What lies ahead for Israel, Gaza and Germany after the Gaza war – Haaretz conference in Berlin
People gather at Haaretz Conference at the Berliner Festspiele, Berlin, Germany, 6 November 2025
Linda Dayan reports in Haaretz on 7 November 2025:
At the Haaretz conference in Berlin on Thursday, titled, “Fault Lines and Futures: Israel, Gaza and Germany in Wartime and After,” speakers convened to discuss this moment in time for Israel, the Palestinian territories, Germany and the world – and what a post-Gaza war region will look like.
The daylong conference – Haaretz’s first in Germany – was held in partnership with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and livestreamed to audiences around the world.
It featured addresses from and panel conversations with Dr. Franziska Brantner, co-chair of the Green party in Germany; Knesset Member Ayman Odeh, chairman of the Hadash Ta’al party; Ehud Olmert, former Israeli prime minister; Dr. Nasser al-Kidwa, former Palestinian minister of foreign affairs, and prominent Israeli author Zeruya Shalev, among other Israeli, Palestinian, German and international speakers. Also partnering in the conference were Campact, NIF Germany, Brot fur die welt, Candid Foundation, taz Panter Foundation, Goethe-Institute, KigA, Givat Haviva, and B8 of Hope.
Matthias Pees, director of the Berliner Festspiele, which hosted the conference in Berlin, highlighted his organization’s rejection of boycotts and commitment to “keeping spaces for discussion open and deepening them,” viewing such spaces as crucial for “the basis for our future coexistence and viability of humanity.”
What comes next?
One of the key issues it addressed was the “day after” the war in Gaza. Olmert and Kidwa discussed their vision for Israeli-Palestinian peace – as well as the difficulties in achieving it, with Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn.
Nasser al-Kidwa and Ehud Olmert greet each other on stage during the Haaretz Conference in Berlin on 6 November 2025
“People are not in the mood to talk peace” after the war, said Kidwa. “They are in the mood to take revenge.” He also expressed his hope that once the war “really ends,” the interest in a political two-state solution will be reignited, “which is the only viable solution to the conflict between both sides.” He added, “We cannot afford not to be hopeful,” stating that “Despite all the problems and all the atrocities that happened… I think there’s a sine qua non for moving ahead.” Palestinians require real hope and honesty from the leadership to do so, he said.
Benn asked whether Palestinian leader and prisoner Marwan Barghouti, convicted of ordering and overseeing attacks that killed five Israeli civilians, should be freed. Olmert said that the question is insulting to Palestinians. “You really think that amongst all of the Palestinian people, there is no one capable of leading them other than someone who is sitting [in jail] for 24 years, and you don’t know who he is, and what his capacity is?” Olmert wondered. He added that Israelis do not need to provide Palestinians with a leader, because “they are smart enough to do that themselves.”
Olmert also fiercely condemned settler violence in the West Bank – and the state mechanisms that allow it to continue. “What is being done today in the territories, daily, are crimes of the worst possible kind, that I, as an Israeli and as a Jew, am ashamed of them,” he said. These acts cannot be waved away as the actions of a small minority, because “It is done by thousands and supported by tens of thousands, and the municipal leaders, who are enormously influential in the community of Jews the group in the territories, are completely in support of them,” Olmert said. The crimes committed daily by these settlers – arson, home invasion, destruction of property, even murder – and the blind eye turned by Israeli security forces, who often detain Palestinians instead, “disgusting and obnoxious, and unforgettable and unforgivable.”
He continued, “If we believe that we can continue to be forever occupy of millions of people, denying them their rights of self-determination, denying them the right of freedom of movement in where they live, and searching them day and night in all kinds of manners – this is not going to bring us any closer to the kind of life which we deserve to have and that they deserve to have.”
MK Ayman Odeh, chairman of the Hadash–Ta’al party, said in his address that “Every hostage returned [from Gaza] is a victory. Every child and family who survived Gaza is a victory. But that is not the victory Netanyahu wants,” adding, “What has been achieved and at what price? Palestinian cities have been erased from the map. Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza were killed, including 20,000 children. Hundreds of thousands were left without homes. This is not a victory. This is devastation.”
MK Ayman Odeh, Chairman of Hadash-Ta’al, at the Haaretz Conference in Berlin on 6 November 2025
Odeh also urged Germany to recognize a Palestinian state, saying that the only request he had of U.S. President Donald Trump when he came to address Israel’s Knesset in October was to recognize a Palestinian state. “So I ask you too: Germany – recognize Palestine! Recognize that there are two people in our shared homeland, both with the right to self-determination,” he cried out, to great applause.
