Even after October 7, this top peace expert believes religion will solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
A protest in Tel Aviv calling for an end to the war in August 2025
Gid’on Lev writes in Haaretz on 24 October 2025:
Prof. Marc Gopin, a world-renowned peace expert is convinced that reconciliation is possible here too – but the Israeli left will have to challenge some of its core assumptions. Civilizations that once slaughtered each other have made peace – Jews and Muslims are no different, he says
When the second intifada was at its height at the end of 2000, Prof. Marc Gopin entered the heart of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government in the West Bank. “Getting there was dangerous,” he relates. “One wrong turn and you’re in trouble. It was nerve-wracking.”
Gopin was taken to a secure room to meet with a senior figure in the Palestinian security services. “We sat and talked. At one point, I quoted Rav Muna [a 3rd-4th century C.E. Talmudic scholar], who said: ‘These three are interlinked: When justice is done, truth is achieved, and peace is established,'” Gopin continues. “But my message to the leader was also that there can be no justice without peace, because they are one and the same. In other words, he cannot attain the justice he deserves through violence and terror. In this way, we were actually studying Gemara together in the midst of the battles, I and this senior Palestinian commander. A few mouths of officers there opened in astonishment at the scene they were witnessing.”
For some 40 years, Gopin – a scholar of peace processes and director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in Virginia – has been at it, hurling himself into the most dangerous places on the planet, and with research-based knowledge, life experience and a touch of Yiddishkeit, looking for a way out of even the most fraught conflicts. The theory he has developed is the methodology of “Compassionate Reasoning,” a fusion of two critical human capabilities. A sober-eyed view of reality with all its difficulties is essential in his field, Gopin notes, but so is what he refers to as a soft gaze.
Gopin, 68, married and the father of three, is the author of eight books on conflict resolution and establishing peace, three of which are about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (all published by Oxford University Press). One book, published in 2002, is entitled “Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East.” He has worked in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Jordan, Bosnia, Northern Ireland and Turkey, and served as an adviser to the World Economic Forum, the U.S. State Department and other international institutions. Moreover, Gopin also served as rabbi of a congregation in Boston and in Berkeley; he was ordained by none other than the late Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, the prominent spiritual leader of Orthodox Jewry in the United States.
Marc Gopin
“What I do is to forge ties of trust in order to foment positive change very gradually,” he says, citing his work over a number of years in Afghanistan, where he set up a program focusing on religions and peace, in 2011 and 2012, drawing world leaders of Islam along with dozens of imams from all over the country. “They were very religious, but they gathered to show that Islam is a religion that can be tolerant, a religion that does not preach terrorism or violence against women. In other words, the Taliban is an external influence. One imam came to the conference on crutches, having been blown up for preaching in favor of women’s rights.”
Following the signing of the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas earlier this month, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s declarations of his intention to achieve “lasting peace” in the Middle East, Prof. Gopin explained his approach – rational and optimistic – to obtaining such an accomplishment in our region, and the place religion should play in it, in three video conversations with Haaretz.
On October 7, 2023, a Muslim fundamentalist organization perpetrated a monstrous massacre. The response to the assault was appallingly lethal – and behind it, in large measure, were Jewish messianic forces. Throughout history, in most wars, religions have acted in a similar manner of being used to weaponize and radicalize. For his part, Gopin is convinced, however, based on decades of practice around the world, that the contribution of religious people must not be bypassed on the road to peacemaking – which is precisely the reason that he is barely known in Israel, despite his many years of activity here. The right objected to his dovish posture and the left was turned off by his suggestion of integrating religion and religious people’s needs into the peace process.
Gopin views the Oslo Accords of the mid-1990s, for example, as a “tragedy.” One of the causes of the failure, he avers, is that the process was based on an alliance in which only the secular population was included, consulted and placed in leadership roles, both in Israel and Palestine.
“Organized religion is a totally secular power structure, in the Marxist sense,” he explains. “But religion is also spirituality, ethics, traditional culture and rituals. The aspects of religion that become bellicose are almost always those that are institutionalized and weaponized.”
Judaism, he notes, was the first to identify those competing facets of religion: “Every people had a king and priests. The king always wants territory and money; the priests want power and legitimization. But what happened in ancient Israel, and set Judaism apart, is the social critique of the Prophets. They fulminated against the king and the priests, who in the name of God transformed religion into a tool of war while oppressing the weak and causing unnecessary death in endless wars. The whole biblical text comes out against this abuse of tradition, over and over.”
