The Israel-Palestinian peace camp has long promoted dialogue against hatred and bloodshed but the passions inflamed by the deadliest Gaza war yet pose entirely new challenges for the movement.
Many of its activists believe that talking to each other is now more important than ever, at a time when the fighting rages unabated and both sides mourn their dead.
“It wasn’t easy before the war,” said Sulaiman Khatib of Fighters for Peace, a group he co-founded in 2006 and whose Israeli and Palestinian members hold weekly meetings and frequent protests.
“But now it’s even more difficult, starting with the relationship with each of the societies, both in Israel and in Palestine, where the extremes have risen.”
The Gaza war has brought levels of suffering unusual even by the brutal standards of the decades-old conflict that has seen two Palestinian uprisings and four previous Gaza wars.