APN Research Center
Student Advocacy Resources
The Peace Movement
The Israeli peace movement began during the 1978 Israeli-Egyptian peace talks with the establishment of Peace Now (Shalom Achshav). The movement became prominent during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when 400,000 Israelis (10% of Israel’s population at the time) attended a Peace Now rally. The movement has suffered a decline in the wake of the Second Intifada (2000-2005) but continues to influence the public discourse in Israel.
APN Resources
Briefing Call - “Current Challenges to the Israeli Peace Movement” with Anat Ben-Nun
Americans for Peace Now / (February 22, 2017)
Briefing call with Peace Now's Anat Ben Nun, who discusses the challenges that Israel’s Peace movement is facing, and further addresses the political situation following the Trump-Netanyahu meeting in Washington, issues relating to West Bank settlements, and anti-democratic Knesset legislation. Read More >
Articles
Twenty Years of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Education: A Research Retrospective
Ned Lazarus / Palestine-Israel Journal (October 1, 2015)
Hundreds of participants of youth peace education programs - Jewish, Israeli, Israeli Palestinians, and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories - have gone to engage in peace-building efforts. Read More >
What Is Israel's Peace Now?
Pierre Tristam / About.com (2014)
Background on Israel's Peace Now movement, including information on the organization's history, origins, and current influence. Read More >
More Relevant Than Ever: People-to-People Peacebuilding Efforts in Israel and Palestine
Ron Pundak / Palestine-Israel Journal (2012)
Pundak, an architect of the Oslo Accords, outlines the people-to-people peace-building efforts currently taking place between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the challenges they face. Read More >
Peace Movements in Israel
Sara Helman / Jewish Women's Archive (March 1, 2009)
Description and analysis of the ways in which women’s peace organizations mobilized, subverted and changed the social identities constituted by the incorporation of Israeli-Jewishness into citizenship. Read More >
Books
When Peace Is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice
Atalia Omer / University of Chicago Press (2013)
Book Review (Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies) | CampusBooks
The Israeli Peace Movement: A Shattered Dream
Tamar S. Hermann / Cambridge University Press (2009)
Book Review (Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice) | CampusBooks
Our Sisters' Promised Land: Women, Politics, and Israeli-Palestinian Coexistence
Ayala Emmett / University of Michigan Press (2003)
Book Review (Amazon.com) | CampusBooks
Dialogue, Conflict Resolution, and Change: Arab-Jewish Encounters in Israel
Mohammed Abu-Nimer / State University of New York Press (1999)
Book Review (Amazon.com) | CampusBooks
Historic Documents
The Officers' Letter
March 1978
Confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict leaked in January 2011. Includes thousands of pages diplomatic correspondence, minutes from private meetings, transcripts of high level exchanges and strategy papers. Read More >
Reports and Data Sources
A future for Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding
Ned Lazarus / BICOM (July 2017)
The report finds that grassroots Israeli-Palestinian peace building projects work - and are a vital missing ingredient in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process - and sets out clear recommendations for practitioners and funders looking to help build the conditions for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. PDF >
Peace Now and the Legitimation Crisis of "Civil Militarism"
Michael Feige / Israel Studies (Spring 1998)
Historical analysis of Peace Now, Israel's largest and most influential peace movement. Shows that the initiation of the movement can be explained in terms of the Israeli military ethos, but that gradually the military experience lost its effect on the movement (requires Project Muse login). Read More >