In The Media

Growing up in East Jerusalem during the Second Intifada, Mai Shahin’s childhood wasn’t easy. She was stopped and held by soldiers on her way to school. She saw home raids and increased separation. Even after she joined peace protests during those early years, she saw violent clashes with the military in the streets, and support for violent resistance was growing. But a job working as a translator showed Mai a challenging world, the world of Combatants for Peace. Founded by former armed combatants, Combatants for Peace calls for a different approach. Learn more in our latest interview with Mai Shahin.

The Freedom School of Faith is a pilot programme run jointly by three activist organisations: Combatants for Peace, Ir Amim and Breaking the Silence. These NGOs have run programs for non-religious Israelis since 2019, aiming to teach young participants about the occupation – which they won’t learn about elsewhere – and give them the tools and community to take action. But this is their first time engaging with the religious community, which tends to be underrepresented in anti-occupation activism frameworks.

Christiane Amanpour speaks with May Pundak, co-director of A Land for All, and Rana Salman, co-director of Combatants For Peace, on working for a better future between Israelis and Palestinians.

Since October 7, Israeli settlers have targeted the al-Auja stream in a Palestinian town in the West Bank, blocking locals from their source of water. A group of Israelis and Palestinians from Combatants for Peace marching at the site are determined to 'sanctify life' over dispossession and war.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, many Democratic lawmakers skipped the speech and held an alternative event on Capitol Hill to promote peace. The panel discussion featured Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah, Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers who have both lost family members to violence. Inon’s parents were killed in the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. When Abu Sarah was a child, his teenage brother was arrested and held in Israeli prison for a year and died shortly after his release from internal injuries he suffered while being tortured in prison. Both Inon and Abu Sarah join Democracy Now! to talk about how they are hoping to use these tragedies to foster peace in Israel-Palestine. Aziz is an AFCFP board member.

Formed 18 years ago, the group Combatants for Peace began bringing together former combatants from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide – emphasizing the all-too-rare-approaches of dialogue, understanding, and community building. Correspondent Seth Doane talks with participants (including an Israeli military veteran and a former member of Hamas) who now seek purpose through cooperation.

After years of ignoring the conflict last week, the G7 released a communique which included unprecedented new language prioritising civil society peacebuilding as a critical component of any diplomatic resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, write Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah (AFCFP Board Member).

How did October 7th impact activists in Israel and Palestine? dis:orient talked to a Palestinian and an Israeli member of the binational organization Combatants for Peace about education, solidarity, and continuing work amidst the war in Gaza.

There are Israelis and Palestinians who reach across the divides to mourn together and declare that war between their two peoples is not the inevitable cost of securing a Jewish state or creating a Palestinian one.

Maoz Inon, whose parents were killed on October 7, and Aziz Abu Sarah, who lost his brother in the second Intifada, addressed Pope Francis in front of a crowd of 13,000.

Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, virtually addressed Combatants For Peace's joint Nakba remembrance ceremony on Wednesday, saying "I know the Nakba never ended.”

“You can’t kill anybody in the name of my child,” was one of the first things Robi Damelin said when Israeli army officers arrived at her door to inform her of the killing of her son, David, in March 2002.

Israelis and Palestinians joining together for any reason during these days of war is rare. Some did for a memorial ceremony honoring victims from all sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Hear from NPR’s Daniel Estrin.

As Israel commemorates Memorial Day in the midst of seven months of war, FRANCE 24's Nadia Massih is joined by our correspondent Irris Makler and our guests from Combatants for Peace: Co-Directors Eszter Koranyi in Jerusalem and Rana Salman in Bethlehem.

“Many people have woken up to the reality that this conflict cannot go on,” said a director of one Israeli peace-building group, referring to the decades of violence.

‘No matter how many people you lose,’ said a Palestinian who has seen 61 relatives killed in Gaza, ‘The feeling is the same.’ Ahmed Alhelou of Jericho is among the speakers at Israel’s joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony. Israel won’t let him enter the country from the occupied West Bank, so he gave his remarks via video.

Controversial Memorial Day commemoration, filmed in advance this year, will be virtual to avoid having all-Israeli crowd, with West Bank Palestinians barred from Israel since Oct. 7

Since Israelis' lives were engulfed in horror on October 7, a catastrophe that has yet to end for Palestinians in Gaza, we bereaved families from both sides of the conflict are coming together to remember the innocent children whose only crime was being Palestinian or Israeli.

Voices on both sides that call for peace with justice are arguably displaying more courage and better leadership than that shown so far by Israel’s government or the militarists of Hamas.

CfP activist and staff member, Carly Rosenthal, from the pro-peace, anti-occupation NGO Combatants for Peace, spoke to Haaretz Podcast about CfP’s 19-year-old tradition of offering an alternative memorial ceremony to the government-sponsored event, which allows "Israelis and Palestinians to mourn together, to grieve for their loved ones that they've lost throughout the conflict."

On May 12, Yom Hazikaron eve, this year as every year for the past 18, the Joint Memorial Service will take place commemorating Israelis and Palestinians who died due to the decades-old conflict in which we are embroiled.

In an op-ed for Peace News, Co-CEO of CfP Rana Salman discusses the need for a non-military solution to the conflict, as well as her and her colleagues' work to promote their organization's mission around the world.

On March 31, 2024, Uri Noy Meir hosted a conversation with Combatants for Peace Co-Founder Sulaiman Khatib and School of Ancestral Medicine founder Dr. Daniel Foor about the current situation and the potential future for the Middle East and beyond.

Skidmore College and MLK Saratoga hosted members of Combatants for Peace to lead a discussion on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East with students and faculty.

Palestine-Israel: from one story to more than one story, from us vs them to togetherness, from cycle of violence to nonviolence, towards a Collective Liberation

Positions have hardened on both sides in the face of the Gaza war, but some activists refuse to give up hope. They let us sit in on one of their meetings.

“If we punch a hole in this boat, we will all sink together.” Activists May Pundak of @2States1Homelan and Rana Salman of @cfpeace discuss their enduring dream for Middle East peace, even as explosions ring out while we speak. “Our lives are intertwined,” they say.

With Israel and Palestine experiencing the worst violence in decades, we speak with two co-founders of Combatants for Peace, a group composed of people from both sides of the conflict who have committed to nonviolence and peaceful coexistence. Avner Wishnitzer is a former member of Sayeret Matkal, one of the Israel Defense Forces’ elite commando units, and Sulaiman Khatib spent more than 10 years in prison after being arrested as a teenager for an attack on Israeli soldiers.

Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza have already caused colossal destruction and anguish. Some 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas on October 7. In the more than six weeks since, at least 13,000 people, according to some estimates, have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli army. Fear and hatred are everywhere here.

A younger generation of Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers want to be part of the dialogue about the "day after" the war, when Israelis and Palestinians must grapple again with how to live side by side.