The Future Is Peace

Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian peacebuilder, and Maoz Inon, an Israeli entrepreneur and activist, share a conviction that travel and storytelling can bridge the divide between their peoples. Both come from farming families and tourism backgrounds. Aziz lost his older brother Tayseer during the First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s and early 1990s; Maoz lost both parents, Yakovi and Bilha Inon, on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants crossed the Gaza border into southern Israel. Their mutual grief and shared commitment to peace brought them together when violence was pushing their communities further apart.

The book recounts an eight-day journey they undertook in August 2024 across the land they both call home, using a "dual-narrative" approach pioneered by Aziz: Each takes turns guiding the reader through the landscape and political history of the region. They describe themselves as marginalized peacebuilders who know that bombs and walls will not bring security to either side, and they commit to not censoring any terminology, even when they disagree.

The journey begins in the Western Negev at Kibbutz Nir Am, the agricultural community near the Gaza border where Maoz's family has deep roots. Maoz recounts his last phone call with his father on the morning of October 7, a calm exchange ending in words of love, after which his father never answered again. Hamas gunmen shot both parents and set their home on fire. During the shiva, the Jewish week of mourning, Maoz's brother Magen asked the family to reject revenge. In a sleepless night, Maoz experienced a vision of humanity weeping together, their tears revealing a path to peace. He awoke to find a condolence message from Aziz.

Aziz recalls his own devastating loss. Israeli soldiers arrested Tayseer during Ramadan, dragging him from the family home in pajamas. In military prison, Tayseer endured waterboarding and confinement in a closet-sized cell. Months after his release, he died from untreated internal injuries at 19. At 10 years old, Aziz was consumed with rage; it took years to find another path. Despite their pain, both men chose peace over revenge and began collaborating, speaking together at the TED conference in Vancouver in April 2024.

They visit the grave of Maoz's grandmother Savta Hana, who immigrated from Bessarabia, present-day Moldova, in the 1930s and helped found the kibbutz. Aziz provides testimony from inside Gaza, where over 40,000 Palestinians had been killed and 1.8 million displaced without adequate food, water, or medicine. At Netiv HaAsara, where Maoz's parents lived, they harvest sabra, prickly pear fruit, from cacti Maoz's father planted decades ago. The sabra carries significance for both peoples: Israeli children are called sabra for being tough outside and sweet inside, while for Palestinians, clusters of sabr cacti often mark the sites of villages destroyed in 1948.

On the second day, they explore Jaffa and Tel Aviv. Their guide Abed Abu Shehadeh, a Jaffa activist, explains that before 1948, 120,000 Palestinians lived in Jaffa; afterward, fewer than 4,000 remained. Maoz narrates the Zionist founding story through his grandparents, whose decision to leave Bessarabia saved their lives during the Holocaust. He traces events through David Ben-Gurion's declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, and the war that displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. They close the day reflecting on the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, arguing that the cycle of trauma and vengeance can be broken only by facing it directly.

The third day focuses on the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line that divided Jerusalem and established the borders of the West Bank. Aziz narrates his childhood in Bethany, three miles east of Jerusalem. After the Oslo II accords of 1995, which divided West Bank administration among Israeli and Palestinian authorities, his family's home fell outside Jerusalem's municipal borders, forcing a wrenching relocation. Maoz narrates his mandatory military service, during which he experienced depression and disassociation, and learns on this journey that his base was less than two and a half miles from Aziz's childhood home. Visiting Aziz's parents' house and looking at Tayseer's portrait, Maoz tells Aziz that the day Aziz was born was the happiest day of Tayseer's life.

On the fourth day, they explore Jerusalem's Old City with Mahmoud Abu Eid, a Palestinian tour guide, and Rabbi Paula Marcus, an American Reform rabbi. They visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall, and the Noble Sanctuary, known to Jews as the Temple Mount. Aziz delivers an emotional meditation on his relationship with a city where he buried his brother yet proposed to his wife Marie. He describes enrolling in ulpan, a Hebrew language school, at 18, where a teacher's act of greeting him in Arabic shifted the course of his life. Through the class, he began shedding the binary of us versus them and made the difficult decision to forgive his brother's killers, not because they deserved it, but because he needed it to heal.

On the fifth and sixth days, they cross into the West Bank, confronting the architecture of occupation. At a protest for water rights organized by Combatants for Peace, a joint Palestinian-Israeli nonviolent organization, soldiers shut down the peaceful march within minutes. Maoz describes visiting Aida Camp, a refugee camp near Bethlehem where 5,500 people live on 17 acres, and recalls thinking the status quo is unsustainable. Aziz recounts the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre of 1994, when an Israeli-American settler murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers during the dawn Ramadan prayer. The days culminate at Bethlehem's concrete separation wall, where the authors declare this book is a hammer to help bring down such barriers.

The seventh day arrives in Nazareth, the most important Arab city in Israel. Maoz recounts his 20-year partnership with Odette Azar Shomar, a Palestinian woman who entrusted him with the key to her family's 200-year-old mansion. The resulting Fauzi Azar Inn sparked a revival that brought more than 50 locally owned businesses to the Old City. Unlike Jaffa's renaissance, Nazareth's revival is owned and operated almost entirely by Palestinian locals. The authors announce that the inn, closed since the tourism collapse, will reopen as a center for peace and education.

The final day traces the Jesus Trail through the Galilee. At Moshav Tzippori, a cooperative farming village built over the ruins of the Palestinian village Saffuriya, they visit an olive press with more than 6,000 ancient trees. At Kibbutz Lavi, founded by children of the Kindertransport, a humanitarian effort that evacuated Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Europe, Maoz weeps reading Holocaust victims' names on a memorial wall. Aziz shares his own transformative visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum, at 18. He recounts how his father attended a meeting of the Parents Circle, a forum of bereaved Palestinian and Israeli families, and openly asked whether the Holocaust really happened. An Israeli member invited him and 70 other Palestinians to Yad Vashem, leading to reciprocal learning about the Nakba, the 1948 mass displacement of Palestinians.

Aziz tells the story of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old in Gaza whose car was fired upon by an Israeli tank, killing the adults and other children inside. Audio recordings captured her three-hour phone call with a Red Crescent dispatcher, asking to be rescued. The ambulance sent for her was destroyed and both medics killed. At the ruins of the Palestinian village Hittin, blocked by a government sign, Maoz breaks the lock on the gate and walks through with Aziz and Rabbi Paula. The journey ends at Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee, where Maoz and Aziz wade barefoot into the water as the sun sets.

In the epilogue, the authors imagine a future in which lasting peace has been achieved: no fences, checkpoints, or watchtowers; restored rail networks; a generation of children who have never known war. In a vision-like scene, Tayseer steps off a train and tells Aziz he was never alone. Maoz's parents emerge and affirm they gave him the tools to pursue his dreams. Together they walk to a restored railway bridge as rain falls. The book closes with the observation that rain is always a good omen in the Holy Land.