One survey after another brings into focus how much faith Israelis and Palestinians have lost in one another. Sixty-two percent of Israeli respondents to a poll released by the Hebrew Universityof Jerusalem in August agreed to some degree with the statement: "There are no innocent people in Gaza." Seventy-six percent of respondents who identified as Israeli Jews agreed with the statement — 42% of those said they "strongly agree."

Such surveys raise fears that the mutual alienation will endure long after the current war. 

"My biggest concern about Israel is the lack of empathy," Corey Gil-Shuster told DW. He heads the master's degree program on conflict resolution and mediation at Tel Aviv University. "People can't even have empathy for children and old people, or the sick."

In 2012, he started a YouTube channel called The Ask Project, where he tackles controversial topics. In his program, he asks viewers for questions that he then directs at members of both societies in street surveys. In one video, he asked Palestinians if they were in favor of another attack in Israel like that of October 7, 2023. In another, he asked Israelis if they were happy about the suffering of the people in Gaza.

When asked about her empathy for the elderly, the sick, and children in Gaza, a woman during a recent filming in northern Israel simply shrugged her shoulders, he said sadly. "I'm not even thinking about what the world thinks. I mean, that's a whole other issue. I'm thinking, 'What about us?'"

"We've lost our empathy for that," he added, "that concerns me."

'Almost complete dehumanization' 

Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, said he's also registered an all-time low point in the relationship between both sides. "The last two years have seen almost complete dehumanization, as the two societies have reached a point where they are unwilling to recognize the humanity of the other side."

This development also had serious implications on which compromises either side would be willing to accept to achieve peace, he told DW.

Shikaki conducts opinion polls in the Palestinian territories and is frequently involved in joint surveys with Israeli participants. His recent poll in May 2025 threw a spotlight on Palestinians' skepticism of robust peace. In Gaza, 69% of those surveyed did not believe that Israel would withdraw from the enclave if Hamas were to surrender their weapons. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, 88% shared this view.

But Shikaki also pointed out that mutual trust was not a necessary precondition for peace, but could grow from it. "If we are going to wait until Palestinians and Israelis trust each other as a means of progressing towards peace, then this will never happen."

First steps toward reconciliation?

But after decades of conflict, how might such a reconciliation process be set out? That's the question Gary Mason from Northern Ireland, pursues. With his organization Rethinking Conflict, he shares the lessons learned in the Irish peace process with partners from the Middle East. Speaking with DW, he said that in both instances, he had observed contentions over land, identity, and religion.

He added that, aside from extremists on either side, both Israelis and Palestinians wanted a lasting solution to the ongoing conflict. "If there was a ceasefire over the next four to six months within that region, and this is just a personal prediction, it could take five to 10 years to get this over the line," he told DW. "There's no instantaneous solution to incredibly intractable problems."

The conflict researcher Gil-Shuster also pointed out that many people had already resigned themselves to the situation. He suggested that political communication might help them overcome this. "The first step is a marketing campaign: 'We're all tired, we don't want to continue, this is ridiculous. People are getting killed, for what?" he told DW. "And then we keep talking about it, marketing and marketing, as if it were a product — Israel and Palestine. Keep talking about it, and give people not hope, but a vision of what it could be."

Could Trump's peace plan work?

In late September, US President Donald Trump brought momentum to the failing peace process when, joined by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he announced a 20-point peace plan for Gaza. It includes an immediate ceasefire — should both sides agree — as well as the return of all remaining hostages currently held in Gaza. Indirect talks to push through the peace plan got underway on Monday (October 6) in Egypt. An international board, chaired by Trump and co-headed by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, would oversee further measures. 

But both in Israel and in the Palestinian territories, people's faith in political leaders is low. In Israel, only a minority still reports that it's satisfied with Netanyahu's government, while President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas hardly enjoys any remaining legitimacy after failing to hold elections for nearly two decades. One of Shikaki's recent studies thus showed that 81% of respondents wanted him to resign his post.

In such a situation, Gil-Shuster argued that strong leadership was the only way out of what seemed like an intractable conflict. "You need a leader who can tell everybody, at least on your side, and sometimes on the other side, that it's okay to think differently. And I see nobody on any horizon who seems to do that."

How realistic is a two-state solution?

The Palestinian political scientist Shikaki added that initiating a credible peace process would require credible third-party actors to support it. He named the United States, as Israel's closest ally, as well as Arab states in the region as interlocutors on Palestinians' behalf.

"Based on the joint Israeli-Palestinian surveys, it is very clear that the Israelis in this case would be willing to change their mind and to show support for a two-state solution," he told DW The two-state solution is a long-standing proposal to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by creating two sovereign, independent states — Israel and Palestine.

He added that Palestinians were currently in favor of the two-state solution, but that roughly two-thirds expressed doubt over its feasibility in his surveys.

In September, France, the UK, Australia and other global powers took the largely symbolic step of recognizing Palestinian statehood. Without providing a roadmap on how to achieve it, Trump's plan at least identifies the need for a "credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood."

Israel's government vehemently rejects the notion of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state. Instead, it has recently intensified the construction of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The survey-based Peace Index by Tel Aviv University recently recorded a drop in Israeli support for a two-state solution. In April and May 2025, only 21% of Jewish Israelis still backed a two-state solution.

Reconciliation despite separation?

Even so, illegal Israeli settlements have fragmented the occupied West Bank to the point that critics warn there's hardly any contiguous territory left for a Palestinian state.

But Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement are proof that intractability need not exclude the possibility for peace and reconciliation. In Belfast, certain unionist and nationalist areas are still separated by "peace walls” with gates that are shut each evening. "They're like a comfort blanket," Gary Mason explained. "There will come a time when they will come down. But 27 years after a conflict is not a long time, because the power of memory is incredible within all those spaces."

Mason has been studying conflicts since the early 1990s — around the same time the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization were being negotiated. Back then, Mason told DW, "Northern Ireland was considered the big, intractable conflict.” Today, it's Israelis and Palestinians whose reconciliation, at least in the near future, seems more than uncertain. 

This article was translated from German.