Friends,
I feel like I can finally exhale.
I’m on text chains filled with joy at the images of twenty hostages – whose stories we’ve come to know so personally – all of whom are now home at last. The emotion is raw and overwhelming.
In Gaza, for the first time in far, far too long, families are sleeping without the sound of bombs and drones overhead. Food and lifesaving medical supplies are on the way to those who need them.
The images we will see over the next few days will paint a complex picture of this moment: Israelis embracing loved ones they didn’t know if they’d see again. The pain of families whose loved ones’ remains were not returned and are still missing.
Palestinian families returning to the rubble to dig out what remains of their homes and reckon with unfathomable loss.
Amid it all, something we can all agree on: This moment should have come long ago.
It’s long been clear that strong American leadership – and firm pressure on both sides – was the only way to end this war and get hostages home.
For many of us, the relief washing over is mixed with disbelief at how fast things changed once the US President decided to lead, and that the president’s name was Donald Trump.
The framework now being implemented is designed not just to stop the fighting, but to pave a path to ending this conflict for good.
There is no guarantee of success. Firm American pressure must remain – on both sides and on regional partners – to see this through.
The challenges are clear: Disarming and permanently sidelining Hamas, stabilizing and rebuilding Gaza, and establishing safe, stable, peaceful governance in Gaza. Preventing extremist forces in Israel from seizing any pretext to restart this war or to pursue annexation of the West Bank, where unchecked violence and displacement continue.
To pave the path to peace will demand imagination, courage, leadership, patience and empathy. This will take time. It will not happen overnight.
It’s a path that leads to a future that looks nothing like the past: A future of partnership and shared prosperity, where the states of Israel and Palestine live side by side, secure in their dignity and humanity. A Middle East working together to defeat extremism, nurture opportunity and give the next generation something to believe in.
The other path requires far less of us: Only inertia, cynicism and rage.
It leads back to bloodshed and tears. Revenge, grievance and fear. Endless arguments over who suffered more, whose God promised what, whose pain justifies another round of killing.
As should be clear by now, our choice is simple: Either everyone wins – or everyone loses.
Danger, of course, lurks on all fronts – abroad and at home.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terror groups and extremists will try to sabotage progress. Iran will look for openings to exploit.
Trump remains who he always has been, a threat to American democracy and global stability. Israel will never sign a lasting peace as long as Netanyahu and his ethnonationalist coalition remain in office.
But I refuse to focus only on the obstacles. History rarely opens doors of opportunity, and we stand before one now. This moment requires change and leadership on all fronts.
Israelis head to the polls next year. They must choose leaders who see the opportunity before them: To secure their borders, normalize their place in the region and restore Israel’s moral standing in the world.
There must be an honest debate about the path to real security – is it the path of Sparta and living by the sword, or of lasting peace and finally building the new Middle East?
Palestinians, too, need renewal. New leadership, new elections, real reform. A process of state-building that unites Gaza and the West Bank and ends Hamas’s reprehensible rule. Mahmoud Abbas should make way for a new generation ready to finish the work he began.
The Arab world must continue to step forward – not just with vague pledges but genuine regional partnership that includes both Israel and Palestine. We don’t need endless, stalled talks between Israelis and Palestinians, or more walls and weapons; we need a broader regional vision and process – a true “23-state solution” built on a shared future.
The United States will play an indispensable role in pressing this forward. All of us who care about Israel, Palestine and peace must join together to press our leaders on this. We must find a new path in our politics – an end to the blame games and hardened thinking that have poisoned this debate for too long.
So many are so tired, so disillusioned, so angry, so cynical. Understandably so. But on this “day after,” history is giving us another chance – maybe a last chance – to choose hope over hate, courage over fear and a commitment to the future rather than the past.
To all of those who have spent decades in this struggle: Let’s give this another try. Let’s not squander this chance. The path we choose will define not only the future of Israelis and Palestinians there, but the kind of world we’ll build for all of us.
Let’s choose a better future, because we cannot afford to repeat the past.
Yours in hope,
Jeremy Ben-Ami
President, J Street
