Lama Abu Arqoub and Yonatan Zeigen, speaking at an event organised in Geneva, November 2024, by NGO Beit of Hope. (Claude Trolliet / Beit of Hope)

🕊️RESISTING FOR PEACE. Lama Abu Arqoub, a Palestinian from Hebron, and Yonatan Zeigen, an Israeli from Tel Aviv, both lost loved ones in the 7 October attack and the war in Gaza that ensued. Both also believe that peace is the only future worth fighting for. The two peace activists were in Geneva last month at the invitation of Beit of Hope, a Swiss association bringing Palestinians and Israelis together in pursuit of a peaceful future.

Turning pain into power. Zeigen’s mother was killed by Hamas. “I feel responsible for using this tragedy to create something new, to spare others from paying this price,” he says.

Abu Arqoub has also lost many dear to her, killed by Israeli soldiers, but rather than waiting for Benjamin Netanyahu to be tried one day, she prefers to focus on the future “Would imprisoning war criminals bring back mothers’ lost children? For me, justice is forward-looking and not being stuck in the past,” she says.

‘Not in my name’. Both activists share something else: they challenge the narrative that would pit against each other as enemies.

Zeigen: “We’ve been betrayed, not just on 7 October but before that, because (the Israeli leadership) are corrupt and hold on to their positions to serve their own interests over national interests…For a long time, this made me feel like a stranger in my own country…Now, it motivates me to gain political and social influence to change the system.”

Abu Arqoub: “Unlike the Israeli government, Hamas isn’t democratically elected and didn’t act on 7 October with the consent of the Palestinian majority. I’m ashamed of what was done that day.”

🔗Read their full story on Geneva Solutions

A DARING PROPOSAL. The war raging on hasn’t stopped some from beginning to think already about the future. International law professor Riccardo Bocco and Nigel Robers, a former member of the UN secretary-general’s advisory board for the UN Peace Building Fund, discreetly published last month a daring proposal to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian seven-decade-old conflict: creating a federal union, “one that preserves their distinct identities and self-rule, while sharing essential common functions like defence, foreign relations, monetary policy and the management of the economy and water/the environment”.

The idea isn’t new yet far from popular. The current context makes it hard to imagine Israelis and Palestinians would agree to share their governance. But is it really more far-fetched than the two-state solution? The authors argue that the Oslo accords failed to deliver and have become virtually impossible to implement. After all, whatever the solution, the two peoples' fates seem inextricably intertwined.

🤑The head of WWF Switzerland earns 200,000 francs a year... Really? Is it possible to oppose the market economy that exhausts our planet's natural resources while simultaneously profiting from it through an extravagant salary? Unlikely, writes Le Temps columnist Marie-Pierre Genecand, who criticises the yawning salary gap between the heads of some Swiss NGOs, and their staff, revealed last month in an investigation by the Swiss media Bon à Savoir.

While it is understandable that competitive salaries are necessary to attract and retain skilled leaders at the helm of these organisations, Genecan argues, it is less so when confronted with the financial hardship some of the organisations are going through, in some cases leading to dismissals, and the fact that their pockets are being lined up with people’s donations. But is there a magic number?