A Multi-Religious Path Towards Middle East Peace
“If we truly wish to resolve this [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, it is unproductive for us to lecture the other side about why we are right and they are wrong. It is impossible to reconcile our competing historical narratives. Instead, we must create new and compelling narratives that acknowledge the innate human dignity, and rights, of both peoples.”
~ Maoz Inon, co-author of The Future is Peace: A Shared Journey Across the Holy Land
Prayer of Mothers for Life and Peace
God of Life
Who heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds,
Please hear the prayer of mothers,
For You did not create us to kill one another,
Nor to live in a state of fear, anger, or hatred in Your world,
But rather, to remember Your Name and magnanimously permit each other to sanctify
Your Name of Life, Your Name of Peace,
In this world.
~ Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum and Shaykha Ibtisam Mahameed
Olive grove outside the old city of Bethlehem
(Mujaddara, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
BEIT JALA, BETHLEHEM, JERUSALEM, NAZARETH, and TEL AVIV, Israel and Palestine — From 2 – 9 January 2026, a small but influential delegation of Dutch and Argentinian leaders affiliated with the renowned Anne Frank House visited the Holy Land. Their purpose was to engage with Israeli and Palestinian religious authorities, educators, activists, and other civil society figures who are striving to create a viable framework to ensure peaceful coexistence and long-term security for both peoples.
The delegation consisted of three individuals: Ronald Leopold, Executive Director of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Héctor Shalom, Director of the Anne Frank Center for Latin America in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is the representative/partner of Anne Frank House for the region; and Rabbi Silvina Chemen of the Masorti (Conservative) Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano. Rabbi Chemen serves on the Board of the G20 Religion Forum (R20) and works closely with Indonesia’s 100-million-member Nahdlatul Ulama organization in developing and executing The Road Not Yet Taken Initiative: A Multi-Religious Path Towards Middle East Peace.
From left to right, Ronald Leopold, Maoz Inon, Héctor Shalom, Odette Azar Shomar, and Rabbi Silvina Chemen. Mrs. Shomar, an Arab Christian, partnered with Israeli peace activist Maoz Inon to restore her family’s historic 19th-century mansion and open it to pilgrims as the Fauzi Azar Inn — a pioneering guesthouse and symbol of Jewish-Arab coexistence in Nazareth’s Old City.
Members of the visiting delegation and their local interlocutors are working to resolve the seemingly intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. They seek to accomplish this objective not through military confrontation or violence, but rather through education, dialogue, and the assumption of moral responsibility for assuring the safety, equality, and dignified treatment of all human beings.
Anne Frank in May 1942, two months before she and her family went into hiding
(Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
The Anne Frank House and Westerkerk on Prinsengracht in Amsterdam
(Martin Furtschegger, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
The visiting delegation met with women’s movements, community leaders, educators, journalists, diplomats, historians, and artists engaged in peacebuilding. The visit was conceived as a “listening mission” aimed at understanding educational, religious/ethical, and civic infrastructures that continue to function and continue to emerge beneath the visible layers of polarization and violence that divide Israeli and Palestinian society.
At an historic inflection point marked by profound trauma on both sides of the ethno-religious divide, the program focused on a central question: “What concrete, replicable educational and civic mechanisms are currently sustaining hope, strengthening resilience, and preparing the next generation for a better future?”
What emerged was not a simplistic narrative of reconciliation, nor an idealized portrayal of coexistence. Instead, the delegation encountered a complex landscape shaped by grief, social fragmentation, extreme tension, and political uncertainty — yet also by hope, creativity, determination, and a refusal, by many actors, to abandon the possibility of shared communal life.
Published by Penguin Random House (2026)
Nazareth: Reframing Memory and Responsibility
In Nazareth, the delegation met with Israeli and Palestinian civic actors working to construct new narratives of coexistence grounded in lived experience.