“You cannot destroy your neighbor without destroying yourself. You cannot build your future on the graves of children,” he said. “We are two people with one destiny, whether we like it or not. There is no military solution, there never was.” He added, “The only way forward is through justice, peace and Jewish-Arab partnership towards a political solution,” he said. “Both peoples have the right to live in our shared homeland in freedom and equality. But this requires moral courage.”
International human rights lawyer Michael Sfard spoke about the need for postwar accountability and justice. Israel has “disproportionately and discriminately killed tens of thousands of civilians, in ways that cannot be seen as compatible with the laws of war,” he said. “We have provided an atmosphere of incitement toward crimes, to crimes against humanity, and to genocide.”
But justice will not be achieved through the Israeli justice system, which has yet to indict anyone for the crimes of October 7. “The justice system is not failing – it is doing exactly what the government wants it to do when it comes to Palestinians,” he said, adding that international tribunals such as the International Criminal Court are available, even though it too has its own troubles, due to American sanctions. “Injustice doesn’t evaporate,” he said. “It might take time, but we’ll see all those cases where a soldier who took a selfie of himself bombing some civilian object being issued arrest warrants in this or that country. Eventually, if there won’t be a serious system to provide justice for the victims, we will not be able to heal,” Sfard added.
When it comes to building peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Palestinian citizens of Israel must have a crucial role, said Dr. Nasreen Haddad Haj Yahya, Co-CEO of NAS Research & Consulting and Vice President of NIF Israel. “When we talk about the ways that the State of Israel treats us, I think this can show how our democracy is a fake democracy,” Yahya said. “We as Palestinians, who speak two languages, that know the two cultures, that understand the pain of our families in Gaza and in the West Bank, but at the same time also understand the pain that the Jewish people… we can be the bridge between the Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza and to the Jewish people that live in Israel and also in the diaspora.”
Part of bridging that gap is driving encounters between Israeli and Palestinian children, to reduce the fear they have of each other and show them that they have more in common than they might have thought, said Michal Sella, CEO of Givat Haviva. But a challenge to that is the politicians that are supposed to serve as their role models. “We expect kids in school to be polite, and they’re not supposed to say horrible things. They’re not supposed to be racist. They’re not supposed to be violent.” However, according to Sella, the behavior of Israeli ministers on television are a bad influence. “It’s weird because they look at their teachers and they’re like, ‘if I want to be successful like a minister, I can be racist and violent, right?’ So what are you telling them?”
The special relationship
Speakers and panelists also discussed Germany’s response to the war in Gaza and its special relationship with Israel, forged in the aftermath of the Holocaust. They also noted how difficult it is to talk about the realities of the war in Gaza and the Israeli government, as the far right’s power grows and as antisemitism proliferates in the country.
Dr. Ofer Waldman, Heinrich Böll Stiftung Head of Office in Tel Aviv, said in conversation with Esther Solomon, Editor-in-Chief of Haaretz English, that Germany must engage in a discussion about Israel, and with Israel, “to understand its past and present.” He added that German politics are facing “an unprecedented and unacceptable diversion,” because, as he sees it, two lessons can be learned from Israel and Germany’s shared past. “One is solidarity with the Jewish people and the state of Israel,” he said. “But just as strong is commitment to human rights.”
Dr. Franziska Brantner, Chairwoman and Member of Parliament for “BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN,” said that Germany “didn’t see the suffering of Palestinians enough,” adding that the national debate on October 7 went so poorly that it led to growing antisemitism, making Jews in the country even more unsafe. “We have to really strongly fight antisemitism, which is emerging in every corner in Germany again, and at the same time, we really have to make sure that we also fight for the right of Palestinians to live freely.”
Zakariyya Meissner, a Palestinian-German educator and dialogue facilitator, said that he believes in the German special relationship with Jewish life, and by extension Israel, but “I would wish that Germany would understand this obligation as a universal one towards, or not in competition with, universal human rights, with universal human dignity.” He added, “Germany has committed at least two genocides. We need to get better at talking about this. By not being able to talk about it, we make everything worse.”
Dervis Hizarci, Author and Chairman of Kreuzberg Initiative against Antisemitism – KIgA e.V., discussed how Germany missed its chance to be a guiding force during the war. “In the recent Israel-Gaza conflict, Germany had a historic opportunity to be a mediator, a moral voice,” he said. “But instead of stepping forward with confidence in our lessons from history, we step back. I assume this has something to do with uncertainty and fear. “He added, “Our commitment to Israel, to its security, its right to exist and the safety of its people, is unwavering, yet this commitment extends further. The moral awareness that emerged after the Shoah binds us not only to Israel, but also to the Palestinians. History has shown that the birth of one state left lasting consequences for another, and we bear the responsibility to both, since both peoples share this land.”
