SAKHNIN, Israel—With hunger worsening and genocide continuing in Gaza, this past weekend saw the largest joint Jewish-Arab/Palestinian demonstration inside Israel since the start of the war.
It was initiated by the Peace Partnership, a grassroots coalition of over 60 Jewish and Palestinian organizations established in December 2023. Formed in response to Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, the partnership calls for an immediate end to violence and a just political resolution.
Operating across Israel/Palestine, the Peace Partnership organizes joint demonstrations, peace conferences, public education campaigns, and community outreach efforts. It advocates five core principles: ending the war, an “all for all” hostage/prisoner exchange, a sustainable political solution, an end to racist and political persecution, and full civil and national equality for all.
“This demonstration is a step in the right direction,” organizers said at the start of the march, announcing that they will continue the struggle until the war ends. The event was co-sponsored by the Supreme Monitoring Committee for Arab Affairs in Israel.
It was also attended by Knesset members from the Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) coalition, including Ayman Odeh, Ahmed Tibi, Aida Touma-Suleiman, and Ofer Cassif. The leaders of Hadash, the Communist Party of Israel, and a number of other political forces in Arab-Israeli society were on stage, as well.
During the demonstration, Hadash MK Touma-Suleiman, who is a member of the Communist Party, condemned the assault on Gaza, saying, “Enough with the starvation in Gaza, enough with the war of annihilation!”
Rally organizers said police tried to postpone or prevent the demonstration by making illegal demands. Officers also confiscated flags, posters, and banners on buses before participants arrived at the demonstration.
More than 10,000 Arabs and Jews from across the country participated in the march and rally, led by Hussein Halagh and Ronit Haimov of the Peace Partnership. The demonstration began with a march from the square of the Al-Nur Mosque toward the city hall square, where a ceremony was held in which speeches were made, among others, by the chairman of the Arab Society Monitoring Committee, Mohammad Barakeh, and the mayor of the city of Sakhnin, Mazen Ghnaim. Numerous police forces were present at the scene.
In his speech, Ghnaim called for an end to the war and famine in Gaza: “We say this clearly: We and our people in Gaza are one people. We demand equality and full civil rights, no more wars.”
The mayor, who was previously a member of the Knesset for the United Arab List, added that he wants a new Middle East. “We want education, employment, health, and to raise our children and grandchildren in the best way possible,” he said. According to him, Arab society “wants to be partners with those who recognize our rights.”
Barakah, the chairman of the Monitoring Committee, said in his speech that the protesters “are here to say a clear word against the extermination.” He asked, “Why are the police mobilizing enormous forces for a legitimate and legal demonstration? This is an attempt to instill terror, but you will not scare us or silence the expression of our identity and belonging.
“We demand that the State of Palestine be declared a sovereign state under occupation. This is Palestinian land—in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza—and the occupation must leave,” stressed Barakeh.
Additional speeches called for an end to the war and for cooperation between Arabs and Jews who oppose government policy. Among the speakers were Dr. Anat Matar, a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University, and Ella Keidar, a conscientious objector from Tel Aviv.
Matar is a member of Academics for Equality, an organization with around a thousand students and faculty members in its ranks who seek to promote leftist values in universities and colleges in diverse fields. She said:
“Since October 2023, we have organized on various campuses in protest against Israel’s murderous attack on Gaza, calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of the hostages. But although we saw from the beginning the dimensions of the killing and destruction, the obliteration of cities and farmland, the abuse of prisoners in detention camps and prisons, and although we quickly realized that war crimes were becoming genocide, none of us anticipated such dimensions of destruction, of limitless cruelty, of starvation to death, of targeted shooting at people trying to get a little food, the bombing of medical teams and rescue teams, and the meticulous and diabolical planning of concentration camps and exile.”
Matar said the scale of the horror makes it hard to imagine how Gaza will rise from the ruins. She said Israelis are living “in a very sick society, possessed by fascism, ignorance, and hatred.” She also criticized the international community, which as for almost two years “been formulating condemnations but not doing anything concrete to stop the destruction.”
But, Matar emphasized, “there are huge demonstrations around the world, labor unions are imposing sanctions on the production and shipment of weapons to Israel, the British Medical Association has suspended ties with the Israeli Medical Association, universities are boycotting academic institutions here…. Everything like that gives a little hope.”
Keidar, who is a leader of the Communist Youth of Israel in Tel Aviv, told the thousands gathered: “More and more people are taking to the streets and becoming involved in leftist activity against the regime, all of this alongside the demonstration today, the largest demonstration against the extermination. We have come, many thousands, Arabs and Jews, to cry out together for an end to this horror. This is what brings me hope. We congratulate the Peace Partnership, the organizers of the demonstration, and all the demonstrators who came here because together we will succeed in ending the extermination and defeating the fascist regime—only together.”
The Communist Party, known by its Hebrew initials as Maki, and Hadash also congratulated the organizers and participants of the demonstration. “This is a powerful cry against the war of extermination, hunger, and barbarity of this period,” the two groups said in a statement. “Thank you to the Peace Partnership for the initiative, to the Monitoring Committee, and to the heads of the Arab authorities. This was the largest demonstration since the outbreak of the war and this is a political turning point in the struggle.”
According to Maki and Hadash, the demonstration showed “the steadfast fighting spirit of the Arab public, which remains committed to the fundamental principle of our struggle: Arab-Jewish unity and cooperation for justice, freedom, and peace. Every time they thought the common struggle was dying out, we showed that the opposite was true. Justice will prevail, no matter how brutality intensifies.”
In the 24 hours before Trump envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Israel Thursday, at least 69 starving people were killed and dozens more wounded while seeking food aid in Gaza. Babies in the blockaded Strip continue to die of acute malnutrition and a severe shortage of milk. According to estimates, approximately 900,000 children are currently suffering from hunger.
The official Gaza death toll since Oct. 7, 2023, passed 60,000 on Tuesday, with the bulk of those victims being women and children; an additional 143,965 are listed as having been injured. These are not final figures, as many bodies are still under the rubble or scattered in the streets, and medical and rescue teams are unable to reach them.
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