Since 2023 the Israel/Palestine conflict has seen extraordinary, sustained attacks, leading to catastrophic civilian losses. 

Israel has suffered around 2,000 civilian deaths.  The death toll on Gaza’s civilians is officially around 30 times that, with around 56–60,000 dead with, additionally, nearly 1,000 more Palestinian civilians dead in the West Bank.  More than 500 Palestinian civilians have been shot dead by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) attending food aid distribution zones.  The numbers of dead under the rubble is unknown but local estimates put this figure at 250,000. 

Aid workers across Gaza, including UN staff, Palestinian Red Crescent personnel, paramedics, and international NGOs, continue to suffer extremely high casualty rates, marking this conflict as exceptionally hazardous for humanitarian action.  In this latest round of killing, 1,513 humanitarian workers (1,402 medics and 111 civil defence staff) have been killed.

On 23 March 2025, Israeli soldiers fired on a convoy of marked ambulances, a fire truck, and a UN vehicle in Rafah, killing 15 first responders (Red Crescent paramedics, civil defence workers, and a UNRWA staffer).  The Israeli Defence Forces than crushed the ambulances and buried the aid workers, and their vehicles, in a mass grave.  Killing and burying the bodies of aid workers and their vehicles was a highly disturbing practice for combat zones involving humanitarian workers.  Forensic teams from Palestinian Civil Defence and international observers documented and exhumed the vehicles and bodies, and the IDF acknowledged the killings and later said that burial of the bodies was done “to preserve dignity and protect them from animals”.  However, the decision to bury the victims and their vehicles has been widely criticised and seen as evidence of disrespect or concealment.  The UN rights office labels Gaza “the most dangerous place for humanitarians ever”.  

Independent bodies, including the UN and top human rights groups, have presented well-documented evidence that Israeli forces have repeatedly targeted civilians, aid workers, and food delivery mechanisms in Gaza. These actions have led to mass deaths and severe famine. Many legal experts argue that these actions amount to war crimes and possibly genocide, which Israel denies.  With millions facing starvation, a near-collapsed health system and a targeted policy of killing civilians and humanitarian aid workers, Gaza faces near-total displacement with acute humanitarian collapse.

Why We Hurt Each Other 

Humans hurt each other for many reasons; fear, power, greed, belief in superiority, the need to belong to a group, lack of evolution.  Often, the capacity to commit violence against another comes down to ‘dehumanisation’.  The Nazis were infamous for this.  When people stop seeing others as fully human, it's easier to justify and inflict violence, cruelty, or neglect.

But, aside from narcissistic entitlement, sometimes one group targets another because “hurt people hurt people”.  Trauma reduces empathy, because when victims are so consumed by their own suffering, they cannot feel others’.   Additionally, when we’re hurting inside of ourselves and empathy for others is reduced, this can facilitate ‘dehumanisation’.  Individuals, groups, even entire nations can carry pain, be it historical, emotional or existential.  Crucially, without healing, that pain can become insufferable and we can tend to want to ‘push it out’ of ourselves, by projecting our suffering onto and against others. 

How it Happens: Cycles of Harm

Traumatised communities tend to see everyone else as a threat, an ‘us versus them’ mentality, which tends to justify preemptive violence: “We must strike first or we’ll be destroyed again.”  This is true whether you're an Israeli child raised with stories of the Holocaust and pogroms, or a Palestinian child who has lived through bombings, checkpoints, and exile.  Once embedded, trauma narrates the future, in that it dictates what people fear, how they interpret others’ actions, and what they believe is justifiable.

Violence often begets more violence.  When a community is harmed (through war, injustice, occupation, etc.), that trauma is internalised as persecution and the resulting belief in that community becomes ‘retribution or our annihilation’.  There becomes an almost fanatical need to fight back, a human survival instinct that is beyond political; it becomes self-defence against the eradication of a people. 

These instincts get passed down through intergenerational trauma (epigenetic) and stories, identity and fear.  A new generation, still feeling that pain, reacts, sometimes violently, and the cycle repeats.  This has been seen in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Rwanda, the Balkans, and the north of Ireland.  Breaking the cycle requires both sides acknowledging the harm done, not denying it, and being open to a constructive conversation about ways forward.

Interrupting the Cycle of Violence

Disrupting cycles of violence is possible. Parts of the healing process in the north of Ireland Peace Process were recognising historical trauma, creating shared spaces and trauma healing. 

Recognising historical trauma meant that communities needed to first name what happened.  In Palestine and Israel, initiatives like ‘Zochrot’ or ‘Breaking the Silence’ work to help uncover suppressed narratives.  Collective recognition of past acts and occurrences is essential for a truth platform (an ‘agreed upon norm’) to emerge.  It’s only when this platform is present, that a new dialogue can begin.