Eroding press freedom
Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken, in his opening address, noted the deterioration of press freedom around the globe. In Gaza, hundreds of journalists have been killed, and in Israel, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is intensifying pressure on journalists, “taking measures that are “Methodically imposed by authoritarian regimes across the globe” – including in its delegitimization campaign against Haaretz, he said.
Speakers also discussed the challenges of reporting on Gaza when foreign journalists have not been allowed entry to the Strip, and all information that comes out of the area is scrutinized and assumed to be propaganda of one side or the other.
Christian Meier, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Near East and North East Africa correspondent, discussed his experience joining activists in the West Bank trying to recover sheep stolen by settlers, and his subsequent detention by Israeli forces. “International journalists are rarely detained… but it isn’t an isolated issue,” he said. “We see all kinds of threats against journalists – I think if I’m trying to make sense of the whole episode, I think police weren’t aware that I’m a journalist who is accredited in Israel,” and instead thought he was an activist, like the many others who have been detained and sometimes deported. “There are all kinds of pushback in the West Bank, which also makes our work as journalists much more difficult,” he added. “We see a blurring of boundaries between the settlers and police and the army.”
Haaretz journalist Hagar Shezaf said that what Meier experienced is a part of an attempt to criminalize activism in the illegitimate detention of activists. She also mentioned the importance of acknowledging Gazan journalists who have been killed in the war. Shezaf said that “even before October 7, reporting about the West Bank is obviously something that is just not met with a lot of interest from Israeli society.” But since then, “It’s all becoming much more complicated, because sentiment, anger and revenge in Israeli society were very, very predominant.”
She said that despite this, the sources of the information on the abuse at the Sde Teiman detention facility were soldiers. “The situation there was so horrendous, and there were people there who saw it for what it was, even though it was very close after October 7, and even though Israelis were told that everyone there is a terrorist, which is not true… even back [in July 2024], people had some sort of judgment to see that what was happening there was wrong.”
Who is accountable?
Some of the most heated discussions from the conference came from the question of how much responsibility Israeli society as a whole bears for the atrocities in Gaza, as artists and other outspoken Israeli critics of the war face boycotts abroad because of their nationality.
Maja Sojref, Executive Director of New Israel Fund in Germany, said that between Israel and the international community, “The relations have broken in all the wrong places. I don’t think breaking off youth exchanges, or excluding queer organizations and feminist organizations from Israel is the right way forward.” The New Israel Fund is interested in viewing Israel as a democratic, safe and peaceful state. “We think the only way to do that is to support civil society organizations that have been out in the street protesting, defending human rights in the West Bank, gathering humanitarian aid trucks and protecting them from attacks of settlers that were going to be delivered to Gaza.”
In response to a question about his statement that if he were a foreign director, he may not have screened his movie at the Jerusalem Film Festival, Israeli director Nadav Lapid said that his sales company asked about sending the film to Russia, which he decided not to do. After the audience applauded, he said, “You should clap for directors who don’t send their films to Israel, to the Jerusalem Film Festival.” Lapid said that Israeli artists, before they complain of the boycott, should ask, “What have we done during these two years? To what extent have Israeli artists been active in the struggle to stop this horror, this genocide?”
Katja Lucker, Managing Director of Initiative Musik gGmbH, argued against his point. “Is it naive to think that we try to see both sides, that we try to bring people together?” She said that despite it all, there should still be conversations between people. She also noted that Berlin’s club scene was silent, and in many cases unempathetic, about their peers who were murdered at the Nova festival. “Is it so naive that we have empathy with all the victims, and that we still want to come together and maybe have a naive dialogue? What else do we have in the end?”
Lapid responded, “The problem is that the European Union couldn’t execute the slightest sanction after two years, and after dozens of years of occupation. Directors of artistic events found themselves having to replace the importance of their political leaders,” he said. Lucker interjected, arguing that the directors of film festivals boycotting Israel “are not politicians.”
Lapid said, “We know that the only one paying for the sins of Israeli society is a filmmaker, a choreographer and a jazz drummer is a kind of absurdity, but this absurdity comes first from the impunity of Israel,” he said. “For me, it’s unthinkable that Iran and Russia were facing sanctions, and Israel can do whatever it wants without risking anything.”
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