In November 2023, shortly after, shortly after Hamas attacked Israel and Israel launched a full-out war in Gaza, NPR published a story that asked a handful of Jewish Israelis and Palestinians to share their innermost thoughts. In the midst of a war that had just begun, these individuals spoke of how they were wrestling with how to maintain empathy and compassion for the other side.
Hamas-led militants launched an attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 more, according to Israeli authorities. The resulting war in Gaza led to the deaths of more than 70,000 Palestinians inside the enclave, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
On Oct. 10, 2025, a ceasefire went into effect between Israel and Hamas, mediated by the U.S., Qatar, Egypt and Turkey. Both sides have since accused the other of violating the terms of that ceasefire — and flareups of violence have continued.
After all that has happened over these last two years, NPR reconnected with a few of the subjects from the original story to gauge their outlook today.
The possibility of peace
When asked, Oded Adomi Leshem, a political psychologist who directs the International Hub for Hope Research at Hebrew University, says he believes peace between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis is possible. But he doesn't think that's quite the right question to focus on.
"We don't need to ask if [peace is] possible or impossible," he says. "We need to ask if it's desirable or not. And if it's desirable, then it becomes possible."
Leshem's group measures this perceived desirability for peace, which they say has been steadily decreasing among Jewish Israelis since 2019. For Palestinians, it's fluctuated over the same interval. But Leshem says that on average, both groups do want peace.
"The majority of Israelis, also the majority of Palestinians — think peace is impossible, think it is problematic … but still find it desirable," says Leshem.
One of those people who desire peace is Yousef Bashir. When he was a boy growing up in Gaza, his father taught him to look for the humanity in everyone — even the Israeli soldiers who entered the enclave and took over and occupied his family's home in 2000.
"I saw my dad insisting that we should not allow them to turn us into hateful, vengeful people, and I think that is his greatest gift," he told NPR two years ago.
Bashir has lived in the U.S. since 2004, a couple years after a soldier fired a bullet into his spine that nearly paralyzed him. But Gaza continues to live deep inside him.
"Everybody has a country," he said in an interview this fall. "I have a country in my heart and my thoughts and in my dreams."
The losses borne by the Palestinian people over these last two years have tested his father's words "like never before," Bashir says. "But they did not fade away."
Bashir's mother and brother still live in Gaza. They stayed throughout the war, even as the bombs fell and tanks and artillery fired upon their house.
Meanwhile, Bashir is now a parent himself. His second child, a baby girl, was born in October.
"It's been a very special experience to be a father," he says. "It really touched me in so many ways."
Even as he raises his kids in Washington, D.C., however, the scenes of this most recent war in Gaza haunt him. "Most of the casualties have been children in Gaza," he says quietly. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says the majority of people who have been killed in the enclave have been women and children.
"The last two years didn't just change me," says Bashir. "I'm different today because I carry grief and purpose at the same time, and both feel permanent."
That purpose is to help create a better world for his fellow Palestinians. Bashir created the Saif Foundation to do just that, by raising funds to provide food, water and clothing to the people of Gaza.
He believes that improving life for Palestinians is achievable if people can find ways to understand one another. He's already begun teaching this philosophy to his young son.
"I tell him what languages will you speak," Bashir says. "And he says 'Arabic, English, Spanish,' and I add Hebrew because it's important to understand the language and the culture of the people we are at conflict with."
That understanding, Bashir believes, may be a path toward peace — and of loving those who may never love you in return.
Searching for a common language
The way Leshem, the political psychologist, sees it, having empathy for those who are suffering is important. But he's not sure that's enough to achieve change on its own. Rather, he believes that what may be required, at least as a first step, is a collective imagining of how beautiful life would be without conflict.
Conjuring that image, he says softly, "peace will bring the end … the total end of violence and bloodshed."
Dr. Lina Qasem Hassan finds it hard to imagine that peace may be possible. "Really, it's not easy in these days," she says.
Qasem Hassan is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and the chair of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, a group that advocates for the health of Jews and Palestinians alike.
The first time NPR spoke with her, days after the war began, she had traveled to a hotel near the Dead Sea to help treat Jewish evacuees who had survived the Hamas attack. But shortly thereafter, Qasem Hassan shared recently, the war threw her into a deep depression.
"I kept watching the news and crying over the horrible scenes coming from Gaza," she says, "especially as a mother, seeing those children, hungry, homeless, losing their families, injured and also dying. That felt to me too much."
The weight of those images — along with extended family members of hers who were killed in Gaza — crushed Qasem Hassan. Her 9-year-old daughter saw that her mom was in crisis and asked if they could go out somewhere to help ease Qasem Hassan's suffering. That small gesture by her daughter brought her back and gave her the hope and strength to act.
"It's impossible to stay silent in front of all the atrocities we are seeing," she says. "So I feel it's my duty to speak up."
Qasem Hassan has spoken up within Israel and beyond about the crimes she believes that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people. (Israel's leadership says it is targeting Hamas militants and trying to minimize civilian casualties, accusing militants of hiding among them.)
Sometimes her words have gotten her into trouble, like when she was cut off mid-interview on Israeli television after speaking about the devastation of the health care system in Gaza. Other times, she says, when speaking to patients or neighbors, what she has to say just falls on deaf ears.
"It's a different language," she says. "You can't even speak to them because they are so far away. I feel that they are losing a very important thing in their soul."
Qasem Hassan has lived in Israel her whole life. But today she feels on the outside of a society that she once belonged to. Peace, to her, seems very far away.
A starstruck vision of the future
Among those envisioning an alternative reality is Maoz Inon. "Peace is inevitable," he says. "It's going to happen and it's going to happen soon."
Inon lives in Binyamina, a town in northern Israel. His parents once lived in Netiv HaAsara, a collective agricultural settlement in the south of the country, close to the border with Gaza. Then, on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas fighters entered their community and burned them and their home.
When Inon first spoke with NPR shortly afterward, he said he felt as if he were swimming through an ocean of grief. "When you are swimming in the ocean, you don't see the end," he said. "You don't see the bottom. That's how big it is — more than you can understand."
With time, he underwent a transformation, aided by two powerful visions. The first, which came in a dream, involved tears washing away the bloodshed on all sides and bringing healing. And the second contained a celestial star that appeared to him as peace incarnate. He says the star told him, "You just need to follow me." The star infused Inon with a powerful sense that peace is real and within reach, should we choose it.
"I went through an unbelievable spiritual growth," Inon shared in an interview this fall. "And I'm not the same person I was." He discovered — what he calls — radical forgiveness.
"I forgive everyone," he says. "I forgive Hamas who murdered my parents. I forgive the Israeli government for betraying and not standing up to the promise to keep them safe and secure. I don't hate anyone. There is no anger within me."
Inon is still filled with sadness and pain, but he says he's channeling it into an unrelenting activism for peace.
"It's too late for thousands, including my parents," he says. "But it's not too late for millions more that still live in Palestine and in Israel. And maybe some of us won't be able to forgive. Maybe for some of us, we'll still be hateful. But we need to pay the price — the difficult price of reconciliation now in order that the next generation would live the life they deserve."
Copyright 2025 NPR