Organized religion always remained a key tool in the service of the warmongers. Gopin points out that one of the reasons that led Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare war on Ukraine over three years ago was the secession of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Russian Orthodox Church in 2019.
“Putin also built up the cathedral in Moscow that is dedicated to the military forces,” he explains. “Organized religion almost always supported war initiatives of leaders. That is a dark side of religion, which drove many away. But among all religious traditions, without any necessary connection to belief in God, there are also elements of wisdom, of psychological understanding, of compassion, of a combination of preserving human life, kindness and mercy, and respect for the other person, including the stranger.”
In practice, those who work for peace in Israel come mainly from the liberal, secular camp.
Gopin: “It’s true that the liberal camp is more faithful to human rights – and Haaretz has always defended those rights – and what in my eyes are ideals of the Torah. But there are well-intentioned people on both sides, the Jewish side and the Muslim side, and also on both sides of Jewish society. Just as there are secular fascists and secular democrats, so too with the religious population.
“There are thousands of religious people in Israel who are not represented by the religious parties, which bargain over power and money. In the same way that Hamas or Taliban do not represent Islam for millions of Muslims, these parties do not represent the true Jewish religious and ethical spectrum. There are religious people in Israel who will support a peace process. I know they exist as I have worked with them.
“It’s necessary to forge ties with them, to undergo a process with them, to have religious and secular forgive one another in both Palestine and Israel – for the future of Israel, Palestine and the whole Middle East. Jewish ideas can be invoked to awaken the Jewish conscience, to connect peace to a deep Jewish identity. Radical inclusiveness is needed at the emotional, psychological and ethical levels of peace-building and peace processes in order to recognize the contribution of all these populations, including the religious community, to the future of the country even if it’s difficult for you.”
“Wherever peace has been established in a lasting and deep way,” Gopin continues, “religious communities and religious tradition have been part of the process. That was the case in Guatemala, the Philippines, South Africa, Colombia, Sri Lanka. Even the peace agreement signed by Germany and France after World War II, which is considered to have been the result of surrender, bore critical moral and spiritual aspects, not only diplomatic ones.
“During those years of transition from war to peace for France and Germany,” the scholar continues, “each party to the conflict underwent ethical, cultural and even a spiritual transformation – involving confession, remorse, forgiveness – as a critical condition to build trust that would end the endless cycle of warfare that had characterized their relationship for centuries. Each side was invited to express its pain, its guilt, its resentment, and to listen to the other side. The process was done in small groups, people facing people, and the position was that each side had to change itself so that it would be possible to change their relations.”
The process between Germany and France didn’t end with the signing of the agreement between the countries in May 1945, but continued during subsequent decades of dialogue. Indeed, from Gopin’s point of view, the final goal in such processes is not an accord per se, but the achievement of what he calls “deep peace”: “There are states of peace that are not amenable to reversal, that are irreversible. Germany and France is a good example. The two countries fought each other unceasingly over a thousand years, but today it’s impossible to imagine a war between them.”
Another example he cites is that of the tribes of Angles and Saxons that arrived on the island of Britain in the 5th century but were merged in the 6th century. “After all, it was inconceivable that they would slaughter each other in the streets, but that’s exactly what they did across lengthy periods of time. The war between them ended at a certain stage, and today it’s not clear who is who. So what changed? That’s the question that must be clarified vis-a-vis deep peace.”
Research by Gopin and other scholars shows that such peace rests on three foundations: diplomatic structures and agreements, economic relations and a system of close ties forged between people on both sides.
“The last element is the most important one,” he notes. “Cross-cutting ties that connect different groups – religious, ethnic or political – are the core of reducing tensions. A sufficient level of cross-cutting ties can, over time, render war impossible and even make the very idea of war ridiculous, because the foundation of society has become dependent on cooperation between millions of people in the two groups. That’s another reason for Oslo’s failure: It was an agreement that produced large economic profits mainly for the elites on both sides, but was signed without the existence of deep, close ties between the two peoples involved. So the majority, especially the religious, didn’t accept it, on both sides.”
Doesn’t peace depend on the work of governments and politicians?
“In the 1980s the thinking was that only diplomatic arrangements are important. Of course they are essential, but they cannot be the main thing. What we see across history, in many cultures, is that peace begins with creating cross-cutting ties.”
Such was Gopin’s experience in the 1990s, and in 1997 in particular, in Northern Ireland, which from his perspective is the only place in the world where a process of deep peace has taken place in recent decades: “The process there hasn’t yet concluded, but it has progressed far more than peace processes in Bosnia or Rwanda or Cambodia – they are weak and could come apart at any moment – because no cross-cutting ties have been formed in them between former enemies and large ethnic groups.”
