For the first time in a long time, there have been signs of hope in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians. There’s been a temporary cessation in Gaza of rocket attacks on Israel, and a truce between the various Palestinian groups. Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has, in his words, reached out the hand of peace, offering to reduce checkpoints and release frozen funds, which would have immediate humanitarian benefits. Small steps, perhaps, but surely in the right direction.

Why now? Perhaps because both sides have realised the full cost of the terrible events this summer in Gaza and Lebanon, which took such a toll on all sides, and achieved so little for any.

They said of the late Chief Rabbi Hertz that he never despaired of a peaceful solution to any problem, once every other alternative had been exhausted.

Sometimes exhaustion achieves what the best laid plans of politicians fail to achieve.

Last week my wife and I hosted a group of young Israelis and Palestinians who’ve been working for the past three years on a peace initiative based on just that principle.

It’s a group with no famous names, no high profile, no exalted vision. It’s based on the premise that sometimes ordinary men and women caught up in a conflict can become a force for coexistence, simply because they’ve seen too much tragedy, and they want to create a life for themselves and a future for their children.

Each of them has seen friends or family injured or killed in the conflict; yet each of them knows that you don’t have to love one another to live together with a minimum of violence and grief.

They’ve passed through their anger and come out the other side, chastened, bereaved, yet deeply committed to peace.

The Bible tells the story of Cain and Abel: the first children, the first murder, the first fratricide. And it contains a line in the original Hebrew that’s impossible to translate. Literally it says: “And Cain said to his brother Abel. And it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.”

Cain said, but it doesn’t say what he said. The fractured syntax of that sentence tells us that communication broke down. And that when words end, violence begins. That’s why, in this willingness of young Israelis and Palestinians to keep talking through the pain, I found a signal of hope.

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