Published: 17 December 2024
Last updated: 9 May 2025
Mika Almog, the granddaughter of former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, is determined to champion hope in an Israel fraught with despair. Despite widespread scepticism among Israelis and Palestinians about the possibility of an alternative, Almog refuses to succumb to cynicism.
“Four years after the devastating Yom Kippur War, a peace agreement was reached with Egypt,” she reflects. “History is full of unexpected turns. While the end of suffering and bereavement feels distant now, history shows us that when wars end — peace is inevitable.”
A mother of three teenagers aged 14, 17 and 19, Almog has dedicated herself to advancing the vision of coexistence her grandfather championed through working for It’s Time, an umbrella coalition of 50 peacebuilding organisations that strives to galvanise Israelis and Palestinians around a shared vision of security and self-determination. Almog is Content Director for the coalition, in which she oversees the panels, speakers, music and entertainment of their mass peace events.
When asked about the Oslo Accords her grandfather initiated, which have been widely criticised as a failure, Almog said: “Oslo was meant to be a process that would lead to peace, yet temporary arrangements such as the creation of Areas A, B and C in the West Bank that were meant to last five years have been in place for 30 years.
Four years after the Yom Kippur War, a peace agreement was reached with Egypt. History is full of unexpected turns.
Mika Almog
Comments2
Cora6 January at 08:55 am
I like the theories of Austrian peace researcher Franz Jedlicka who has examined the linkages between a widespread acceptance of violence in a country that can be identified in its legislation (does it still allow child corporal punishment, violence against women, capital punishment ..) and wars. He lists those countries in his “Culture of Violence Scale” (last updated 2023?). His question “Can countries become sustainably peaceful when already violence against children is accepted?” seems logical to me.
Cora
Ian Light17 December at 05:02 am
At the most based on the 89% approval of the atrocity barbarism attack on Israelis by Hamas on thar horrible day October 7 2023 ,10 % of Palestinians are capable of Peace with the Israelis at this time . That is in line with the Tribal War mentality over Land and Religion with bitter violent histories. It was witnessed horribly in the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990’s ,in Rwanda in 1994 and in the freeing of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971 and the Iraqi and Syrian sectarian Wars . It will take Decades but a Generations long ceasefire is possible.