United by unimaginable loss, Palestinians and Israelis are turning pain into purpose. Their grassroots movement of bereaved families is working to build peace where politics has failed
There are two people on the Zoom screen in front of me. One, a Palestinian man in the ancient city of Jericho, in the West Bank. The other, an Israeli woman in Tel Aviv.
They’re separated, literally and metaphorically, by a wall. And they’re united in loss: specifically, the loss of a child. Something else unites them: a determination to build bridges of shared understanding at a time when the gulf between their peoples seems deeper than ever.
They’re both part of the Parents Circle – Families Forum (PCFF), membership of which has the grimmest of qualifications: that your child has been killed in the conflict. Their backgrounds could not be more different, and yet, partly because of their loss, they’ve arrived in the same place. The fighting has to end, and bereaved parents are better placed than most to achieve that.
The man on my screen, Bassam Aramin, grew up in a small village in the West Bank, already under Israeli occupation when he was born, and was 13 when he first got into trouble raising the Palestinian fag with school friends. At 16, he was on the fringes of a group of friends that found some old grenades in a cave. Two boys threw them at an Israeli patrol. The grenades were duds. But they were all rounded up and sent to prison, where, as he says “you just learn to hate these people”.
But hate wasn’t all. While there, he saw a documentary on the Holocaust. Previously, like many from his background, he’d been sceptical: “We thought it was a big lie – how can anyone kill six million people?” Yet watching the flm: “After a few minutes, I found myself crying. It was unbelievable [but] I felt sympathy with these innocent people.”
It started him on a long journey, which eventually led to the University of Bradford for a master’s in Holocaust Studies, complete with visits to Nazi concentration camps. It was the culmination of an extraordinary path to reconciliation, which earlier – after his release from prison – had led him and fellow members of the resistance to make contact with Israeli ex-soldiers who’d become disillusioned with the occupation.
The PCFF has developed online dialogue programmes, in partnership with US universities, and to work with Jewish and Muslim students in Berlin, among other institutions. Image: Levi Meir Clancy
Together they formed Combatants for Peace in 2005. “We took our slogan from Nelson Mandela: if you want to make peace, you need to work with your enemy, until your enemy becomes your partner. We don’t need to love each other, we don’t even need to like each other, we just [need] to be partners for peace.”
The task was to become a lot tougher two years later, as Bassam explains: “On the 16th January, 2007, an Israeli border policeman shot and killed my 10-year-old daughter, Abir, in front of her school. She was hit in the back of the head, she fell down, and died two days later in the hospital where she was born. And two days after that, I joined the Parents Circle.”
Founded in 1995, the PCFF now includes 800 parents. With the credibility that comes from their own suffering, they stage ‘dialogue meetings’ at schools and colleges in which parents from each side – side by side – tell their personal stories and explain why they reject revenge. They take participants to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, and to the Palestinian village of Lifta, razed to the ground by Israeli forces in 1948, in the early days of the first war.
You can see in their eyes the hatred for this Arab, this ‘terrorist’. After you finish your human story, suddenly there is no fear. There is empathy
“Before you start to talk [in those meetings],” says Aramin, “you can see in their eyes the fear – even hatred – for this Arab, this ‘terrorist’. And after you fnish your human story, suddenly there is no fear. Suddenly there is empathy. Some of them cry. Some of them want to shake your hand. This is, as Robi always calls it, our ‘emotional breakthrough’.”
‘Robi’ is Robi Damelin, now director of international relations for the PCFF. Born and raised in a comfortable home in South Africa, she followed in a family tradition – her uncle had helped defend Mandela in his frst treason trial – by speaking out against apartheid.
Later, settled in Israel, she worked in PR. While Aramin was in prison, she was “promoting TV channels, wine and music”. Meanwhile, her son David was torn between his perceived duty to do military service and his unease about Israel’s actions in the West Bank. After completing his service, he frst studied, then taught, philosophy – before being called up for reserve duty in 2002, in the West Bank.
By now, explains Robi via Zoom, he’s an officer. “He doesn’t want to go. [But] he’ll treat anybody, any Palestinian, with respect, and so will his soldiers by his example. He said: ‘If I don’t go, someone else will, and do terrible things [to the Palestinians]’.”
'We took our slogan from Nelson Mandela: if you want to make peace, you need to work with your enemy, until your enemy becomes your partner' said Bassam Aramin, whose 10-year-old daughter was killed by an Israeli border policeman. Image: Joe Piette
David and his unit were posted to a checkpoint. He called his mother. “I have done everything to protect us … but this is a terrible place. I feel like a sitting duck.” Later that day, a sniper opened fire. David was killed, along with nine of his comrades. A year later, Robi joined the Parents Circle.
Its impact, says Eran Ram, an Israeli ex-soldier who took part in a PCFF process, can be “eyeopening, rattling, rough, depressing and hopeful at the same time”. At his frst PCFF session he says, a young Palestinian sat down beside him. “I looked at him, smiled and said: ‘Hello, my name is Eran. You look tired.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘My name is Tarek. I’m from Bethlehem and I worked until late last night.’ I suddenly realised how complex it is and how easy it could be.”
Eran had served many times in the West Bank, “but never really knew [any] Palestinians”. Suddenly, he was face to face with one, talking about their daily lives. He talks of “the small moments of intimacy and trust that are created in the one-on-one encounters. The sense that in this ocean of hate and ignorance there are islands of hope … [Now] I worry about the future, for my family, for Israelis, for Palestinians – and for my friend Tarek from Bethlehem.”
After the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and the Israeli response in Gaza, the PCFF started to draw more international attention, says Robi. It felt like “the whole world wanted us to come and give them hope”. It led to the development of online dialogue programmes, in partnership with US universities, and to work with Jewish and Muslim students in Berlin, among other institutions.
Once you recognise your joint pain, that you share the same colour of tears, it becomes a completely different story
Gaza and the hostage crisis only strengthened the resolve of those involved, says Robi. Today, the PCFF chair is Maoz Inon, whose parents were burned to death when a Hamas rocket hit their home. And they’ve had enquiries from Palestinians in Gaza who have lost children, too.
For Robi, it is the meetings between mothers that have particular power. “Once you recognise your joint pain, that you share the same colour of tears, it becomes a completely different story.”
Robi and Aramin and many others in PCFF share a hope, however slim, that one day Palestinians and Israelis will learn to share their land. As Bassam points out, the Holocaust was not so long ago – yet now there is a German ambassador in Tel Aviv; an Israeli in Berlin.
Not so long ago, the Germans and British were killing vast numbers of each other’s children. Redemption can happen.
Bassam eventually met the man who’d killed his daughter, and told him he did not seek revenge, because the man, too, was a victim. He was a killer, yes, but also a victim of the environment in which he’d been brought up, of his history, his education, and the conflict itself. “If any day, you come to ask me to forgive you,” he told him, “you will always find me there.”
Main illustration by The Project Twins
Martin Wright is a director of Positive News
