“People are starting to see that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his personal benefit.”
The Israel-Hamas war has passed its seventh month, and Israel’s military has conducted operations in Rafah despite global objections. On May 26, an Israeli airstrike hit a camp for displaced civilians in Rafah, which caused a fire to break out, killing at least 45 people and injuring more than 200 more. (Prime Minister Netanyahu called it “a tragic mistake”.) Meanwhile, rockets were fired at Tel Aviv for the first time in months on Sunday. Humanitarian groups warn of famine in Gaza, where the death toll has surpassed 30,000. Israeli officials believe 100 hostages are still being held captive in Gaza, where the bodies of three hostages were recovered on May 24.
Much of the news coverage has focused on the supposed divide between Israelis and Palestinians — but within Israel, there is a growing progressive movement of people who believe that Israelis’ and Palestinians’ futures are inextricably linked — and they’re taking to the streets to stand up for each other.
We spoke to Alon-Lee Green, the national co-director of Standing Together — a grassroots movement mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and justice — about the movement’s origins, how he sees the war in Gaza ending, and more.
Katie Couric Media: How did Standing Together start?
Alon-Lee Green: Standing Together started eight years ago, around yet another violent escalation in our society where Jews and Palestinians were thrown into a reality of death, sorrow, and grief. (Editor’s Note: In 2014, three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian militants affiliated with Hamas, which triggered a seven-week war in which 2,251 Palestinians were killed — about half of whom were civilians — and 66 Israeli soldiers and 5 civilians were killed.) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said what became a very famous sentence then: “We will forever live by the sword.”
We decided we didn’t want to accept that we were destined to just move from one violent escalation to the other — building more settlements, expanding and deepening the occupation. We said, “We need to organize and build a movement in Israeli society of Jews and Palestinians, fighting the status quo and demanding a different reality of peace.” Standing Together is a movement that organizes and mobilizes Jews and Palestinians all across the country in the pursuit of peace, equality, and social justice.
Has there been more interest in your movement recently?
We now have more than 5,200 registered members and chapters all across different localities and regions.
We also had a surge of young Palestinians and Jewish people joining the movement since October 7. Something we need to understand about young people in Israel is that a full generation grew up knowing nothing but Netanyahu; nothing but endless cycles of war, expanding the settlements, and sending soldiers to Palestinian cities. Not once in their lives have they heard a real conversation [from their Prime Minster] about peace.
After the morning of October 7, it seemed as if the entire political system in Israel was aligned with the message of the government, that what we need right now is war and that the only answer to Hamas’s attack is to send our soldiers and bombs on the people of Gaza. And [Standing Together] said, “No, that is not the answer.” The fact that we were the only ones to speak up against that led a lot of people to notice and join us.
Have you seen involvement from family members of hostages?
We make sure and will continue to make sure that at every gathering, convention, rally, and demonstration, there will be speakers from the hostages’ families, from the families that lost their children during the attack of October 7, parents of soldiers that lost their lives [in this war], or people who were evacuated from their homes in the north or south of Israel.
It’s a misconception that we live in a dichotomous reality where all Palestinians are the victims, and all Jews are on the side of the oppressors. In reality, life is more complicated and more nuanced than that. There are a lot of victims. But on the Jewish side, we acknowledge the power difference. We acknowledge the fact that Israel is the hegemonic force on the ground and Israel is occupying Palestinians — and we acknowledge the Palestinians are paying a much, much heavier price.
We also acknowledge that Jewish people can and do pay a price in this reality in which violence hits them and they don’t have a peaceful life. We also pay the price for diverting all our resources to the occupation to buy more tanks or airplanes or to build walls instead of putting it into our welfare or our education system, toward building good infrastructure and lowering the prices in Israel. Both groups have much to gain from a political solution that will end the occupation and achieve a reality of equality, freedom, and independence for all.
From your perspective, what does that future look like?
I think we’ve hit a historic junction where we cannot continue forward. It’s not sustainable anymore to just say that between cycles of war, we’ll forget about the occupation and the fact that millions of Palestinians are living under oppression and the military rule of an army that isn’t theirs, without having citizenship or basic human or civil rights.
We need to choose. We can go in the direction of eternal, endless war that will bring not only the Palestinians’ demise but mutual destruction and a reality in which no sane person will want to live on this land. Or the other option is to turn to a direction of Israeli-Palestinian peace.
[Peace] can look like a few different things, but it must consist of principled agreements that indicate the intentions of Israeli and Palestinian leaders. It must be a reality where all people are equal, have a free and independent life, and have self-determination.
[We have to be careful of] a fake kind of solution that, for instance, tells Palestinians, “You get autonomy in Gaza and a few cities in the West Bank. Wait 15 years and then we’ll see [what else we can offer].” [Something like that] is a recipe for failure and disaster because people have no time to wait for their freedom.
And what would your response be to people who say that a ceasefire can’t happen until the hostages are released?
The only way to release the hostages is by a ceasefire. So people who say “no ceasefire until they’re all released” just don’t understand that the only way to release them is with a ceasefire agreement. The only time in this war there was a real release of hostages was when we came to an eight-day ceasefire agreement with Hamas, and 108 hostages were released alive. In the other six months of the war, three hostages were released alive because of the military campaign, while at least three that we know of were killed by the military campaign. So do the math. The only way to release the hostages is by a ceasefire agreement. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
There have been growing calls for an election. Is that something that you foresee happening?
We’re seeing more and more people in Israel demanding elections and the release of the hostages with a ceasefire agreement. That’s because people are starting to see that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his personal benefit and that all of the 64 members of the coalition understand that the minute this war is over, they’re out. [Netanyahu’s cabinet members] are minorities in the polls right now, so if the election were held right now in Israel, they would for sure lose.
But it’s not enough just to replace Netanyahu and have another center-right government that says no to an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement or chooses the path of occupation and war. It’s our job to demand not only the replacement of Netanyahu but the replacement of the right-wing in Israel. We need to demand an end to the occupation, and this reality in which Palestinians and Israelis are paying a price for not having equal, free, and independent lives. If we only tell Netanyahu to leave, we will not be able to bring upon a government or parliament that will agree on the historic change that we need.
For people outside of Israel who want to get involved and help in some way, what do you recommend?
First, learn. Be curious. Find out about the reality and form an opinion that is educated and based in fact. Ask yourself, when you’re reading something on social media, which you should; when you’re standing in solidarity with Palestinians, which you definitely should; when you’re talking about this war, which you most definitely should: “What am I trying to do? Am I trying to use buzzwords to signal my identity? Or am I trying to convince people? Am I trying to only condemn reality? Or am I trying to change reality?” There’s a very big difference between those things.
We need to really be able to build enough power to resist those in power right now. They have the funds, the support, the governments, and the economic industrial complex that’s making money out of all of this. We need to be stronger than them, and for that we need all the people possible in our movement. We need to convince people and we need to remember 7 million Palestinians are living on this land, and they are going nowhere. Next to them, 7 million Jewish people are living on the same land, and they are going nowhere. Only when we understand that can we start talking not only about how bad the reality is but about the solution.
And we need to remember that every political system, no matter where we are in the world, counts. We need to be engaged, we need to demand our politicians to do something. We all have the power to influence this reality.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
