The struggle of Israel's peace movement

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1:07Welcome to the Crossing Continents podcast. I'm Emily Wither and two years ago in the wake of October 7th I met a small group of Jewish and Palestinian peace activists who stood almost alone in Israel in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. I've returned to find out what's happened to this peace movement when communities are more divided than ever. We're deep in a valley now. We've descended from the hilltops. The ground is very stony. You have to watch your step. And we're just about to enter into the olive grove. We're kind of climbing over a collapsed wall, it looks like. And there's a long line of volunteers snaking across the fields.

1:54It's 8am near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, and we're joining a group of around 20 Israeli activists, rabbis and international volunteers. They're here to help Palestinians harvest their olives in response to rising settler violence. They feel if Israelis are present, Palestinians are less likely to be attacked by settlers. She says that this is the settlement, right? You understand the situation. This valley, it's the farmlands of the Palestinian village. From the left, you can see the outskirts of the village, the houses. But here on the right, you can see the red roofs. This is the settlement, the Israeli-Jewish settlement, sitting on the land of the Palestinian villages.

2:36And Ibtisan here, she's from the village, and she says they're too scared to, or prevented a lot of times by the army, to actually pick up the olives or the grapes. Alon Lee Green is a Jewish-Israeli and the national co-director of Standing Together, a mixed grassroots peace movement of both Israelis and Palestinians. They've spent the last two years campaigning for a ceasefire in Gaza. Now they're shifting their focus to rising violence in the West Bank. The UN says there's been more than 150 documented attacks by settlers on the olive harvest this year. The Israeli military rejects accusations that it supports or enables violence by Israeli civilians and says it's there to keep everyone safe.

3:24weeks ago. It was a Saturday and settlers came to this place where we are right now with the army and sent some people to the hospital with violence. Jewish settlers have built around 160 of these settlements since Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East War. This is land the Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state. It's now home to 700 ,000 Jews who live alongside an estimated 3.3 million Palestinians. Most of the world considers Israeli settlements as illegal under international law. Israel disagrees and far-right settlers now sit in the heart of the Israeli government.

4:10They say the land was promised to them by God and the finance minister, Betzel El Smotrich, says building settlements will bury the idea of a Palestinian state. if you're up in that settlement at the top of the hill you really have a direct view down into the orchard exactly yeah it's very vulnerable and there's always a strategic reason for the location they're building their settlements it all it's always to connect one piece of land that is already annexed or part of the big chunk of settlements to another palestinian land and another palestinian land and it's always biting more and more chunks yeah so we're just about to dip under a really low-hanging olive tree here.

4:54Look at the olives. Yeah, the olives are ready to be picked. They are very ready to be picked. How important is your presence here? It's very important, literally helping on the ground the ability of people to survive, to live, to do their work of providing for their families, and, of course, to show that Jews and Palestinians, Israelis, can work together, can do the very profound work of surviving together and working together.

5:26I first met Alon Lee and three other members of the group standing together in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7th, 2023. That day, 1 ,200 Israelis were killed and 251 were taken hostage by Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist group by many countries, including the UK. In response, Israel launched an offensive on Gaza. And in those painful early days, Alon Lee and his colleagues stood almost alone in calling for a ceasefire. They argued revenge wasn't the answer. Many Israelis called them traitors. Since then, Gaza has been reduced to rubble. And according to the Hamas-run health ministry, 70 ,000 Palestinians have been killed.

6:12A UN commission of inquiry concluded Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel's government vehemently rejected the report, denouncing it as distorted and false. Now with the tentative ceasefire in place, I've returned for Crossing Continents to hear how the lives of two Jewish Israelis and two Palestinian citizens of Israel have changed during the war, and if they feel there's a chance for a different future.

6:52How has life changed in the last two years for Palestinians living in Israel, for Israeli Arabs? The main thing that has changed is you have more fear. There was a huge wave of arresting people. Anybody who would say anything about Gaza, especially the first year, This government didn't allow people to criticise what it was doing inside of Gaza. A lot of people were afraid to speak, and they're still afraid until this moment, because whenever they want, they can arrest you, they can beat you. Rula Daud is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and a national co-director of Standing Together with Elan Lee.

