Three years after October 7, our Palestinian and Israeli team came together. Severe closures across the West Bank meant we could not meet in person, so we met online, and each of us was invited to share what this day meant to us.
Fatima, our Palestinian Education Coordinator, spoke first. She shared memories of her mother, who was killed in Gaza by an Israeli drone. We sat in silence as she described her loss of family, home and the life she knew. She told us that hope is what carries her through, and even if our work makes only 1% of difference somehow – it is all worth it. Many of us cried with her as she spoke. Our Israeli colleagues were quiet, carrying their own pain, grief and haunted memories of October 7.
We all recognise that three years of devastating violence have brought neither security for Israelis nor freedom for Palestinians. There can be no future built on occupation, ethnic cleansing, genocide and the denial of Palestinian rights. Nor can more violence bring the security Israelis deserve. We urgently need a new vision for the future.
As the sadness and hopelessness of the moment began to set in, Fatima gave us a reason to believe that another future is still possible. Her usual warmth and optimism returned as she updated us about the Freedom School – our flagship educational programme. Its seventh cohort begins soon and will bring together 27 young Palestinians from across the West Bank, including remote villages and refugee camps. Many already knew Combatants for Peace, having seen videos of our work and our joint Palestinian-Israeli activism in the field.
What surprised Fatima most is how open this new generation is to the idea of nonviolent co-resistance and joint action. Some of those coming from communities most directly affected by the occupation are among the most open to working together for change.
That is the hope we want to share today.
At a moment when it can feel as though the space for another way forward is disappearing, a new generation is finding us – and choosing nonviolence, joint struggle and a different future.
Rana closed our meeting by reading the final paragraph of a poem, White Lilies, by Mahmoud Darwish.
I dream of white lilies, streets of song, a house of light.
I need a kind heart, not a bullet.
I need a bright day, not a mad, fascist moment of triumph.
I need a child to cherish a day of laughter, not a weapon of war.
I came to live for rising suns, not to witness their setting.
He said goodbye and went looking for white lilies, a bird welcoming the dawn on an olive branch.
He understands things only as he senses and smells them.
Homeland for him, he said, is to drink my mother’s coffee, to return safely, at nightfall.
Mahmoud Darwish