Among them was peace entrepreneur Maoz Inon — whose mother and father were murdered by Hamas at their home in Kibbutz Netiv HaAsara on 7 October 2023 — and his Palestinian friend Aziz Abu Sarah, whose 19-year-old brother died as a result of internal injuries sustained during his year-long detention and interrogation by Israeli authorities on suspicion of throwing stones during the First Intifada. Together, they authored a book titled The Future Is Peace, which invites readers to explore the mythical, political, and personal histories that simultaneously divide and unite their peoples.
During his conversation with members of the Anne Frank House/Anne Frank Center/R20 delegation, Maoz articulated a key strategic insight: “The world is constantly importing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. We must learn to export the solution.”
Maoz and Aziz insist that while the past cannot be undone, we must actively construct a better future. Reconciliation does not begin with formal agreements, but by restoring everyday human proximity and civic trust. It is in these concrete spaces that new narratives become possible.
Aziz Abu Sarah (left) and Maoz Inon
From left to right: Héctor Shalom; Ronald Leopold; Hyam Tannous, an Israeli Arab Roman Catholic who serves on the Board of Directors of Women Wage Peace; Rabbi Tamar Elad-Apelbaum; and Rabbi Silvina Chemen
Jerusalem: Religious Leadership and a Moral Responsibility to Act
In Jerusalem, the visiting delegation met with Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum, Vice President of the Masorti Rabbinical Assembly (the international professional body for Masorti/Conservative rabbis); founder of the pluralistic community Kehilat Zion; Director of the Rabbanut Yisraelit Network; and Co-Director of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Ritual Center. Her work focuses on reimagining Jerusalem not merely as contested territory, but as an ethical project grounded in radical inclusion, shared spirituality, and civic courage.
A self-described “egalitarian/traditional/experimental” synagogue in Jerusalem affiliated with the Masorti movement, Kehilat Zion brings together Jews from diverse religious backgrounds — Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, secular, Sephardi, Ashkenazi — alongside members of the Muslim and Christian traditions. The community integrates shared celebrations, interreligious educational initiatives, and equitable social action, including the distribution of charitable funds equally among Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities.
Rabbi Tamar’s leadership is deeply shaped by the loss of her brother — who was killed in 2001 while serving in an elite IDF combat unit — and by a conviction that peace cannot be outsourced to political actors alone. As she stated during a meeting with the visiting delegation, “We cannot wait for others to build peace. We must begin this process ourselves.”
Rabbi Tamar’s pedagogical approach emphasizes encounter from early childhood, multilingual education, and shared rituals, teaching young children to resist fear-based narratives amplified by digital media. She is the co-author — together with the Israeli Palestinian Shaykha Ibtisam Mahameed — of the widely recited Prayer of Mothers for Life and Peace:
From left to right, Rabbi Silvina Chemen (Buenos Aires); Lana Wos and Reem al-Hajajreh (Bethlehem); and Hyam Tannous (Haifa)
Beit Jala: Women of the Sun and Women Wage Peace
“Choosing Life” as a Form of Political Action
In Beit Jala — a largely Christian town in the Governorate of Bethlehem, Palestine — the delegation met with leaders of two grassroots movements, both headed by women/mothers who work across ethno-religious divides to advance nonviolent civic engagement.
Women of the Sun — founded in 2021 by Palestinian Muslim activist Reem al-Hajajreh (photograph above) — seeks to empower women economically and politically, strengthen their leadership roles, and advance a nonviolent resolution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through dialogue, education, and joint peace initiatives.
Women Wage Peace is Israel’s largest grassroots peace movement. Founded in 2014 in the aftermath of that year’s Gaza War, it unites nearly 50,000 Israeli women — drawn from Jewish, Muslim, Christian, secular, right/center/left, and various ethnic groups, including Druze and Bedouin — to demand a nonviolent, negotiated end to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
The two movements work in close coordination, developing joint initiatives such as The Mothers’ Call, a shared declaration and petition in which Israeli and Palestinian mothers — representing diverse religious, ethnic, and political backgrounds — unite to demand an immediate end to the cycle of violence, a return to negotiations, and the full inclusion of women in every stage of the peace process, so that their children may live in equality, dignity, freedom, and peace. Significantly, these movements focus on moral, spiritual, and maternal principles rather than specific policy proposals, such as a one- or two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
UN Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted unanimously on 31 October 2000, lies at the heart of The Mothers’ Call. This landmark UN Resolution on Women, Peace, and Security affirms the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, stresses the need for their equal participation and full involvement in all peace and security efforts, and calls for a gender perspective to address the special needs and protection of women and girls during and after armed conflict.
