George Stevens is co-founder of the 4MENA Network, the first network of organisations from Israel, Palestine and across the MENA region devoted to a more inclusive, interconnected and peaceful future for all, and director of partnerships for NOAL, Israel’s largest Jewish-Arab youth movement. He argues that the peace movement in Israel and beyond has ‘an overly simplistic view in which diplomacy and Israeli concessions alone can ensure peace, with no need to offer any solution to the military might and eliminationist desires of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime.’ He proposes an alternative approach: peace realism.
It is awfully lonely being an Israeli peace activist in Sderot, the city closest to our border with Gaza. But not for the reasons you might think.
Sderot is one of Israel’s more right-wing cities. It’s a working-class, religiously traditional town, with a Mizrahi majority and large Russian-speaking minority. And its residents have paid the price of failed peace processes and Palestinian extremism, living through 23 years of rocket attacks and then the horrors of the 7 October massacres. (Among the 50 murdered in Sderot on that day Dolev and Odaya Suissa, neighbors who lived in my apartment building just over a mile from Gaza, were murdered in front of their two young daughters).
To describe Sderot’s residents as ‘peace skeptical’ would an understatement. Talking to my neighbors about allowing the Palestinians a state of their own can feel like talking to Americans about a possible reunification with Great Britain (‘George VII will be much more even-handed than George III, I promise’).
Yet for all our disagreements, I sometimes experience a level of both solidarity and openness with fellow Sderotis that I don’t in working with fellow peace activists, in both the Israeli and international contexts.
While the peace camp has held on to a crucial role – keeping alive the faint hope that we may one day live in peace with our neighbors – it has failed on several levels.
The peace camp here is dominated by educated, middle class, English-speaking professionals from Tel Aviv and the kibbutzim, who often look down on (or despise) working class, traditional and peace-skeptical Israelis. Many Israeli peace activists feel more at home in cosmopolitan Berlin or New York than in mingling with Sderotis. (A personal aside: while I myself am one of those English-speaking, university-educated people I mentioned above – I have made my home in Sderot precisely because I want to experience life with Israelis of different backgrounds and to build solidarity with those who pay the prices of war, rather than comment on the conflict from a more comfortable, like-minded bubble).
Beyond Israel, a depressing climate of intellectual conformity exists in the peace camp when discussing the Middle East conflict. At conferences of peace activists (whether Israeli, Arab or from those outside the region) there is consensus that Israel must end the occupation – but a near-total inability to discuss antisemitism, support for terror and peace-intransigence on the Palestinian side. As a person whose apartment building was shot at on October 7th and whose son’s daycare was hit with a rocket later that month, it is hard not to feel like many of these activists lack empathy for the existential concerns my neighbours and I experience. And on a rational level, it seems that all too many of these peace activists don’t even purport to have any solutions for these concerns because you cannot solve problems (terror, antisemitism) when you avoid discussing them (or at least deny that the Palestinians are in any way responsible for their own society’s problems).
This bifurcated reality creates opposite perspectives that are really just two sides of the same coin: while Sderotis by-and-large are convinced that military action alone can ensure a better future for our children and see no value in diplomacy, peaceniks has also developed an overly simplistic view in which diplomacy and Israeli concessions alone can ensure peace, with no need to offer any solution to the military might and eliminationist desires of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime.
These two worldviews – one in which everything will be fine if we just kill enough terrorists, and the other in which everything can be fine without fighting terror at all – are mirror images of each other. One sees military action as the only means for shifting reality; the other views diplomacy as the cure-all for all our problems. One views the world through jaded realism – that the Middle East is a brutal neighborhood where the weak get trampled and antisemitism is rampant; the other through a hopeful idealism that we can lay down our arms and achieve a future without war. One values security alone; the other only peace. The truth is that both military action and diplomacy can be powerful (and complementary!) tools when used correctly, and that security will only be achieved fully through peace, and peace will only be attained by creating the conditions for our security.
What is missing on the Israeli stage, and what has yet to be defined, is what I call peace realism. It’s the view, best embodied by our former prime minister and chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin, who in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech stated that peace is the best and ultimately the only sustainable solution to our problems.
