Tel Aviv: Chanting “yes, to peace, yes, to deal”, hundreds of Palestinians and Jewish Israelis marched through Tel Aviv on Thursday night in a noisy march demanding an end to the cycle of war and violence in Gaza.
Their agenda starts with a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, but ultimately, they want to restart Palestinian-Israeli relations, and breathe new life into the moribund peace movement.
“It basically went silent after October 7,” and the start of the war, Amira Mohammed, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, said of the peace camp.
“The fanatics became louder than the peace movement. So now we have to be radical about the peace we want.
Mohammed said that includes “recognition of the power dynamics between the occupier and the occupied” as well as “accountability on both sides”.
“We cannot stop violence with more violence,” said teacher Carmit Bar Levy, 49.
“We need to ensure a better life for both Palestinians and Jews inside Israel. We must recognize that they have the same right to live here as we do.”
She said that after the outbreak of war, the feeling of not being able to maintain the status quo increased.
“Peace is the way forward,” said Marcelo Oliki, 64, a survivor of the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Nirim.
“Children, women and infants are dying from me alone across the border. There are people who mourn like me, and they want peace like I do.”
As the war escalates, demonstrations are taking place several times a week in Israel's largest city, some organized by families of hostages in Gaza, some by anti-government protesters active before the war and others by Jewish-Arab peace camps.
About 20 percent of Israel's 9.5 million residents are Arabs, and many of these identify as Palestinians.
According to activists and watchdogs, Palestinian citizens of Israel are struggling to gain the right to protest against the war. Thursday's march was postponed a week after organizers said the permit was suddenly withdrawn.
While the various protest groups in Tel Aviv may differ in politics, they overlap in calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his insistence on “total victory” in an address to the US Congress on Wednesday, while at home, members of his far-right coalition threatened to topple the government over any deal with Hamas.
Hamas attacks that started the war on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to AFP figures based on official Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliation killed at least 39,175 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.
“We have to remember that peace is an option, we don't have to convince the far right … we just have to convince the people in the middle who don't want war anymore,” said 23-year-old Maya Ofer. , a member of the student and activist group Standing Together, which organized the march.
Rula Daoud, the group's co-director, addressed the crowd waving signs that read “peace now” and “war has no winners.”
The protesters insisted that their vision for a long-term political solution arose not from idealism but from deep pragmatism.
“There are two people living in this country, and neither of them is going anywhere,” Daoud said.