The profound significance of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 is best understood in light of the Preamble to the United Nations Charter and the history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. R20 Board member, Harvard Law Professor, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon, authored the definitive history of the UDHR in her book A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As described on the back cover of Professor Glendon’s seminal work:
Unafraid to speak her mind and famously tenacious in her convictions, Eleanor Roosevelt was still mourning the death of FDR when she was asked by President Truman to lead a controversial commission, under the auspices of the newly formed United Nations, to forge the world’s first international bill of rights.
A World Made New is the dramatic and inspiring story of the remarkable group of men and women from around the world who participated in this historic achievement and gave us the founding document of the modern human rights movement. Spurred on by the horrors of the Second World War and working against the clock in the brief window of hope between the armistice and the Cold War, they grappled together to articulate a new vision of the rights that every man and woman in every country around the world should share, regardless of their culture or religion.
In 2024, Women Wage Peace and Women of the Sun were jointly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. While criticized by hardline factions on both sides of the Israeli–Palestinian divide, media coverage generally portrays them as courageous, mother-led efforts to forge peace amid and despite intense grief — most recently, following in the wake of the October 7th attack and subsequent Gaza War, which claimed the lives of numerous women and children on both sides, including members of both movements.
In conversation with Rabbi Silvina Chemen, Reem al-Hajajreh summarized the ethical core of her work in a single sentence: “Some say that we must die for liberation. I say, we must live for liberation.”
Yael Admi, one of the founders of Women Wage Peace, told the Argentinian Masorti Rabbi: “We stand together as mothers. We do not want another child — whether Israeli or Palestinian — to die.”
Rabbi Silvina Chemen with peace activists Reem al-Hajajreh (left) and Yael Admi (right)
These Israeli and Palestinian women reframe grief as a powerful motivation for seeking peace, rather than justifying revenge and the further escalation of conflict. At the core of their multifaith alliance is the conviction that lasting security cannot be attained through violence, but should be built through long-term investment in the education, dignity, and ethical formation of the next generation.
Palestinian and Israeli women leaders in dialogue with members of the Anne Frank House/Anne Frank Center/R20 Delegation in the Palestinian Christian town of Beit Jala — January 2026
From left to right: Héctor Shalom, Director of the Anne Frank Center for Latin America; Reem al-Hajajreh, founder, Women of the Sun; and Hyam Tannous and Angela Scharf of Women Wage Peace
In August 2025, the Anne Frank Center for Latin America facilitated an 8-day visit to Argentina and Uruguay by representatives of Women Wage Peace and Women of the Sun, to promote The Mothers’ Call. Their extensive, wide-ranging itinerary included meetings and a public event at the Chamber of Deputies of the Argentine Nation (Diputados de la Nación Argentina, photo above).
In the city of Santiago del Estero, capital of a province bearing the same name, a children’s choir (photo below) and the Provincial Governor welcomed the delegation at a public ceremony held in the Parque del Encuentro (Park of Encounter). Inaugurated in 2021, the park features scale replicas of five houses of worship (Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, Protestant, and Buddhist) designed to promote peace and religious diversity.
Founder of the G20 Religion Forum (R20) KH. Yahya Cholil Staquf (above, center) and members of a Nahdlatul Ulama delegation with leaders of Women Wage Peace, during Mr. Staquf’s historic visit to Jerusalem in June 2018. The intense controversy that ensued, in Indonesia, illustrates the challenges faced by those who seek to promote universal love and compassion, rather than continued violence.
Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam: Institutionalizing Shared Society
The Anne Frank House/Anne Frank Center/R20 delegation also visited Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, a Jewish-Arab community established in the 1970s on the principle of full civic equality between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The village is not a merely symbolic project but rather a fully functioning shared municipality, where governance, education, and public life operate bilingually and binationally. Its School for Peace and its integrated primary school serve as longstanding laboratories for innovative educational programs designed to reduce conflict and promote peaceful coexistence. The School offers workshops at various universities to facilitate communication between Jews and Arabs. Students at the School for Peace learn the national histories of both peoples, and equal status is accorded to Hebrew and Arabic. The community addresses and commemorates Israeli Independence Day, Nakba Day, and Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, with intellectual honesty rather than avoidance.
Having visited Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, members of the delegation concluded that it is not only possible, but essential, to conduct respectful, fruitful conversations about even the most difficult and emotionally charged topics. Peace education should not remain “extracurricular.” Rather, it should be institutionalized, systemic, bilingual, and anchored in mutual recognition of collective narratives.
Rozana: Transcending Political Deadlock Through Medical Cooperation
The delegation met with Rodica Radian Gordon, Former Ambassador of Israel to Mexico and Spain, and Board Member of the NGO Rozana — an organization that advances Israeli–Palestinian cooperation through the healthcare sector. Founded on the premise that medical care constitutes a shared human obligation, Rozana facilitates access to treatment, professional training, and hospital partnerships.
Its work includes enabling Palestinian patients to receive specialized medical treatment in Israeli hospitals, while simultaneously investing in the professional development of Palestinian medical staff and strengthening healthcare infrastructure within Palestinian communities.
Rozana’s leadership emphasized a crucial principle: health cooperation should be framed as institutional collaboration that builds interdependence and trust over time.
Rozana offers a pragmatic model of “functional peacebuilding,” in which health diplomacy and cooperation are built around shared human vulnerability, and saving lives is not only an ethical duty but also serves to bridge conflict by establishing authentic and sincere human relationships.
Tel Aviv: Strategic Regional Analysis
In Tel Aviv, the Anne Frank House/Anne Frank Center/R20 delegation met with veteran journalist and Middle East analyst Henrique Cymerman, whose decades of on-the-ground reporting and diplomatic engagement provide a broad, long-term perspective on regional dynamics that reaches far beyond the immediate cycle of violence.
Cymerman placed the current Israeli–Palestinian conflict within the context of a larger geopolitical transformation, highlighting shifting alliances across the Arab world, the normalization process between Israel and several Gulf states, the role of Iran and its proxies, and the strategic recalibration of global powers in the region.
One of his key observations was that “The Middle East is changing faster than its narratives.”
Cymerman cautioned that progress towards a peaceful resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would require pragmatic leadership capable of navigating internal political fragility on both sides, while also leveraging emerging regional alignments.
The conversation offered a valuable macro-context: peacebuilding efforts on the ground do not exist in isolation, but operate within a fluid and interdependent geopolitical ecosystem where local coexistence projects and broader diplomatic shifts are interdependent layers of the same strategic landscape.
International journalist, university professor, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Henrique Cymerman’s new book (published 31 October 2025) tells the story of a country that, despite being so prominent in the media, nevertheless remains an enigma.
Members of the delegation with Fania Oz-Salzberger
Tel Aviv: Memory, Education, and Democratic Responsibility
The delegation met with Fania Oz-Salzberger, an historian and public intellectual, whose work bridges Jewish textual tradition, liberal political thought, and contemporary Israeli civic discourse. She follows in the footsteps of her father, the renowned author and pacifist leader Amos Oz.
Oz-Salzberger reflected on the tension between nationalism and liberal democratic principles, underscoring that Israeli society currently faces a profound internal debate regarding identity, power, and ethical responsibility.
One insight resonated strongly with members of the visiting delegation: “The Jewish story has always been a story of words — and words can build futures.” Peacebuilding, from this perspective, is not only an institutional or diplomatic endeavor. It also requires developing and disseminating effective narratives.
