Maoz Inon is an Israeli and Aziz Abu Sarah is a Palestinian. Each had members of their family killed by the other side. The parents of Maoz Inon were both killed in the Hamas attack on Israel which began the war in Gaza. Aziz`s elder brother died as a result of internal injuries caused by beatings in an Israeli prison where he was held for throwing rocks at Israeli vehicles. He was a teenager at the time. Maoz and Aziz were deeply traumatized.

Both have become great publicists for peace. Aziz is a peacebuilder, an entrepreneur, a National Geographic Explorer, a renowned speaker, and trainer on conflict resolution and responsible travel. He writes for the The New York Times, The Washington Post and Israeli and Palestinian publications. Maoz has received the prestigious Franco German Human Rights prize and has spoken on Capitol Hill and the European Parliament. He has written for The Washington Post and Israeli and Palestinian publications. They are international figures.

They have both been subject to the usual dismissal of advocates of peace – that they are naive dreamers. Their response is that they are realists. They know that bombs will not bring quiet, that walls will not protect us and that war will not bring security to either side. And peacemakers have been successful in Northern Ireland, in Apartheid South Africa, Rwanda and Vietnam. Further back in history, Jews and Arabs lived together in peace for three hundred years in Medieval Spain.

And Israel, which seems a tower of strength, according to Maoz, has problems. The amount of money and manpower being invested in the segregation, oppression, dispossession and fragmentation of the Palestinian people is beyond anything you can imagine, until you see it with your eyes, writes Maoz. He believes that it is not sustainable.

What will happen if the whole structure collapses? Neither Maoz nor Aziz believe in a two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians. What they believe in is a confederation of Israeli and Palestinian states. It should have open borders, shared institutions and mutual co-operation, giving national self-determination for both sides while addressing ‘obstacles to peace’:  Jerusalem, refugees, the economy, and natural resources. Of course, they wouldn`t anticipate perfection. They recognize that every peace agreement has compromises.

It seems studies show that when there is gender equality in the conference room, the chances of long-term success increases by 35%. The room needs to include religious leaders, spiritual leaders and educators, to be as diverse as possible, and to have strong international support and guarantees. There is no need to convince everyone, enough will do.

Maoz and Aziz are impressively enterprising. They realize that when people travel, they want to relax, but they also want to learn. Maoz and Aziz concluded that travel is an unused vehicle for peacemaking. They decided to set up their own travel business which they named Mejdi Tours, Mejdi being the Arab word for ‘honour’. They wanted to honour different viewpoints as well as the travellers, the locals and the places they visited. When they launched Mejdi Tours in 2009, most doubted that it would last a year. Today [2026] they are a global company, operating dual narrative tours in more than thirty countries, creating connections all over the world through culturally immersive, socially conscious travel. They were drawn to tourism because its reach is unmatched by that of almost any other industry.

The authors argue that war should be treated like a disease, a form of social cancer. That is a good analogy, and there is another one: slavery. It had been a part of human existence for thousands of years. It was accepted by all classes as being an essential component of society: great religious innovators exhorted slaves to obey their owners. But the evaluation of this changed. It was realized that it degraded people, that it was an affront to their dignity as human beings. And it encouraged their owners to be inhumane. The harm done to the victims of war is obvious, and the injury to those fighting is now understood. The financial cost is obscene. It is time it went.