Combatants For Peace builds relationships by sharing meals and personal stories of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Sulaiman, as a 14 year old living in the West Bank, became entrenched in violent responses to the occupation. “At 14, you don’t think things through,” he explained. “I was angry at what I saw and experienced with the occupation and I wanted revenge.” From rock throwing to Molotov cocktails, he attacked Israeli soldiers with knives in an attempt to capture their weapons. As a political prisoner, he learned the art of non-violent action, his last hunger strike lasting two weeks. He found these coordinated non-violent actions improved prison conditions. He studied Hebrew, English, world history, and Gandhi, Dr. King, and Nelson Mandela. When he left prison, he was morally committed to nonviolence and one of a handful of Palestinians who reached out to meet Israeli soldiers and founded Combatants For Peace. “It is obvious to anyone who wants to see it that there is no military solution to this problem, not for the Israelis and not for the Palestinians.”

Maya grew up in a kibbutz near the Galilee. She grew up a liberal who believed in a two state solution, but she had never met a Palestinian and rarely questioned the policies of the occupation. She served in the Israeli military and protected her people. She met her first Palestinian while attending an olive harvest in the West Bank with Combatants For Peace. “He was a nice gentleman, he introduced himself, and then he told me he distributed ice-cream in Jerusalem and I was so disturbed at meeting him that I had to get out of there; so I went to the bus and stayed in my seat for the rest of the event.” She later attended another olive harvest and was shocked when settlers attacked them, brutally beating one of their members. “It felt strange,” she recalled, “finding that the Israeli forces were not defending me, but were on the other side, throwing tear gas at us. We were peacefully harvesting olives, nothing more.” Last year Maya was the organizer of the alternative Memorial Day ceremony in Tel Aviv, a Combatants For Peace event open to the public and attended by five-thousand Arabs and Israelis gathering to remember the fallen from both sides of the conflict.