Conclusions
From the perspective of the educational mission of the Anne Frank House and of the Anne Frank Center for Latin America, the main goal of this trip was to explore the landscape of “living together” / “bridge building” initiatives in the region, in order to:
- Assess the possibilities of supporting any of these initiatives; and
- Assess the possibility of whether and how these initiatives could be helpful in advancing the mission of the Anne Frank House and Anne Frank Center in their own immediate environments, in Europe and Latin America.
From this point of view, the visit was highly successful. Members of the delegation returned to their respective institutions inspired, with a much better understanding of the initiatives they had encountered, as well as their context — with much food for thought, and with concrete leads to explore further.
From the perspective of Rabbi Chemen — who serves on the Board of the G20 Religion Forum (R20) and is deeply engaged with The Road Not Yet Taken Initiative: A Multi-Religious Path Towards Middle East Peace — her week-long visit to Israel and Palestine revealed a complex but striking reality: carefully structured peacebuilding efforts exist, and are progressing, within religious communities, educational institutions, and civil society at large. Rabbi Chemen believes that several lessons may be derived from careful observation of these efforts.
First, ethical leadership is indispensable to the success of any peacebuilding effort. Civil society actors emphasized that harmonious coexistence requires internal mechanisms to ensure accountability, the development and widespread dissemination of responsible narratives, and the courage, as well as character, needed to resist polarization. In Israel, a coalition of more than 70 organizations working for peace in various arenas of social and human development has been established under the banner: “The Time Has Come.” These organizations joined forces to amplify their collective voice and demands, in order to transform local and civil society initiatives into public policy.
Second, efforts to establish a “shared society” must be institutionalized if they are to succeed. Models of bilingual education, equal-status municipal governance, and Israeli–Palestinian medical cooperation demonstrate that peaceful coexistence becomes durable only when embedded in well-organized, functioning systems — not left to fleeting, symbolic gestures.
Third, the regional environment is undergoing rapid structural transformation. Emerging diplomatic alignments and cross-border economic frameworks — such as those with Arab Gulf States — create both risks and opportunities. Grassroots initiatives and geopolitical shifts are interconnected; each influences the viability of the other.
For actors engaged at a multilateral level — including platforms such as the G20 Religion Forum (R20) and its Road Not Yet Taken Initiative: A Multi-Religious Path Towards Middle East Peace — these findings carry direct implications. Religious leadership, academic institutions, and civil society networks are strategic stakeholders in fostering local, regional, and global stability.
Rabbi Chemen returned home with a clear and definite conclusion: peaceful coexistence may become possible, and durable, if nourished by a thriving ecosystem of ethical leadership, coherent narratives, institutional support, and sustained international reinforcement.
Global forums such as the R20 offer an opportunity to develop strategic alignment among powerful international actors — thereby ensuring that viable models are recognized, nurtured, amplified, and interconnected in ways that foster international peace and security.
“Sustainable security cannot be achieved by erecting walls, but by developing relationships founded upon mutual compassion and respect”
~ Rabbi Silvina Chemen
Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano, R20 Board Member, and Co-Leader of The Road Not Yet Taken Initiative: A Multi-Religious Path Towards Middle East Peace
The Road Not Yet Taken Initiative is a joint program of Nahdlatul Ulama, the Center for Shared Civilizational Values, the G20 Religion Forum (R20), and the Institute for Humanitarian Islam.
R20 Working Groups associated with The Road Not Yet Taken Initiative include Working Group 2 on the need to identify shared values and establish reciprocity among the world’s diverse peoples, cultures, and religions, by treating one another in accordance with the highest moral standards embraced by our respective traditions (“WG-2 on Shared Values and Reciprocity”); Working Group 3 on historical grievances, truth-telling, compassion, reconciliation, and forgiveness (“WG-3 on Truth and Reconciliation”); and Working Group 4 on the recontextualization of obsolete and problematic tenets of religious orthodoxy (“WG-4 on Recontextualization”).
Seminar hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (above) on 23 September 2024, as part of the “soft launch” of The Road Not Yet Taken Initiative
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