In the months following October 7, a painful question echoed across Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the diaspora: Were all Palestinians supporters of Hamas, or were there Palestinians who opposed the massacre and longed for a different future?

My search for that answer led me to a Facebook post by a man in Gaza named Moataz Al-Mansi.

His words were not the words of a propagandist or an ideologue. They were the words of a Palestinian who looked at Israel’s achievements in science, technology, education, and economic development and asked why Palestinians could not build the same for their own children.

“The future of Palestine is not built on hatred or on the dreams of cancelling the other,” he wrote. “I dream of a relationship based on good neighbors, shared interests, and mutual respect, so that borders become a bridge to cooperation rather than a line of conflict.”

I reached out immediately and invited him to appear on my podcast, Conversations at the Peace Table.

Even arranging the interview revealed the harsh reality of life in Gaza. Moataz said that since October 7th, Gazans depended on solar power and they lived in darkness when the sun went down. So we scheduled our conversation during daylight hours when solar power was available. For me in California, that meant waking before dawn. What was supposed to be a 30-minute interview lasted more than an hour.

Moataz told me he had advocated for peace long before October 7. He had lost both of his businesses during the war. His children had not attended school in years. Yet despite his losses, he refused to abandon his belief that Israelis and........

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