Thousands gather for rare peace event in Jerusalem

Thousands gathered for a rare peace event in Jerusalem on Friday, with the Gaza war in its 20th month, the UN warning of humanitarian catastrophe and Palestinian militants still holding dozens of Israelis captive.

In recent days, Israel has announced plans for an expanded military campaign in Gaza entailing the “conquest” of the Palestinian territory. Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said this meant that the Gaza Strip would be “entirely destroyed”.

“We cannot let the extremists on both sides that thrive over revenge, fear and hate also control our future,” said Maoz Inon, 50, an Israeli entrepreneur and peace activist who was one of the main organisers of Friday’s “People’s Peace Summit”.

“Even though they are controlling our present and reality, we must choose an alternative and create and shape an alternative future,” he told AFP.

Friday’s event was organised by a grouping of some 60 grassroots peace-building organisations working to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a political agreement.

At the event, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and ex-Palestinian Authority foreign minister Nasser Al-Kidwa presented their proposal for peace, originally unveiled last year.

Kidwa, the nephew of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, joined via livestream from the occupied West Bank.

“Only a two-state solution is a prescription for a dramatic change in the direction of our country and of the entire region,” said Olmert, a centrist predecessor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We have to end the war and pull out of Gaza, Gaza is Palestinian... and it has to be part of a Palestinian state,” he added.

He advocated for the establishment of an “internal security force” linked to the Palestinian Authority that would have “objective powers... to try and rebuild Gaza without any participation” of the militant group Hamas.

Kidwa said the pair’s peace proposal involved a two-state solution including the exchange of 4.4 per cent of territory between Israel and a Palestinian state. Under the plan unveiled last year, Kidwa and Olmert said this territory swap would involve Israel annexing land where the main Jewish settlement blocs exist in the West Bank, including some of the area around Jerusalem.

In exchange, an equally sized piece of Israeli territory would be annexed by a future Palestinian state, they said.

Their vision of a two-state solution is based on Israel’s June 4, 1967 borders -- before the occupation of the West Bank.

The Olmert-Kidwa plan also advocates for shared sovereignty over Jerusalem’s Old City, involving a trusteeship which would include Israel and a Palestinian state.

The current war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Of the 251 people abducted in Israel that day, 58 are still being held in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the Israeli army.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 52,787 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations regards as reliable.

The territory has been under a total Israeli blockade since March 2, with UN agencies and other humanitarian organisations warning of dwindling supplies of everything from fuel and medicine to food and clean water.

On the other hand, international aid agencies warned on Friday that plans presented by Israel to control aid distribution in Gaza, including a US-backed proposal, will only increase suffering and death in the devastated Palestinian territory, which has been under a total Israeli blockade for nearly 10 weeks.

They urged Israel to lift its ban on all food, medicine and other supplies entering Gaza, which has caused a surge of malnutrition and hunger among Palestinians as supplies rapidly dwindle.

“Humanitarian aid should never be used as a bargaining chip,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said in Geneva.

Agencies