It’s not easy to breathe in Israel today; to talk of hope and peace seems simply insane. Maoz Inon, who grew up in Netiv Ha’asarah (Hebrew for “Path of the Ten”), bang on the northern Gaza border, knows this on his skin. The tiny agricultural settlement was born in pain and hope. Seventy families, evacuated from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 after the Camp David Agreement, established their new home with the expectation that peace was standing tiptoe on the misty mountaintop.
The original moshav was named for 10 soldiers who died in a helicopter accident south of Rafah in 1971; the dream was that peace with Egypt would herald a beautiful age of regional cooperation. No more war, no more bloodshed, etc...
We know how that turned out. Years of bombardments followed: Kassams, Katyushas, mortars, and attempted infiltrations until, on October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists stormed the pastoral village, massacring at least 20 of the residents, including Bilha and Yahovi Inon, who were burnt to death inside their home. “We were the first family to sit shiva then,” says son Maoz Inon, 49, married with three children, who got the ungraspable news in the late afternoon. “There was nothing left to bury.”
Israel, shocked and brutalized, retaliated with massive bombardments of Gaza and an unending war. But this was no comfort for Inon. “For me, the real anger was toward the government of Israel,” he explains, “the people in charge who had promised my parents that the security barrier would keep them safe, that there was no need for patrols in our little community.” Literally sick with grief and anger, Inon decided that he had to forgive in order to preserve his own health and sanity.
Prodded by his brother’s pronouncement that the family wanted no revenge, and a vivid dream of regeneration later that night, the Israeli entrepreneur and peacemaker par excellence pledged to harness his pain to be part of the solution.
“Hope is an action; hope is a verb,” Inon asserts. “Together, we have to envision a better future and effectively make it happen.”
An award-winning Israeli social entrepreneur and activist, Inon is perfectly positioned to be a crusader for peace. The founder of the Fauzi Inn in Nazareth and a string of Abraham Hostels around Israel, he also set up the Galilee Jesus Hiking Trail and has decades of cooperation and partnership with other populations in Israel under his belt.
So Inon was ready when Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian Muslim from Jerusalem – whose brother was jailed for a year for stone throwing and died from injuries soon after being released – contacted him to express his condolences about Maoz losing his parents. “I’d met Aziz briefly a decade ago when we were both involved in dual-narrative tours,” he recalls. “I knew I had to work with him.”
Abu Sarah
ABU SARAH, 44, is a peace activist, columnist for many publications including The New York Times, Al-Quds, and Haaretz, and National Geographic Explorer and TED Fellow. Every year since 2010, the Jordanian Royal Strategic Centre has included him in its 500 most influential Muslims in the world list. He’s an author; executive director at the George Mason University’s Centre for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution; and served as chairman of the Parents Circle Family Forum for bereaved families of the Middle East conflict.
Inon and Abu Sarah met, and then they met the pope, did a heart-stopping TED Talk together… and magic began to happen.
However, Abu Sarah’s journey to reconciliation was not straightforward. Growing up in east Jerusalem in the shadow of his brother’s death, he was pretty much “anti-peace,” throwing stones at Israeli soldiers – “because I was bored” – and refusing to learn Hebrew at school.
Later, at a west Jerusalem ulpan, where he eventually studied Hebrew, he met sympathetic Israelis and Jews for the first time who spoke about equality and peace. “I realized that by choosing hate and revenge, I was a slave to the soldier who killed my brother,” he explains. “Choosing peace is freeing.”
OVER THE next quarter of a century, based in Jerusalem and Virginia, together with Jewish friends and partners, he established InterAct International – a nonprofit advancing sustainability, education, and cross-cultural connections – Mejdi’s Tours, and I Am Your Protector: a community of people who speak out and stand up for one another other across dimensions of religion, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. He wrote books, lectured, and charmed audiences around the globe. His initiatives span conflict zones in over 70 countries, such as Afghanistan and Colombia, as well as communities in the US.
ABU SARAH and Inon are not starry-eyed adolescents singing “We Shall Overcome” by a campfire. They are both successful directors of their own companies, and have business acumen, experience, and a very personal relationship with violence and loss. They know that to many, their dream of peace is a pipe dream; that they are dismissed quicker than you can hum “Imagine all the people sharing all the world.” And still, they are determined to forge a better future together.
Currently, they are working on creating a center for dual narrative education, and recruiting other groups working for peace and coexistence to collaborate. “Of course I look at the news today, see the bloodshed and feel angry,” admits Abu Sarah. “But we let our anger fuel our peace work, not lead us to violence.”
Inon is even more optimistic. “On July 1, we held the biggest peace rally ever in Israel, starting a people process,” he declares. “We aim to achieve peace in the region by 2030, and I believe with perfect faith that we can get there. We need to amplify our voices and build legitimacy as leaders of the future – and that is what we are doing.”
The tabernacle of peace will ultimately be spread over the desert sands, shores, and green valleys of the Middle East; the question is how many lives will be lost until then. To speed up the process, Inon envisages a five-step plan.
First is the dream: to achieve peace by 2030. Then comes shared values: Palestinian and Jewish Israelis met in Geneva recently and wrote a charter setting out their vision. Now they are building a coalition and recruiting partners; meeting the pope and huge peace rallies here and abroad are part of this process. Step four is a road map of actions: political activism, protest marches and demonstrations, Gandhi-like resistance to the status quo. And step five is execution: preventing wars before they happen.
“Look,” Inon says to the skeptics in his midst, “days after the 7th, a surviving neighbor of my parents’ went to Berlin to find some peace of mind. Who’d have believed, 80 years ago, that Jews from Israel would go for solace to Germany?”
In the same way, he acknowledges, we can’t at this point imagine that peace will reign over us here, from the river to the sea; yet, he believes, it is coming. “The best way to cure trauma is to create meaning,” he explains. “And Aziz and I want to be a bridge between crisis and meaning.”
Imagine all the people sharing all the land; if you will it, our present nightmare may just become a realizable dream. We will live, and we will see what’s in store for us.
For more details: linktr.ee/maozinon
The writer lectures at the Reichman University. peledpam@gmail.com