7:32She's at her laptop behind a large table where groups of activists discuss the week's events at their headquarters in Tel Aviv. Standing Together is the largest grassroots movement of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian citizens of Israel or as the state calls them, Israeli Arabs At just over 20 % of the population, they're Israel's largest minority and it's unusual to find a mixed group working together for a shared political cause They say they're campaigning against the occupation and for peace, equality and justice in Israel-Palestine In the wake of October 7th, the head of the Israeli police said there would be a zero-tolerance policy towards anyone identifying with Gaza.

8:15Rula, a Palestinian Christian, said this was especially tough for Israeli Arabs like herself. She lives in a mixed suburb of Tel Aviv. If you go to Yaffa, 80 % of the Arabs who live in Yaffa have families inside of Gaza. and these people are not allowed to speak about the pain that they had for their own family members being killed in Gaza. It makes you reduce yourself, like to shrink your space, your identity, who you are and even not to be honest about telling what is really the problem and which leads to not having a real conversation at the end of the day. I decide to speak about politics each and every day but most Palestinians inside of Israel, they don't.

8:56It's very different. How has that impacted your life day to day? Look, the first month after October the 7th, I didn't write anything. Nothing. I really, I was so afraid. I didn't like anything. I didn't tweet. But then, you know, I am a political figure. I am part of a grassroots movement. And the first time I spoke, when I wrote something, many people attacked me. Lefties and right-wing, many. And then we started getting a lot of threats. We know where you live, we know where your office is. And actually, a whole year I didn't speak Arabic in public places. And I don't today if I see soldiers in the train or in the bus, because, you know, Israel is a very military society, so most of the soldiers you see went to Gaza.

9:47So I am very much afraid that if they will hear me speak in Arabic, it will trigger something. Even in mixed neighbourhoods, Jews and Palestinians often just coexist. A gap, the group says, has only widened in the last two years, as both communities retreated into their own news programmes, anger and grief. Palestinian citizens of Israel have far greater freedoms than those living in the West Bank or Gaza, but they say they're treated like second-class citizens and face daily discrimination. After October 7th, Jewish Israelis were encouraged by the police to arm themselves for protection. And suddenly you could see more civilians carrying large firearms like assault rifles, just running errands in their neighbourhoods.

10:31Rula says this only adds to the tension. So my neighbourhood was in Yaffa and there was a playground. We were there with our kids and there was a man, you know, civilian, but he had a gun. So he felt that he needs to come to the playground with his kids, with other people's kids, wearing a gun in Yaffa. And, you know, people don't feel secure, especially Arabs, when they see guns. Because, unfortunately, I can be shot and it will not make any difference. This government will not care. The jittical system will not care. Probably nobody will be jailed. This is how we see it as, you know, Arabs. So he went to the playground with the gun.

11:13and an argument started between him and another parent. What did the parent say? He told him, why are you here with a gun? Like, why? You see our kids. My son is afraid, okay? And he told him, but I am here to protect them. He told him, but my son doesn't see this as a protection because he sees what's happening, what you are doing inside of Gaza. And when he said he sees what you're doing inside of Gaza, it exploded. And people kind of got in the middle. Just both of you leave. and this is just a playground for kids and a whole month nobody played in that playground because of the argument that there was between two parents.

11:48This is kind of the reality that we live in, an unsafe reality.

11:59You told me two weeks after October 7th that you were feeling quite lonely and quite isolated for speaking up and I just wondered how that feeling might have changed. Has it changed over the last two years? For so many months and maybe even in the first full year after October 7th, we felt that we're standing together but actually standing quite alone. When we used the term ceasefire deal or hostage deal, it was almost a taboo. It was almost as if we said something that is not allowed to be said on our society. It was a constant struggle to just be on social media, to just be with your message in the public space.

12:48We were arrested. We didn't get one permit from the police to go out and demonstrate in the street. Alonli says the space for them to campaign opened up when the families of the Israeli hostages began pushing for a ceasefire deal too to bring their loved ones home. Standing Together grew on social media, drew in new supporters, and became known in their trademark purple t-shirts. But there's still a small minority voice in Israel, and organisers admit they've attracted more attention abroad than they have domestically. We started building a momentum and having thousands of people going to our rallies and demonstrations in the streets.