When this truth platform is present, it’s possible to create shared spaces where opposing groups meet under structured, humanising conditions (like shared storytelling), that can change perceptions. These programs work especially well with youth, like the ‘Seeds of Peace’ camp that brings together Israelis, Palestinians, and others from conflict zones.  The Truth and Reconciliation platform in northern Ireland was a forum that respected both communities’ views and sought to hear individual stories of people caught up in the conflict.  It created a ‘listening zone’ for people who had been silenced, which helped people to find solace after their trauma.  The idea was taken from the peace process in South Africa, where it also helped heal the trauma from that conflict.

For perpetrators of violence, these programs also recognised that violence is not just political, it’s also emotional. Unhealed trauma often leads to ‘acting out’. Programs that combine mental health and reconciliation, such as Rwanda’s village reconciliation courts (Gacaca), show how trauma processing can prevent relapse into violence.

Empathy

Empathy is the turning point in any conflict because it disrupts dehumanisation.  It doesn’t require agreement, just the recognition of the other’s pain and personhood.  When people hear each other’s lived experiences (e.g. a parent who lost a child, or a survivor of violence), it becomes harder to sustain hate.  

There are powerful examples of this in action, like the Israeli and Palestinian families in the Parents Circle, Families Forum (PCFF), who’ve lost loved ones.  The group arose from both communities, of parents stricken by grief, recognising their commonality with parents from the other community having more in common with them than what keeps them apart.  They grieve together and work together for peace, reaching 30,000 people a year in community groups, schools and universities. Their work is emotionally wrenching but radically transformative, and is radical empathy in action.

In PCFF’s 20-year evaluation, via the American Friends branch, it was found that over 7,000 dialogue meetings had been held, reaching more than 250,000 Israeli and Palestinian participants.  Empathy can be taught. Results from those interactions found that 76% felt “increased trust in peace possibilities”, 81% reported a better perception of “the other”, 65% experienced heightened empathy, and 75% wanted to learn more about the other side.  These outcomes illustrate how personal stories, when combined with structured dialogue, can move communities toward empathy and reconciliation, even in deeply polarised environments.

Formula for Healing After Conflict

Healing from violence is long, slow and non-linear.  But Peace Processes have worked in the past; there are proven frameworks for securing peace, even in seemingly intransigent conflicts.  

They all have a common formula: Truth-telling (as in South Africa’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission), justice mechanisms (like war crimes trials, reparations or freeing prisoners), and an ongoing recognition of the collective suffering experienced and mourned (memorials, days of remembrance, tribunals into state violence).

Truth Telling

The Truth & Reconciliation (South Africa) post-apartheid process, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, focused not just on punishment, but on truth-telling. Victims and perpetrators came together in shared spaces and spoke publicly about their experiences. It wasn’t a perfect process, but it provided a ‘listening space’ so that victims and perpetrators were heard, allowing acknowledgement, national mourning and moving forward.  This model also formed a key part of the successful northern Ireland Peace Process.

Justice Mechanisms

Compared to traditional punitive justice models, trauma-informed community circles using the ‘Restorative Justice’ model have been proven to work in a variety of conflict resolution settings.

The Restorative Justice Circles (Canada, U.S., N.Z.), with their roots in the indigenous models for healing in post-conflict situations, emphasise repair, not revenge. The victim, offender, and community come together to acknowledge the harm done, to identify the needs of those involved and to agree on a path forward.  It’s been used for everything from petty crime to reconciliation in schools and post-conflict areas.  In New Zealand, Māori communities fought for restorative justice and land return, reclaiming indigenous ways of resolving conflict rooted in relationship, not control.

Ongoing Recognition of the Collective Suffering

In the north of Ireland, to support the Good Friday Agreement and in response to ongoing calls for an inquiry into the ‘Bloody Sunday’ 1972 shooting of 14 unarmed civilians by the British Army, the Saville Inquiry was established in 1998.  The Inquiry took 12 years to reach its findings, cost the British taxpayer £195 million and heard testimony from 900 witnesses, including British soldiers, civilians, journalists and experts.  The Inquiry found all 14 were unarmed and had been killed without justification or warning.

The UK Prime Minister issued a landmark public state apology, which was met with emotional scenes in Ireland, and although no soldiers were jailed for the murders, the Inquiry helped build trust between the islands.

Peace

Peace is hard to achieve but it is worth the work.  Generations of trauma have been inflicted in the Middle East in the last two years and there is growing international alarm at the horrors inflicted there.

The International Criminal Court, last year, issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, alleging they bear “criminal responsibility” for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including using starvation as a method of warfare and targeting civilians in Gaza.

Aside from more international focus on what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank, what is needed is truth-telling that validates the experiences of all sides, an understanding of how fear, entitlement and trauma encourage conflict, and a trauma-informed peace process.

Unhealed multi-generational trauma burrows deep into the psyche of a community, saying, ‘this is all we’ve ever known, and is all we will ever know’.  But when communities begin to name and heal from trauma, hope happens, and with it comes the possibility of peace.

Blessings to all on the path.