drawn mainly from Palestinian residents of Israel.
Land for all: two states, one homeland, often known as ALFA, was founded in 2012 and is co-run by Palestinians and Jewish Israelis. IN events after October 7members they struggled with their sadness deciding to assume a shared political future.
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The basic premise of ALFA is that “each men belong to the entire earth” While he believes that realistically, Jewish settlers will remain in the territories occupied in 1967, he predicts that they’ll change into Israeli residents of the long run State of Palestine – one half of a larger confederation with the State of Israel.
Likewise the organization Standing together sent two representatives – one Jewish Israeli and one Palestinian Israeli – to the United States to jointly organize events with the message that “each the Jewish people and the Palestinians intend to stay in this land. Nobody goes anywhere“
It is price noting that Palestinian members of groups in search of Palestinian-Israeli dialogue are normally non-Green Line Israeli residents, with a few exceptions reminiscent of Peace fighters – a group of Palestinians and Jews advocating non-violence but consisting of former combatants.
However, after many years of the “peace process”, many Palestinians interpret coexistence initiatives as a form standardization of the career.
The Faithful Left
The tension between Israel’s Jewish and democratic identities was present even before the state’s founding. But critics fear this has been the case under the present hardline government giving up the democratic part for Jewish supremacy.
They were religious politicians some of probably the most visible supporters for measures that reduce the likelihood of a neighboring sovereign Palestinian state, reminiscent of: construction of recent housing estates. Still the present right-wing coalition provided the impetus for more Israelis who are observant Jews to affix the peace effort: “The Faithful Left”, meaning Little Emuni in Hebrew.
The movement was born when lots of of people arrived Jerusalem conference in January 2023, discussing his discomfort with the political exploitation of Jewish tradition, and second conference took place in February 2024. Since many Faithful Leftists are products of religious Zionist schools, their key advantage in the peace movement is the flexibility to compete arguments for annexation or domination on religious grounds.
Older groups, e.g Rabbis for Human Rightswhose members include each humanists and Orthodox Christians, have also been drawing on religious ideas for many years.
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Some activists of the Faithful Left also participated in the motion Bnei Avrahamgroup which shows solidarity with the Palestinians by constructing relationships in the West Bank – particularly in Hebron, where Palestinians routinely experience violence and harassment.
Secular anti-occupation groups reminiscent of Ta’ayush go a step further and try to supply personal protection from violence. For example, Ta’ayush activists walk children to high school or accompany Palestinian shepherds as a buffer against harassment.
The erosion of the Green Line has undermined many peace groups’ visions for peace and justice, regardless of their diversity. Even more fundamentally, it reopened the query of what it means for Israel to be Jewish and a Democrat – a query at the guts of Israeli peace activists’ challenges today.