13:26We grew geographically. We have many more Palestinians and Jewish members that have joined the movement since October 7th. We started collecting food for Gaza, more than 400 trucks from Israeli citizens. And we started getting beaten, arrested. People came to our offices. The government started persecuting us. And we were accused that we were damaging the war effort of the Israeli state. Just a few weeks ago, we had to hold the doors from people trying to storm inside. people chanting death to all Arabs. Police never helped. That was also the very frightening part of it. You call the police and they don't show up.

14:10At the mass demonstrations in Israel, for many saving the hostages was the focus, not the suffering of Palestinians. Speaking up for the other came at a personal cost too. Alon Limp says he's aged a lot, lost friendships and is constantly looking over his shoulder. His brother's bookshop has been attacked several times. They're identical twins and often mixed up. I personally came to the police 17 times since October 7th with death threats that I received, sometimes a bunch of 200 in the same week, telling them, look, they say that before the week will end they will come and slaughter me, as they say, or they will target my home and they know my home address.

14:51Has Israeli society changed over the last two years? I think the Israeli society changed dramatically. We lost a lot of barriers and we crossed a lot of lines and we lost a lot of our humanity and we lost a lot of our compassion and we did things that we shouldn't have done and then justified it to ourselves in many different ways. And it scares me. There's still strong public backing for the Israeli military. one opinion poll suggested that a large majority of Jewish Israelis believed Israel made real efforts to avoid harming civilians in Gaza, and they weren't troubled by reports of Palestinian famine or suffering.

15:43We've come up the coast to Haifa, Israel's third largest city, and its biggest mixed one. It's often held up as a model of Jewish-Arab coexistence. But even here, there's resistance to Standing Together's message. The group have hung up large banners in their purple branding. They say, yes, peace in Arabic and Hebrew. And they've hung them up on a busy intersection on these old stone buildings with arched windows. Right, so our community organizer here in Haifa came to hang them up and he was like, can you just make sure that no one took them down? You know, fully expecting, unfortunately, that they will be taken down.

16:30Is that because you're not very popular here? I just think that the message for some people is naive or even provocative. Sally Abed is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, a local councillor and another member of Standing Together. Since I last saw her, she's had a baby daughter named Shams. I love the name. Son, right? Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you. Shams al-Hurriya in Arabic is like the son of freedom. Sounds like you chose that name quite purposely. Yeah, it just has a lot of light, which we all need at these times. What was it like becoming a mother during this time when rockets were flying around the country and you were having to go into bomb shelters?

17:12Yeah. Horrible. It was horrible. I was here literally alone, just having to wake up my newborn to go into a shelter. It was horrible. But the guilt, that was one of the main things that I really had to deal with. Yes, we had bombings. Yes, we had sirens. Comparatively, it was nothing to really imagine the experience of Palestinian mothers in Gaza. Whenever she got sick, I would just cry so hard because I knew that she had everything she needed. I couldn't fathom not having that. Did you ever bring your daughter to a protest? Yes. Unfortunately. Twice. She loved it. She had a blast. You know, you had the drums of the protest.

18:11She would dance. She's adorable. There was one instance where it was very difficult, because I was holding a sign that said, a child is a child, both in Hebrew and Arabic, and I held my child. And a woman, nice woman, like liberal, you know, going out shouting for hostage deal, probably the age of my mom, probably a grandma, came and like shouted at me, it's not the same, it's not the same. And they are future terrorists. it's difficult to accept that while also understanding that she is also part of the people that we do want to mobilize. When we met two years ago you told me that your dad had said to you that if the situation gets worse get the hell out of here.

18:59What do you think about that now? Oh they still say that to me. I think like even now that Shams is getting the bigger she's getting and just fear for me to imagine. Just the simplest thing, the hardships of her growing up here. We are definitely not paying the price that Palestinians with the West Bank and definitely not in Gaza are paying. But people in Israel are paying a price. Everything is just so expensive. Our health care is deteriorating. Education is deteriorating. So much is going into war and security and military. And we are feeling that. Getting out of here becomes like less of a fantasy and more of like an urgency at some point.

19:42But not yet. I mean, I still have hope. I give it like five years. I mean, we're not going to like achieve just peace in five years, but like have like a major shift in the direction in which we're going, hopeful.

