Peace of the Believers in the Heart of Qusra

For years, I have worked through the Children of Abraham Project to bring Palestinians and Israelis together, especially when the political reality around us tells us that doing so is impossible.

We have gathered around tables and inside tents. We have brought together rabbis and sheikhs, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza together with Israeli Jews, Muslims, Jews and Christians, religious and secular people, children and grandparents.

We have done this because we believe that peace cannot begin only in political negotiations. It must also begin between human beings — in the difficult work of seeing, hearing and recognizing one another.

And over the past few years, we have tried to turn that belief into something real.

In March 2025, more than 900 Jews and Muslims came together for our Iftar Meal of Reconciliation in the midst of war. We sat at one table while children were dying in Gaza and Israeli hostages remained in captivity. We did not pretend that the suffering around us did not exist. We gathered precisely because it did. Our message was that humanity is indivisible, and that suffering does not become less sacred because the person suffering belongs to the other people.

A few months later, around 200 Palestinians and Israeli Jews — children, parents and grandparents — spent a day and night together in 100 Tents for Justice, Humanity and Equality. We ate together, held dialogue circles, shared our experiences and watched children from different communities simply play together.

Then came one of the most difficult and meaningful initiatives we have organized: 100 Stories, One Voice for Peace.

We brought together 100 Palestinian and Israeli voices from Gaza, the West Bank and Israel — people who did not know war as an argument on television, but through their own bodies, homes and families.

Among them were Maoz and Mayan Inon, who lost their parents on October 7. Abdulrahman came from Gaza carrying the loss of more than nine members of his family during the war. Others had lost loved ones, suffered injuries, experienced displacement, or watched the world they knew collapse around them.

Some of the stories were almost unbearable to hear.

But we did not bring these people together to compare their suffering.

There was no competition over whose dead mattered more, whose tears were more legitimate, or whose trauma deserved greater recognition.

And what moved me most was not only the enormous loss these people carried. It was the choice many of them had made despite that loss.

They understood that revenge would not bring their families back. Another dead child would not resurrect their own child. Another grieving mother would not heal their own mother. Another destroyed home would not rebuild the home they had lost.

But they refused to make revenge their future.

Instead, these Palestinian and Israeli voices spoke about justice, equality, reconciliation and the possibility of building something together.

One hundred stories of trauma, grief and survival became one voice saying: we must break this cycle rather than pass it on to our children.

This past Ramadan, we went even further. Despite war and enormous logistical challenges, our interfaith Iftar........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)