'We have to work together to build trust, achieve peace for two states'

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00:00Which moves us nicely, as Shirley said, to Itamar Averi, Israeli peace activist, one of the co-founders,

00:05co-organizers of the Solidarity Group Standing Together, which was established a decade ago.

00:09He's in Paris for an event this evening. He joins us in the studio. Great to see you tonight.

00:13Before we get on to what your group is doing, Itamar, just listening to Shirley's point a moment ago,

00:19when we were listening to how you see a diplomatic solution with these up to 200 Hamas fighters in a tunnel,

00:26what are your thoughts on how to resolve this?

00:28Well, I can't comment on this specific issue because I'm not in the negotiating room

00:34and I don't know really what everybody is trying to achieve.

00:37But I think what we have to remember also is that there is a lot of political interest in here.

00:43And I suppose that the Americans and the Europeans want to solve this issue.

00:49But in the Israeli government, there are ministers and there are forces who want the ceasefire to collapse.

00:55And it's very obvious that they are trying to use this specific situation in order to advance the collapse of the ceasefire.

01:04And this is what I am very afraid of.

01:06And this is what I think many Israelis and, of course, also Palestinians are very afraid of.

01:10That elements inside our government actually want to continue with the war and want to return to the war

01:17because they told us all the way through the war that they want to conquer Gaza and expel the Palestinians.

01:24And now that the world stopped them and the Israeli public stopped them, they are very frustrated.

01:28I wonder if the dynamic changes this week.

01:32And I wonder your thoughts on this.

01:33If one of the reasons that was standing in the way, critics would say, of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister,

01:39of putting off his corruption case for alleged bribery for fraud, which he denies,

01:45suddenly President Trump writes to the president in Israel this week to say, you know, pardon him.

01:51I don't want to get involved.

01:53But what did he say a month ago?

01:54Cigars and champagne.

01:55Who the hell cares anyway?

01:56Could that be a factor?

01:59For sure it's a factor when they are talking, you know, among one another.

02:04But is it something you would want to see or welcome?

02:06And A, Trump getting involved and B, femininity?

02:09You know, when you talk with people in Israel, the feeling is that we became a colony of the U.S.,

02:15the 51st state or something like that.

02:18And it's ridiculous for us that Trump is getting himself involved in our internal affairs.

02:24I think that Benjamin Netanyahu, he is standing on trial and the trial should continue.

02:30And we want the trial to continue.

02:32And maybe he'll find not guilty.

02:34That's fine.

02:35But no, we don't want that.

02:37Tell us about your event tonight.

02:39Tell us about standing together.

02:40It's, well, you've been there 10 years now.

02:42Well, just how it's shaped an organization, how it's changed since the conflicts began.

02:49Give us a sense of where you stand right now.

02:51So standing together, we are the biggest grassroots movement in Israel, not only on the left,

02:55but the biggest movement in Israel right now.

02:58This is a movement, a joint movement of Jewish and Palestinian people who are all citizens of Israel.

03:03And when we established the movement 10 years ago, the cause was to fight for a just peace,

03:09ending the occupation, and also for equality and social justice inside Israel.

03:14In the last two years, since October 7, and then the war on Gaza,

03:18we mainly focus, of course, on stopping this war, bringing back the hostages,

03:22allowing also the Palestinians in Gaza to rebuild their lives,

03:27also stopping what's going on right now in the West Bank with a lot of settlers,

03:32violent settlers that are attacking the Palestinian communities.

03:35And what we are trying to do right now, you know, we are in the opposition, of course, in our country,

03:42and we oppose our government.

03:44But we also acknowledge that it's not going to be enough just to stop a war

03:49if we really want to live in peace and in prosperity and in safety.

03:54Everybody, both Jewish people and Palestinian people,

03:56what we have to achieve is a Jewish-Israeli-Palestinian peace,

04:00a just Israeli-Palestinian peace.

04:02And this is what we are trying to do right now on the ground.

04:05The far right in Israel, they have a solution for the conflict,

04:10and their solution is to expel all Palestinians.

04:13What we are trying to say is that there is a real solution,

04:16but the solution is to understand that there are approximately 7 million Jewish people on the land

04:22and approximately 7 million Palestinians on the land,

04:25and no one is going nowhere,

04:26and so we have to work together to build the trust and to achieve peace of two states.

04:31How do you navigate a path when you have so much concern from Israelis,

04:38from the Jewish population about the pro-Palestinian movement,

04:41demonstration marches from the river to the sea,

04:43and conversely, when it comes to pro-Israeli demonstrations,

04:47clearly are lesser than what we're seeing with pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the world.

04:50How do you find a route through the middle of that?

04:53Do you say no to attending any demonstrations?

04:56What do you do?

04:56So we are going to our demonstrations, and we are trying to organize demonstrations,

05:00and because we are working mainly inside Israel and not abroad,

05:03we are here right now, but we're not working abroad.

05:06For us, that is not a problem.