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21:00With the hostages now returned, and large public protests around the Gaza war have ended. Now the group are trying to rally more people behind a wider peace. Back at the olive harvest in the occupied West Bank, Alonle says in small ways the group is making a difference. So we can just see a group of Palestinian women now who are running down the hill with ladders and bags because they can see that the group are here and they're taking this opportunity to come and pick some of the olives. Because they feel safer? Yes. So they have not accessed their land in the valley here in the last two years because it's too close to the settlement.

21:43So I am happy to see that it gives some courage to the local people to just reach their own land. The pitter-patter you can hear is the group stripping olives from the trees, which fall onto large plastic sheets laid underneath. One of the Palestinian women tells the group her son was beaten by Israeli soldiers when he last tried to work their land. Is the group's focus now on protecting Palestinians in the West Bank? After Gaza, which is not over yet, this is a very worrying, developing front, yes. In the West Bank, things are becoming tougher and tougher. And the presence of Israelis doesn't always stop the violence.

22:34Just the day before, a Jewish-Israeli activist, Itamar Avneri, from Standing Together, was picking in another olive grove. We first met two years ago. He grew up on a kibbutz in northern Israel. At that harvest, settlers flew a drone into one of the volunteers. They then threatened the group, firing M16 assault rifles just above their heads.

23:03I think I'm still shaking a little bit by the fact that he shot at us. I mean, live ammunition. Itamar posted a video of the encounter, and the responses show the challenges they face. And many people, of course, denounced it and said, this is terrible, this is horrible. But then a lot of people, young people, responded to my video on TikTok or Instagram and said, I wish they were firing at you and not above your head. Why are you going to help Palestinians? Why are you helping terrorists? All Palestinians are terrorists. You should stand with the settlers. I'm very used to it. Do you always do that?

23:46Do you always read the comments? Yeah, I don't know why, but I do. It's horrible. It's terrible. It's something from inside. I have to see it. I have to understand. And I was thinking to myself, so many young people are talking with such conviction and saying such horrible things. And it was so hurtful because just a few weeks ago, I went to the kibbutz and I found something I drew when I was a child in the 90s. and it's funny today the drawing is a drawing of two leaders shaking their hands with the flags of Palestine and Israel behind them I drew as a child peace ceremonies and they are advocating for killing and expelling all Palestinians and I thought, my God But my society is really on such a dangerous place right now.

24:46Are you, your family and your friends still affected by what happened on October 7th? Yes, of course. And I think in different ways. First of all, we are all traumatised. We are all still inside the trauma. We're still processing the trauma of October 7th. We all knew people that were murdered or kidnapped on October 7th. My sister's family, her husband's aunt and uncle were murdered. So, of course, people are affected. Given what happened on October 7th, is that one of the reasons why many Israelis don't think that now is the right time to talk about peace with the Palestinians? Of course, it can explain at least some of it.

25:29But for me, it's not an excuse. And I will say why. For 25 years now, all Israelis are hearing from our leaders, from our politicians is that peace is impossible. There is no partner. There is a lack of vision and a lack of belief in our society, and I blame the leaders of our society who never tried to do that. And Israeli media is not talking about what's going on in Gaza. And it's also people choosing not to know, because people are afraid to see it, people don't want to see it because they don't want to believe it, they don't want to face it. For Israelis, or Jewish Israelis, October 7 is proof that Palestinians don't want peace.

26:10For Palestinians, the war on Gaza is the proof that Israelis don't want peace. Standing Together has faced criticism from both sides of the conflict, and some major Palestinian groups have called for an outright boycott of the movement for not taking a tougher line on Israel. They accuse the group of normalising Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory and whitewashing Israel's crimes against Palestinians. Rula, a Palestinian, rejects this. She says working with Israelis is the only way to achieve peace. If I want to change my reality, I want all people in here on board with me. And there is an Israeli society in this land, whether they want it or not.

26:54It is. These are my neighbours, my people, the people I work with. And I am also part of this society. okay it is an unjust unfair country to live in of course but at the end of the day if I want to make change if I want the occupation to to end I need to convince people that it must end for them to fight next to me and I don't need to you know push away everybody who does not agree with me and this is not how you build a majority there's a huge difference between protesting and calling for freedom for people than from having illusions of one people will be staying here and the other won't. Because at the end of the day, it means that both of you are extremists.