As director of an Israeli nongovernmental organization, Maya Savir made her first trip to South Africa and Rwanda to work on malnutrition prevention in 2014. Over the following years, "knowledge flowed in both directions: we offered agricultural and technological expertise, while seeking to learn, from students and teachers, janitors and principals, farmers and agronomists, what it means to reconcile and to distill the action of reconciliation down into its fundamental components...to discover what they came to understand—and what we still fail to comprehend.”
On October 27, elections will be held in Israel. For a conflict that seems intractable, this might open the door for a new approach. There are people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who are actively laying the groundwork for that opportunity, and have spent years planning for what could happen next.
Maya Savir, daughter of Oslo Accords architect Uri Savir, is one of these people. She is not afraid to speak out for reconciliation in 2026, because through years of fieldwork, research, and deep listening to people who have achieved reconciliation in other countries, she knows that every conflict comes to an end. Her new book, On Reconciliation, charts a viable path forward for Israelis, Palestinians, and all of us.