On October 7th, Israel will mark the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ unprecedented cross-border attack from Gaza into Israel: Over 1200 people massacred and hundreds taken hostage back into Gaza in harrowing conditions. It was the deadliest attack in Israel’s history and the largest loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust. In the violent aftermath, Israel declared war on Hamas, vowing to crush the violent Palestinian militant group. Israel’s nearly year-long military campaign to eradicate Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack has weakened the rulers of Gaza by killing several of its leaders and thousands of fighters, reducing swaths of the territory it rules to rubble. But the Islamist militant group has not been crushed outright, and, a year on, an end to its hold over Gaza remains elusive. All the while more than 41,000 people in Gaza have been killed, the majority civilians. And now the conflict is spreading to Israel’s northern front in Lebanon. Yet, in the face of this brutal conflict that risks escalating into an all-out regional war, two peace activists, an Israeli and a Palestinian envision a way forward towards lasting peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. FRANCE 24’s Nadia Massih welcomes Ibrahim Abu Ahmad, Palestinian Israeli political and peace activist, and Maoz Inon, Israeli entrepreneur and peace activist. Mr. Abu Ahmad decided it was now time "to speak up, discussing complexity, the reality on the ground and combatting polarisation, actually most prevalent in the West." Mr. Inon joins the conversation, warning that "there’s a huge urgency to act now" to avoid a regional war making mass death and destruction an absolute certainty for both Israelis and Palestinians alike. Mr. Inon’s parents were both killed by Hamas, and he is more determined than ever to push for a lasting peace: "I want my parents to be victims of peace. That will be the only way for me to justify their deaths." Both of our guests are passionately committed to tirelessly campaigning and advocating in the spirit of "harvesting peace": "sew hope, sew reconciliation, and sew the future." In their bid to "foster peace" they assert together that back from a century ago all the way to the current day, "war was never the answer and war will never be the answer."
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