Talking Peace in Paris While Bombs Fall Back Home

The Paris Peace Forum’s Conference is over. As the largest gathering of Palestinians and Israelis since October 7, it was a success in so many ways, featuring hundreds of us working together on real, detailed plans and recommendations for ending the war and creating a long-term peace. We sat at tables with world leaders, representatives from the UN, diplomats, and experts in important fields like conflict resolution and reconciliation.

And we had to go all the way to Paris to do it. Because a gathering like this is impossible close to home — our government has made it too difficult for us to gather. As do other forces. For instance, a delegation of 40 Gazans was prevented from attending by bureaucratic forces in Egypt. We didn’t get the details, but their absence almost derailed the conference. The group from the West Bank had an extremely difficult time getting to Paris. These hurdles are frustrating, infuriating, and shaming.

And as the saying goes, nevertheless she persisted… because despite these obstacles, people came. Eagerly. Hopefully. There was a vibrant atmosphere of belief and optimism, despite the appalling reality surrounding us.

We, like everyone else, woke up last Friday to a new layer of insanity in this violence, just when we thought it couldn’t get worse. Every single person in the room was suddenly dealing with the very personal impacts of these events, including children they left behind–children whom they now don’t know when they will see again. Some were dealing the angst of relatives in bomb shelters, their neighborhoods being bombed, their families in the West Bank unable to move, or thoughts about the Gazans still under attack while the world’s eyes shift to Tehran and Tel Aviv.

All of us stayed glued to the news and images, wondering how this all connects. In one session, for example, we were reminded that 60 Gazans had been killed that morning, while we were sitting there. It’s an almost surreal thing we were doing, insisting on continuing that path towards peace while all signs around us are leading us elsewhere.

But maybe that’s exactly the point. Here from the depths of the darkness, we came together calling for the same thing — for an end to all this. In one session, the woman on my left was a survivor of Oct 7 whose family was attacked and who lost her home and her community (and is still wandering), and on my right was a man whose entire family is in Gaza, who has also lost family members and a home. Both of them shared the same belief system, the same vision, the same core understanding that there is a different way and it starts with understanding that we are all human.

All of us are driven by the same motivation. By complete dedication to ending the violence. By a complete commitment to the humanity of all of us. By a willingness to hold our own people accountable while also seeking systemic change and real justice for those who need and deserve it. And by an unwavering insistence that if we are willing to hang on to that place of compassion first, peace is possible.

It was so powerful. That was the deep, core fire of this conference, the engine of it all — our shared humanity. That is the pshat. Everything else is interpretation.

And so, I wrote this piece in the Paris airport waiting to board a flight to Greece, where I will continue to stay until I am able to make my way home. Hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians have been all figuring this out, too, needing to get home to their loved ones while praying for this all to end.

I admit this is the first time I have been far from my family during one of these violent eruptions, and there is something particularly hard about that, about watching your loved ones under rocket fire while there is a chasm between you, and no way to reach each other. Now I understand those of my friends who call me every time there is an eruption. I understand the impulse more deeply, and I am even more appreciative now than I was before.

Signing off, with prayers for peace.

Photo credit: @Nicolo’ Revelli Beaumont/Sipa Press