05:09And, you know, it's very true that in our land, people are immersed in trauma and in fear.

05:16For Israelis, October 7 was a proof that Palestinians don't want peace.

05:21For Palestinians, the war on Gaza after that and the violence in the West Bank

05:25is a proof that Israelis don't want peace.

05:27But actually, if you're looking in the polls and if you're talking with people,

05:31the overwhelming majority in both societies, in the Palestinian society, in Gaza also even,

05:36and in the West Bank, and also the Jewish-Israeli society inside Israel,

05:40people want to live in peace.

05:42They don't believe that it's possible.

05:44So what we are trying to do is to show our society that it is possible,

05:49that we have partners on the other side.

05:51Tomorrow we are going to meet with many, many Palestinian leaders in Bordeaux,

05:54not in Paris, in Bordeaux, and we are going to talk with them.

05:57And the aim is to show our societies that actually the people who can be our partners,

06:03they are already here.

06:04We are already talking.

06:05And this is what we are trying to do.

06:07One thing that strikes me is that this is not an easy campaign for you.

06:11And I think I'm all right to say that you face death threats for speaking out,

06:16for criticizing the far-right government,

06:17for criticizing the National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir.

06:20Media smears too.

06:22How do you navigate through that right now?

06:24Is it simply you continue?

06:28And is it, despite your ideas for the government maybe blowing in the wind right now,

06:31if they have another agenda, but what keeps you going?

06:36You know, in the last few weeks, we are going to the West Bank

06:39because this is the olive harvest season.

06:42And the olive harvest season is the most violent season of the year in the West Bank.

06:46And right now it's extremely violent.

06:48And last week I was there and there was a drone above our head sent by settlers.

06:55And then they crashed this drone over one of the Israeli activists who came with us.

07:02And they came with weapons.

07:04They shot above our head live ammunition and stole the drone.

07:08And people are asking us, aren't you afraid?

07:13And the answer is, of course we are.

07:15It's very, very frightening.

07:17But we are also very, very afraid of what would happen if we will not do what we are doing.

07:23I get to see each and every day in the offices of Standing Together a different viable potential future

07:31for the land of Israel and Palestine, where Jewish people and Palestinian people are working together,

07:36speaking Arabic and Hebrew, and fighting together for a just peace for everybody.

07:42And we know that if we're not going to do that, and if we are not going to fight this good fight,

07:47the far right would win, and then everything would be horrible.

07:50So, yeah, it is very, very frightening, but we have to do it.

07:54We have to do it for our sake.

07:56One united plan that seems to be put out there in the last few months, as Shirley knows as well,

08:01which is that, and he was on this program talking to me about it,

08:03Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, called the Olmert al-Kidwa plan.

08:07So it's Nasser al-Kidwa, the former Palestinian foreign minister,

08:10a plan for a two-state solution.

08:12It's been praised for its bipartisanship.

08:14But one thing that's controversial for some is the fact that Ehud Olmert has spent time in prison.

08:18His name seems to be tarred by that for a section of Israeli society.

08:22It omits Palestinian right of return for refugees,

08:25it omits accountability for war crimes as well on both sides.

08:30Where do you stand on that? Do you support it?

08:32Yeah, we absolutely support it.

08:33But what we are always saying is that we don't lack solutions.

08:37There are many solutions.

08:38The two-state solution, the one-state solution, federation, confederation.

08:42We have the solutions.

08:44What we don't have yet is enough political will and political power from within the Israeli society,

08:49which is the force on the ground.

08:51We are much stronger than the Palestinian society, of course.

08:54We don't have enough power in order to force our leaders to start negotiating for this peace plan or another peace plan.

09:01So what we are trying to do is to organize our society in order to demand our leaders to go through with such kind of plan.

09:08But yeah, absolutely.

09:09There's one point about what we're hearing from the EU actually in the past hour or so.

09:14I'd love to get your take on it, which is Shirley talked about the momentum from the Trump administration

09:18trying to keep something going, that there is some kind of a ramp towards the next stage,

09:24which seems incredibly difficult right now, having an international stabilization force.

09:27We're hearing from the EU plans to train 3,000 Palestinians as police officers to return to Gaza

09:32to be voted on in the next few days by EU foreign ministers.

09:36Is that a goer for you?

09:38I haven't heard about it before.

09:40I'm just hearing about it right now.

09:42But, you know, the basic answer is yes.

09:46For me, as an Israeli, I know that my safety depends on Palestinian independence and Palestinian sovereignty.

09:54So for me, I want to see an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, but not a quasi-state, a real state with the army,

10:03with the ability to defend itself.

10:05And I know that if that would happen, I will be much safer in Israel.

10:10So I don't know about this specific plan.

10:12But if I'm trying to think about what is it that we need to achieve in the future, the answer is absolutely yes.

10:18It's really good to talk to you, your campaign and your determination as well.

10:22Thank you. Itamar, a very Israeli peace activist, one of the co-organisers of the Solidarity Group Standing Together.

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