Campaigners in Tel Aviv, Israel, protest for peace and an end to the war in Gaza. Image Dana Reany
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“It’s been the scariest time of my life,” Israeli peace activist Eran Nissan tells the Big Issue of life after 7 October 2023. “That being said, we also saw the protests, the weekly protests, that evolved from protesting against the government to protesting for a hostage deal or a ceasefire.”
Eran Nissan, from Jaffa, Tel Aviv, is the CEO of the progressive organisation Mehazkim, which advocates for peace between Israel and Palestine, as well as campaigns against racism, and for social justice issues and human rights.
Nissan, who is also a volunteer ambulance driver and medic, worked in a hospital during the 7 October attack on Nova music festival. An estimated 1,200 people died during the attack, while 251 people were taken hostage. As of August, 117 hostages have been released.
“On 7 October last year, I was with my wife in southern Israel. Her birthday is 9 October, so we went on a hiking trip and we were sleeping in a tent, and we were woken up at 6.30 in the morning to sirens,” he explained, adding that while driving to his wife’s grandmother’s, they arrived to “rocket fire with sirens and explosions above our heads”.
“Because I’m an ambulance driver, I said I’m gonna go to the nearest hospital to see if I can help, and I arrived there as the first wave of survivors and wounded and casualties arrived, and I stayed back there in the Soroka hospital in Beersheba,” he said.
“I treated soldiers and police officers, but also survivors from the Nova festival party and Bedouin kids from… villages in southern Israel that were hit with shrapnel from rockets.”
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Nissan explained that the year following 7 October has been “very traumatic”, and that everyone knows someone who has either been “murdered or taken hostage or wounded or called up for reserve duty”.
Campaigners in Tel Aviv, Israel, protest for peace and an end to the war in Gaza. Image: Adar Eyal
In the year since the attack, Israel has conducted a ground and air campaign in Gaza, with latest figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry estimating that 41,595 Palestinian people had been killed in the year following 7 October. This reportedly amounts to one in 55 of the pre-war population.
Nissan said he has been campaigning for an urgent ceasefire to stop the siege on Gaza and come up with a peaceful solution to end the decades-long conflict.
The peace activist, whose organisation aims to “promote the values of the Israeli left wing, so all the initiatives, the voices, the protests to do with equality, with peace, with democracy”, said he first got involved with the peace movement after his mandatory service in the Israeli military, where he worked in the canine unit as a dog handler.
“I’m a peace activist because of my military service, because of the experiences I had in Gaza, in the northern border, but mainly in the West Bank,” he said. “I had my personal bomb-detection dog, and we were sent to carry out missions, experience combat, and I lost friends and classmates.”
He explained that he first wanted to take a “more active role in ending this cycle of violence” in order to protect his own future, however after volunteering for Peace Now, which he describes as “Israel’s biggest and oldest peace movement, advocating for the two-state solution” he met several young Palestinians, and now advocates for “generational peace activism”.
“I believe that a conflict that we pass on to our children is a conflict we’ve lost, and we have a generational responsibility to make sure that we put an end to the inequality, the oppression, the violence, the extremism, and that we can do it only together,” he explained.
Nissan explained that in the decade he has been working in peace activism, one thing he noticed “changed dramatically” since 7 October is the “indifference” towards the conflict in Palestine.
“Up until 7 October… I’ve been fighting and trying to tackle the indifference of the Israeli mainstream population, because people in Tel Aviv, they didn’t have the sense of urgency about the need to end the occupation,” he said. “They said we can live a normal, and even a good life, here inside of Israel, even though there are Palestinians in Gaza or in Jenin or in Nablus that are suffering and their basic human rights are violated on a daily basis by Israel.
“And we get a reminder once every now and then… but we can travel around the world, we can have a normal life. This misconception, this illusion, shattered on the morning of 7 October.”
He explained: “Right now, every Israeli citizen understands deeply the urgent need to have a strategy, to have a vision, to demand from our leaders… for them to have answers about where we are going from here.”
The National March for Palestine takes place in central London. Image: Jess Hurd
Eran Nissan explained that one year on from the 7 October attack and subsequent Israeli attack on Palestine, the “most urgent need” is a ceasefire in Gaza, the return of the remaining hostages, and humanitarian relief, along with the “recognition of a state of Palestine by more countries”, however those measures alone are “not enough”.
“It’s not enough to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, because we need to talk about how we promote reconstruction, and how we move the international community to take a more constructive role in Israel-Palestine,” he explained.
“For that to happen, for us to see the short term, the medium term and the long term, I think that the paradigm shift that needs to happen is how the international community sees its role.
“Up until now, I saw… that the international community is trying to be an architect, the UK, but also the EU, the US, the UN, they approach Israel-Palestine like it’s a drawing board, and they need to design and build and put infrastructure and put the foundation to make it like a transactional real estate deal,” he explained.
“This is not the way to go. It failed, and it will continue to fail. Instead, the international community should take the role of a midwife, understanding that it’s our peace to deliver, and that their role is to offer expertise and support and be there to help us do what we want to do, and not try to control us.”
Nissan added that the international community shouldn’t “talk about us without us”, and that conversations about the conflict should take place with “young Israelis and Palestinians present”.
He explained: “I call upon the British government to open up a space for young Israeli and Palestinian peace activists… I’ve seen this in the US Congress. I saw how powerful it is to have a Palestinian sit in front of a politician and talk about how important it is to bring the hostages home… And then right after, there’s an Israeli peace activist who’s talking about settler violence in the West Bank and how there should be immediate legal action in order to alleviate this dangerous thing that is happening while all eyes are on Gaza, and there is a power and strength in this joint advocacy.”
He added that despite an escalation in the conflict – Israel has now invaded southern Lebanon, while Iran has launched missile attacks on Israel – he is “optimistic” about the future of a peace resolution.
“I see that things can change for the worse in just two weeks, but it means that reality is dynamic and that it can also change for the better,” he explained.
“When I look back in history… people didn’t believe that the Northern Ireland conflict could be solved, and it was solved, and even peace between Israel and Egypt just a couple of years after the 1973 October war was something that was deemed unlikely, but it happened.
“I believe that we can change the course of history, but also the course of our future from this very dark and bleak reality of terror attacks in Jaffa and soldiers dying in Lebanon and children dying in Gaza to a future where both Israelis and Palestinians can build the life that we deserve here, and we can share this shared homeland, because our future is plural. Our future here is together.”
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