Creating such connections is no simple matter, and not only because of the inherent tensions between conflicting groups. “Tyrants, dictators and oligarchs acquire strength by fomenting hatred among the masses,” Gopin says. “They want people to fall upon each other’s throats and fuel the public’s hatred for their own benefit. There was a stage when the Palestinians became fed up with terrorism – even [PLO leader Yasser] Arafat had had enough. I met with him a few times and it was clear. But then Hamas received funding from the Gulf and continued the war. The Gulf states have often promoted tribal hatred in order to keep producing oil without problems.”
Syria constitutes a case in which Gopin has directly witnessed how external funds fan the flames of hatred, division and war. He first arrived there in 2005 and visited the country almost every year for about a decade, with the regime’s permission. “I was invited because the regime wanted to show the international community that Syria is a legitimate place. I spoke in the Assad Library, I appeared several times on state television; I was treated like royalty. At the same time, under [President Bashar] Assad’s nose, I was involved in setting up networks of people who tried to create a pluralistic society – communists, Druze, Christians, Sunnis, Alawites.”
How did you manage to operate there?
“The people who invited me belonged to a few of the most important families in Syria. They were part of the senior members of society, but wanted to open up society and hoped that Assad would join, that he would be different from his father. They were also very frightened of him, but tried to create new modes of activity, and I was part of that process.
“Over the years I discovered that it’s possible to work with very oppressive police states, if you’re considered a respected guest and if you don’t say anything politically critical. That’s the key. So I have always focused on articulating a positive vision, on simply teaching and training students about communal conflict resolution. I was subjected to attempts at provocation. For example, during a live television broadcast, a regime supporter got up and asked if I was willing to apologize for the Balfour Declaration [the 1917 British document in support of a national home for Jews in Palestine]. I told him, ‘We all have things to apologize for,’ and he fell silent. Everyone there knew about the crimes of the Assad regime.”
Gopin refused to meet with Assad himself, because he didn’t want to be identified with the leader’s criminal deeds, but in 2011 he met for two hours with Assad’s wife, Asma, with students from George Mason: “She was very impressive and tried to demonstrate a great deal of knowledge about conflict resolution. We conducted a good dialogue. You must understand that the majority of people in Syria didn’t want violent regime change, which is why they were against American involvement. People want gradual change, not violence. That’s also true in the case of Iran.”
Some of the people Gopin trained back then now hold senior positions in the rebuilding of Syria, he says, but the effort he was involved in ultimately failed: Assad refused to accept nonviolent and interfaith efforts at reform and launched a brutal war against his own people, who rose up with the nonviolent demonstrations of the Arab Spring. The Gulf states supported the opposition with imported jihadis, against Assad.
“We were stunned by the amounts of money that arrived from the Gulf for the jihadis. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia at the time fomented jihadi approaches to war, because they assumed that once a democratic Arab state came into being, as most Syrians wanted, those families, the ones who manage the Gulf, would be out of power,” Gopin says. “Arafat asserted that he wanted democracy in Palestine, and accordingly he was the greatest enemy of the Gulf states, and Hamas was an ally of theirs. Jihad is foreign policy, it’s a type of diplomacy.”
This pattern – of capital and funds from external sources exacerbating and prolonging wars – is not only endemic to the oil- and intrigue-ridden Middle East. “That’s exactly what happened in Northern Ireland, too,” he asserts. “There are 50 million people of Irish extraction in the United States, and many financed the war in Northern Ireland in the last century. Americans supplied vast amounts of money and arms, both to Catholics and to Protestants. It’s ‘war via a third party.’ The rich remain comfortably in their homes and go on strengthening their tribal identity through war.”
Why did Americans fund the war in Northern Ireland?
“It was a very human thing. Wealthy people can also be filled with rage even if they are successful and safe. An affluent Irish-American businessman in Boston is still resentful because his grandfather or even his father died of hunger when all the food was sent to England, leaving only rotten potatoes. And therefore he helped to finance the IRA, because it took revenge on the British.”
How did it all end?
“It ended because the children of those wealthy people – like [Senator] Ted Kennedy, or George Mitchell [the U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland who brought about the Good Friday Agreement, which ended 30 years of conflict in Ireland] or [longtime Congressman and House speaker] Tip O’Neill or [President] Bill Clinton, who were all of Irish descent – said ‘Enough, we’ve had it.’ That war was an embarrassment to them.