Yet while Rabin died fighting for peace, we must remember that he spent 27 years as a warrior, and repeatedly stated that Israelis ‘must fight terrorism as if there’s no peace process, and work to achieve peace as if there’s no terror.’ The fight against terror was essential not only to preserve Israeli lives; it was essential to defeat extremism in order to preserve the possibility of peace.
Those of us in the peace realism camp must remember Rabin’s idealism and also the complexity of his analysis: while peace must always be our goal, we must also acknowledge some painful truths: that peace might not always be possible; that military strength is often a pre-requisite for achieving peace; and that the goal of peace can only be achieved by acknowledging the difficult conditions around us and working to impact them so that peace becomes possible.
Here I will attempt to outline 12 universal principles of peace realism that can guide those who seek to build relevant, realistic and popular movements for peace. (Note that while the principles below are universal – their interpretation and implementation will of necessity be context-dependent).
13 Core Principles of Peace Realism
1 Peace as the ultimate goal
Peace is our highest ideal and our end goal. It is the only sustainable long-term solution between nations in conflict.
2 Realistic means
The goal of peace will only be achieved through realistic means, not through the means that sound best in theory or feel the nicest. We must pursue a utopian goal through realistic means. The choice of what means are best suited to shifting reality begins with a sharp-eyed assessment of the problems we are confronting. This means not white-washing or oversimplifying problems on the one hand (as idealists tend to do), while also not giving into the deterministic view that said problems are so deeply entrenched that they can never be resolved (as cynics do).
3 Force is sometimes necessary
In reality, strength and the use of force are sometimes (but not always) crucial tools in enabling peace, when the force is geared towards defense rather than destruction or domination. The weakening of extremist elements (e.g. Hamas, ISIS, Nazi Germany), and proving that extreme outcomes (e.g. Israel’s elimination as a country) are essentially impossible, are key steps in creating the conditions for peace. Egypt vowed in both 1948 and 1967 to wipe Israel off the map – yet its defeat in those wars, and the 1973 war ending with the IDF closing in on Cairo, proved to the Egyptians that they would never succeed in eliminating Israel. After successive defeats, and realizing how much his country could gain by pivoting towards Washington (in foreign aid, military support, etc.), Sadat recognized Israel in 1979, making Egypt the first Arab nation to have peace with the Jewish state.
4 Force must have clear aims and clear red lines
The use of force, if it is to foster the conditions for peace in the long run, must be conducted with clear, morally justifiable aims (for example, “Spain should no longer rule over Venezuela” or “There should not be slavery in the United States”). And the force must be conducted within clear moral red lines: neither peace nor security will not be achieved through sexual violence or the intentional killing of civilians. These principles hold for both state actors and for insurgent group/independence movements.
5 Strategic thinking over feel-good thinking
Conflicts are emotionally all-consuming, and peace activists rightfully have a strong love of life and hatred for war. But these predilections shouldn’t come at the expense of long-term thinking. The 2008-9 Israel-Gaza war was seen as a catastrophe by peace activists, including all on the Palestinian side and many on the Israeli side. Some 1,110-1,400 Palestinians died alongside 13 Israelis in 3 weeks of fighting. What almost none in the peace camp were willing to ask then was: what is the price of leaving Hamas in power vs. the price of removing it? (Hamas was much weaker then, having only taken over Gaza in 2007). We now know the price of leaving Hamas in power: another decade and a half in which peace was impossible, wars were commonplace, Gazans lived under severe repression and Israeli children grew up under rocket fire – all of which culminated in 1,200 butchered in a single day on the Israeli side, and 40,000 dead in Gaza. Hamas’ removal in early 2009 would have involved terrible costs – yet those costs were a small fraction of what we have paid by leaving them in power. Peace strategists must ask: which option most limits suffering and makes peace most viable in the long run?
6 Reading the other side’s deeper intentions
Understanding the other side’s level of extremism is critical to achieving peace, and to understand with whom peace can be achieved and with whom it cannot. The IRA, for instance, often used deplorable tactics, as did the UK. Both found themselves willing to stop fighting and compromise on core principles in the 1990s, however. Hamas, on the other hand, seemed open to a long-term truce and influenced by economic incentives. But on 7 October – by far the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, with mass rapes, entire families burned alive and hundreds killed at point-blank range – that the genocidal ideology outlined in Hamas’ charter was actually the core driving force of the organization, and that it will continue to murder men, women and children until Israel is eliminated from the earth. The ability to read these differences – who is driven by die-hard fanaticism vs. who might be willing to achieve a workable compromise – is key in creating a successful peace strategy.
