“Yes, Peace”
Standing Together’s National Field Organiser Uri Weltmann writes about the movement’s new campaign, following the thousands-strong peace march Standing Together co-organised in Tel Aviv on 25 July.
As we are almost 10 months into the war, Netanyahu and his government continue to stall the negotiations towards reaching a ceasefire agreement, for their political reasons. While public opinion polls in Israel continue to show that there is a steady two-third majority for a hostage deal that would end the war, the government remains committed to prolonging and extending the war, with a terrible human toll on the civil population in Gaza.
For almost a quarter of a century – since the collapse of the Oslo peace talks in October 2000, and the outbreak of the Second Intifada – the hegemonic conception that dominated mainstream Israeli politics, was that there is no urgency, and probably also no possibility, to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and therefore we simply need “to manage it”. This conception – shared by both the Center-Right and the Center-Left – was translated into disdain towards negotiations with the Palestinian leadership, into steps to weaken the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which supported negotiations, and to strengthen such militant groups as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, which rejected negotiations.
Indeed, it was Netanyahu who said in 2019, in a meeting of his Likud Party faction in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), that channeling funds for Hamas was part of his strategy to prevent a Palestinian state. And the current Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionism Party, said in an interview in 2015, that “Hamas is an asset, and the Palestinian Authority is a burden”.
These conceptions dominated Israeli politics, and even the once dovish Left-of-Center parties have dropped references to negotiations with the Palestinian leadership or to a Palestinian state alongside Israel in their elections campaigns and in the statements by their leading politicians. They joined with the Right-wing in adhering to the “managing the conflict” paradigm.
October 7th shattered this paradigm completely. It became evident that the idea that millions of Palestinians can continue to live under military occupation, devoid of citizenship and basic rights, suffering oppression and violence, and their right to national self-determination crushed – this idea is not only immoral, but also unviable. It led to October 7th, and it will continue to lead to similar outbursts of violence, that harm innocent civilians.
This is why we in Standing Together are launching a new campaign – “YES, PEACE” – with the aim of reintroducing into the public discussion in Israel the need to negotiate with the Palestinian leadership towards ending the occupation, establishing a Palestinian state, and achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace, which is the only way to guarantee both peoples safety, security, justice, freedom and independence.
We start this campaign with a series of conferences in cities across the country, with the aim of onboarding new people into our campaign, explaining its rationale and method of work, and absorbing people into local working groups that will put into work a coordinate and centralized national campaign plan.
The first conference was held on Sunday in Beer Sheva, in the Negev desert, where I was one of the speakers:
The next day, more than 100 people came to our conference in Jerusalem, where one of the speakers was Rula Daood, our National Co-Director:
And the day after that, more than 100 people came to our Haifa conference, where, among others. spoke Sally Abed, a member of the leadership of Standing Together and an elected City Councilor:
Next week we will also have a similar conference in Tel Aviv, with the aim of getting more people involved, including people without prior involvement in political activism.
This past Thursday, July 25th, we organized The Peace and Life March in Tel-Aviv. It was initiated by Standing Together and co-sponsored by numerous peace organizations, and brought a crowd of thousands of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel to march in major streets in Tel-Aviv, calling for a hostage deal, an end to the war and the occupation, and for Israeli-Palestinian peace. For us, this was the public launch of our “Yes, Peace” campaign, alongside the conferences we organize in major cities.
Initially supposed to be held a week earlier, the police refused to give us permission to march, forcing us at the very last minute to appeal to the Supreme Court. The court convened in the morning of the march, and there it was decided that the police will allow the march to take place, albeit a week later.
It is a worrying sign that since the outbreak of the war, democratic rights have been curtailed inside Israel, including the freedom of protest. The fact that the Minister of National Security – in charge of the police – is the Kahanist Itamar Ben Gvir, is very much felt in the attitude of the police towards the peace movement and the Arab citizens of Israel post October 7th. Indeed, even during our Thursday protest, while allowed to take place, the police announced that it will not tolerate the presence of Palestinian flags, and arrested two demonstrators for wearing a T-Shirt with a drawing of a watermelon (colored red-green-black-white, like the Palestinian flag)…
For pictures and videos from the Peace and Life March:
Last week it was announced that Yagev Buchstav – 35 year old from Kibbutz Nirim – was killed while in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip. He was taken hostage on October 7th, and his wife was released in the November ceasefire agreement, and there was great fear for his life for the last couple of months. Now, came the sad news of his confirmed death.
Yagev has been a peace activist, a founding member of the Negev circle of Standing Together. He has family members who are currently active in Standing Together, and he will be missed by all who knew him. We will honor his memory by continuing to fight after his death for the ideals he believed in during his life.
Around two weeks ago we publicly launched a crowdfunding campaign, in order to collect small donations from Standing Together supporters in Israel and abroad. We set ourselves the ambitious goal of raising $400,000 – and that goal was achieved within a few days! Now we raised the bar, to try and reach $550,000 in small donations from people who appreciate the work we are doing and think it is worthwhile and important to support. If you’d like to join more than 3000 people who have already made contributions, you can use this link.