“But it also happened because enough people in Belfast and other places showed that Catholics and Protestants can live together. Thousands of people on both sides who supported peace built bridges, established joint projects. They forged solid cross-cutting ties. These are ties that happen when, for example, you are guest in someone’s home, share meals, and when you are ready to take risks for friendship with them.”
Gopin arrived in Ireland in 1997, a year before the Good Friday Agreement was signed, and spoke at one of the meetings held in the border zone between the two communities in the conflict. “There were 500 people there, Catholics and Protestants,” he recalls. “People were exhausted from the violence, from the terrorism, but they also wanted to preserve the boundaries and the differences between them, in order not to lose their singularity and their identity. So I spoke about biblical love for the stranger. The stranger is different from you, but you accept him, look after him.
“People there burst into tears at my words, and I was astonished. One of them, a young Protestant man, got up and said, ‘I don’t belong to this place, because my forefathers arrived here and hurt you.’ A Catholic answered him in Gaelic: ‘You are welcome here.’ That was an insane moment in my life: To arrive as a Jew in a foreign country and, thanks to the experience of our people and our core prophetic values like loving the stranger, to be able to help in some small way two groups who fought each other for so many years.”
Although what the professor refers to as cross-cutting ties may be the driving force of a peace process, they are not enough. “A strong mediator is also needed,” Gopin emphasizes. “But his emergence is thanks to those ties. When Kennedy and Mitchell saw the bonds between people [in Ireland], they decided to strengthen them in order to arrive at a solution. Mitchell himself told me that one time in a conversation in his kitchen.
“It was all about building from the ground up, which in the end leads to negotiations – that are very complicated – about security and cooperation. All the elements are needed, but the foundation for negotiations is provided by a broad, supportive public: religious, secular, educated, uneducated, men and women. But even then the process could have collapsed,” he continues, “because the IRA was tough and extreme, and so were the Protestants. So a strong mediator is needed who strives for cooperation, who is also ready to underwrite the process and who holds people’s toes to the fire so they don’t escape.
“In a strange way, Trump has succeeded in doing something like that now with [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, despite what looks like Netanyahu’s desire for an eternal war. In this instance, too, Trump’s determined mediation came after he discerned very broad support among the public for the move.”
Gopin himself seems less impressed by Israelis’ fierce opposition to Netanyahu: “Instead of shouting about how Netanyahu has to go, it would be preferable for the peace movement to invest energy in something positive. When you mount opposition to someone, it strengthens him, positions him as more important than he really is. Peace-building is a process that intertwines three things: hope, imagination and a focus on the future. It activates a completely different region of the brain than what is involved in resistance and struggle.”
At this point, the scholar mentions a relatively new field in brain research known as “prospection science”: the ability of the human imagination to consider and evaluate possible future scenarios and alternative paths. “What has been discovered is that the default network in the brain – a large neural network that is active when a person is at rest – is responsible for planning future moves, even planning things like how and when I will brush my teeth. It was also found that healthy people constantly plan ahead, while people who are depressed or anxious are more engaged with the present or the past. We need to plan – it’s an important human ability.”
So we need to devote a few minutes a day to planning, to thinking ahead?
“No. We do it all the time, throughout the day. What’s important is to plan a future in a complex, rational way. To consider all the future possibilities, both opportunities and dangers. Take Israel as an example. It was founded pragmatically – the planning-ahead aspect was very impressive. Within 20 years it became a nuclear power. But the planning wasn’t comprehensive enough, because those involved in it didn’t think about those who were already here. The first Zionists had a blind spot – namely, the Arab population. The prevailing conception was that the Arabs would simply disappear. That was an irrational fantasy, which is the worst form of planning for the future. And now look at the results.”
Is there a chance to be extricated from this?
“The situation between Israel and the Palestinians is far worse than what existed in Northern Ireland, but it recalls what happened in 1948. Gaza was completely destroyed. A compassionate approach toward the people who were defeated can achieve a great deal. I visit Judea and Samaria very frequently. People there are afraid to leave their home at night, because they don’t know when a military patrol or settlers will show up. They are also afraid of a Nakba, of being expelled from the West Bank. So they are very interested in cooperating with Israel.”
Their situation doesn’t fill them with hate?
“They are also consumed with hate, obviously. But so are the Israelis. That’s understandable. We mustn’t forget for a moment the horror of the events of October 7. But the Palestinians seek cooperation, and there are many like that among the Israelis as well. One of the most beautiful expressions in the Talmud, which could have prevented the whole tragedy, is: ‘Respect him and suspect him.’ A combination of mistrust and respect is a good basis for creating true cooperation between adversaries. And if that is done by thousands of people, then ultimately it reaches the politicians, including very nationalist, right-wing politicians, as long as they are not invested in destruction.”