7 Speaking to the mainstream of your society
If your goal is to change your society and end its conflicts, you must work with the mainstream and seek to influence it. While peace activists must form in-groups that often hold unpopular ideas, there exists a perpetual danger in which the in-group will seek only to convince itself. This dynamic weakens the peace camp by creating a feeling of distrust among the general public, who feel condescended to and that their legitimate concerns are being dismissed by their more ‘enlightened’ peace-seeking compatriots.
8 Acknowledging your side’s concerns
If you seek to bring your public onboard for the possibility of peace, you must start by acknowledging that they are in pain and have a right to be skeptical towards the other side. Downplaying or ignoring your public’s concerns distances your public – it implies a lack of solidarity and an overly naïve view of reality. The Israeli peace camp, for examples, avoids discussing Palestinian antisemitism, ceding the topic to its ideological opponents and losing credibility among the wider Israeli public. Accepting your public’s fear and skepticism – while combatting tendencies towards hate and racism – is key to inviting people in rather than turning them off.
9 Incorporating working class voices
Peace (at least when democratic societies are involved) cannot be a project of the elite. It cannot be reserved for those who speak English and hold university degrees. This is not only because of the need to onboard the widest possible swath of the public; but because the common people and working class are those most likely to pay the prices of war, they see perspectives that elites often overlook, and they can make peace movements feel more localized and practical rather than global and utopian. This principle is difficult to implement in practice, both in local people-to-people exchanges and especially in international conferences and actions. But without their perspectives, the disconnect between the peace camp and the mainstream grows wider, pushing peace further away rather than bringing it closer.
10 Speaking to your people’s self-interest
The most compelling case for peace is that it serves the interests of your country or in-group, including the common people. Appeals to abstract ideas (peace as a value, human rights, democracy) are generally less convincing than ‘This will make our lives better and safer.’ If you can’t offer to improve your neighbors’ lives, you won’t make an impact.
11 Fostering a complex view of the other
The other must be humanized and understood with nuance, which is especially difficult to do with the mainstream of a society at war, under threat or facing subjugation. On the other hand, problems in the other’s culture, mindset and political system that form impediments to peace can and should be contested and criticized. Palestinians are right to be angry about settlement expansion and their clear lack of civic equality in the West Bank; Israelis are right to be angry about the rampant antisemitism and support for terrorism against civilians in Palestinian society. Those who would have you overlook these problems are not creating the conditions for peace. Yet opponents of peace – who generally view the other side entirely through the lens of their gravest moral failings – not only tend to dehumanize the other; they tend to miss all the nuance, complexity, internal struggles and inner contradictions that make up the other society.
12 Winning the peace
Following wars, ideal outcomes are achieved by focusing on winning the peace (a wonderful English phrase which unfortunately has no Hebrew equivalent). This often means choosing to act wisely (Mandela after Apartheid; the US, UK and France after WWII) rather than seeking justice and retribution (those same countries after WWI). Sometimes winning the peace can come even after losing a war, if the loser is willing to make painful yet strategically savvy compromises (Finland, after initial successes, was ultimately crushed by the USSR in WWII – yet avoided being a Soviet puppet state by ceding huge chunks of territory and including communist politicians in its government). Victors who seek to win the peace must display well-reasoned benevolence to the vanquished: offering positive horizons of economic opportunity and self-definition, while defining clear limits that prevent relapse to extremism and conflict.
13 Fostering positive outside involvement
Regional players and global powers are often key in settling conflicts. They cannot be ignored. On the other hand, they cannot replace the importance of those directly involved and their agency in shaping their futures.
While my examples reveal my own background and biases, these twelve principles are crucial for building peace-seeking movements generally that want to build trust and solve problems.
And in the context of Israel-Palestine, in this unprecedentedly bloody war that I see every day out my front window, we who seek peace must urgently reckon with these principles. It is more crucial than ever that we fundamentally transform the dynamic between our two peoples – but this can only happen when we prove ourselves to be more realistic and relevant than we were in the pre-7 October world.
