On October 8 2023, I co-founded the European Office for the Hostages. Having grown up in Israel and spent most of my professional life in the Brussels ‘EU Bubble’, I felt that my most valuable contribution to this humanitarian crisis would be to bring the urgent plea of the hostage families to European leaders, institutions, and the European public.
Now the war is over. The last living hostages are home at last, reunited with their families. Gazans should finally be able to access the aid they need and deserve without fear of being killed on their way to collect it.
The relief is immense. We can somehow breathe again. But our challenge now is even greater: to turn the final hostage-ceasefire deal into a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and eventually across the region. That is our best chance to prevent the horrors of the past two years from ever repeating themselves. There should never be an office for hostages again.
Moral coherence without borders
As soon as the war started we also came to realise that our struggle for the hostages was incomplete, morally inconsistent, if it did not include fighting for innocent Palestinian lives as well. Our dedication to the hostages gradually became inseparable from a broader struggle to stop the war.
We found ourselves organising Track II diplomacy efforts with diplomats from Arab countries, public concerts to raise awareness, and campaigned in the media. We continued organising meetings between hostage families and European leaders, hoping that their voices could help to end war, bring back the hostages and stop the immense suffering on both sides.
Following this logic, we coordinated a discreet citizen-led operation, which delivered prescription medications - for both Israeli hostages and Gazan children whose cancer treatment had been provided in Israeli hospitals until October 7. The idea came from hostage families themselves, who were concerned both about the immediate survival of their kidnapped family members - some of them in their 80s - and about the Palestinian children they had been volunteering with.
As opposed to the Israeli government, these hostage families did not see their humanitarian work with Palestinians as contradictory to saving their loved-ones but complementary to it. We were not a recognised humanitarian organisation and knew little about the process but we felt strongly about our moral principles. Hearing our story, the EU leadership exceptionally agreed to add our boxes of prescription medications to its humanitarian flights to Gaza via Egypt. They arrived exactly where they were needed.
I’ve lost count of Presidents, Prime Ministers, Commissioners, Members of Parliament, and ambassadors we met from the early days and throughout the past two years. Our message was always that diplomacy was the best chance for the hostages to ever come back.
I strongly believed that the war would not save the hostages but kill them and it would not eliminate Hamas nor make Israel safer. Now we know it for a fact. If anything, the war eliminated the broad support Israel enjoyed directly after 7 October, turning it into a pariah state for its oblivion of international law.
The most painful realisation is that the same ceasefire - hostage deal deal could have been signed early on, saving countless lives - Israelis and even more so, Palestinians.
The political turning point
Today, we can gladly close the European Office for the Hostages. The living ones are back and the missing bodies must be returned. But the mission now is far greater: to ensure the fragile ceasefire deal evolves into a lasting peace. Now it’s time to ensure that the day after the war does not look like the day before October 7, or else we will fall back into the same abyss, or even worse.
The past two years have shown us, with brutal clarity, what happens when there is no political horizon — when the world pretends this conflict can be “managed” rather than resolved. We learned that you cannot normalize the Middle East while excluding Palestine. We learned that ignoring despair does not make it disappear. We learned what hell looks like.
The political reality that preceded the war had brought neither safety for Israelis nor dignity for Palestinians. The only sustainable future is one shared between two peoples who finally recognize each other’s legitimate right to self-determination in this small land between the river and the sea. Neither side can make the other disappear. Neither can deny the other’s fundamental right.
Paradoxically, we have never been so far from peace — and yet never so close. The trauma and distrust are overwhelming, but the international awareness, motivation, and pressure to finally resolve the conflict are now higher than ever.
From the Arab world to Europe, from the Global South to President Trump, we are now hearing the same urgent message to seize the rare opportunity, and build on the tragedy a better future. On the same day the hostages returned, we heard it loud and clear from world leaders in Sharm El Sheikh; calling for normalisation of Arab and Muslim countries with Israel, living next to an independent Palestine.
Peace-builders' moment
A peace process is not going to be any easier this time. The two peoples are tired, scarred, traumatized. Israelis have lost their sense of security. Gazans have lost everything. In the West Bank violence continues daily. Reconciliation will therefore take many years but the political process must start now.
It will require deradicalization efforts on both sides. Fostering new political leadership in both Israel and Palestine who can offer an alternative to the blood and tears, will be challenging. But we have no alternative. We just saw what the lack of process looks like. No political compromise can possibly be worse.
Some of the most vocal peace activists were murdered in Israel on October 7 or killed in Gaza over the past two years. But their legacy lives on. Many others have changed their minds, ‘disillusioned’ about the ability to reason with the other side, following the recent atrocities. Yet, many of us in the peace camp have been continuing despite and because of the horrors. Gaining less media attention than the violence, Israeli-Palestinian peace rallies and conferences have taken place in various cities around the world during the war, including Tel Aviv, Larnaca, Paris, Jerusalem and New York.
Over the past months, I have had the privilege to travel through European capitals with Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates as part of the EU-funded EPICON project. Even as the war raged, we met to listen, to mourn, and to re-humanise each other. We also went to plead with European policymakers and influencers not to give up on us. Israelis and Palestinians will have to make peace themselves — but they cannot do it alone. Outside pressure and support are essential.
Europe now faces a test of courage and imagination. It must invest in both bottom-up and top-bottom processes; people-to-people dialogue, education, and deradicalisation but also political pressure and incentives on governments. It will take determination to bring both sides back to the table. Friends of Israel and Palestine who truly wish them peace must be ready to use every diplomatic, economic, and moral tool available.
This might truly be our last chance to offer our children and grandchildren a better future. We cannot afford to miss it.