What do you suggest for those who seek peace in Israel?
“The most important thing at the moment is to build ties between Palestinians and Israelis. To forge friendships, cross-cutting ties with Palestinians who are close to you. Even in Haifa, in Nazareth, in Jerusalem. To forge one tie at a time, with a heart that is admittedly broken, that has no trust, that is suspicious – but that is also open, is also respectful.”
You mention connections between communities, and the important place religion has in bringing them about. But in Judaism there appears to be a strong emphasis on separation, such as in various kashrut laws, which are intended to prevent people from drawing close or forming interfaith relations.
“There were people like Philo of Alexandria and many rabbis after him who saw kashrut as part of a spiritual tradition that is related to discipline, to overcoming instinctual desires, to not harming animals. You can look at these laws in all kinds of ways. In the Middle Ages the relations between Jews and Christians were poor. The Christians promulgated laws against Jews, and that led to Jews also promulgating similar laws, or overemphasizing laws of separation like tzitzit [ceremonial garments worn by Orthodox men], kashrut or wine.
“But during periods in which there were good relations, those laws were less centralized. Judaism is elastic; there are different approaches among arbiters of halakha [traditional religious law] according to the relations they had with their neighbors. In the Bible, too, we constantly see changes in relationships with neighboring peoples. There were periods of tough wars and periods when alliances were formed.
“So it’s true that there is belief in a separate people, with its own sacred religion, but you must remember that the law that is cited most frequently in the Bible relates to the attitude toward the stranger. Love for the stranger and concern for him is mentioned 176 times, whereas laws relating to diet and kashrut are mentioned about 100 times – and tzitzit just twice.
“In other words,” Gopin sums up, “the separatist line, which does indeed exist, is not the only one that exists in Judaism. The argument of contemporary rabbis, among them [the late U.K. Chief Rabbi] Jonathan Sacks, is that pluralism is preferable to universalism: I am unique and you are unique, and both of us are building a relationship that goes above and beyond the boundary that exists between us and that will always exist.”
Prof. Gopin knows quite a few Jews and Arabs who have succeeded in doing that. Indeed, he wrote a book about Jewish and Arab peace activists, titled “Bridges Across an Impossible Divide: The Inner Lives of Arab and Jewish Peacemakers” (2012). His voice breaks when the name of such an activist, Vivian Silver, who was murdered on October 7, comes up in the conversation. “She devoted 30 or 40 years of her life to building bridges between Gazans and Israelis, and her body was identified only weeks later. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands more people like Vivian, who built small bridges. Now they are destroyed, and people are depressed because they feel that all their work has gone down the drain.
“But history is not linear,” he continues. “There are ups and downs, and if we continue to work on bold ideas like peace or freedom or human rights, they can be realized in the long run, as history is showing us. Human rights are a fantasy, after all, and we have made it more of a reality than it was 300 years ago. Peace also sounds like a fantasy, but it’s possible to draw closer to it, one person at a time. We are like tiny ants: if a lot of people do it, it has great strength.”
Do you really think that peace is possible here, after the massacre, the starvation, the destruction?
“I am convinced that it’s possible, because we see time and again that civilizations that murdered each other over the centuries are today so close that it’s hard to understand what they were fighting over. There is no reason to think that Jews and Muslims are different. Jews and Muslims existed together in a better and closer way than did Jews and Christians in Europe, not to mention Protestants and Catholics.
“There are people who are very hurt, and that makes it very difficult to build trust. But habits can be changed, as long as the change is built on a strong foundation of physical security, economic security and social ties of recognition, forgiveness and repentance. What upsets the extremists most is the ties created between communities. It’s the same everywhere.
“That’s why Hamas attacked people in kibbutzim who tried to build bridges: They were the biggest threat to its conception of a pure Islamic caliphate. There is also a Jewish parallel, a conception that holds that security will be achieved only if all the Arabs are expelled or killed. But that philosophy has been vanquished time and again throughout history by coexistence.”
In closing, Gopin notes that “even Abraham made an agreement with the Philistines. “I myself was somewhat surprised when I read that not long ago in the Book of Genesis, but it’s there. He signed a military and economic agreement with [Philistine king] Abimelech and with Phicol, commander of his army. And then, as it’s written – you can check – he lived in the land of the Philistines, in Gaza, ‘many days.’ The agreement held.”
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