Our visit to the old city of Nazareth in Israel's Lower Galilee region starts with dessert. A well-known Arab delicacy called Layali Lubnan ("Lebanese nights," in English) made of semolina pudding layered with silky whipped cream and fragrant rose and orange blossom water, which is then topped with bright green pistachios crumbs.
The dessert is one of the signature dishes at Rose Boutique Cafe, the first stop on a tour entitled Making Hope: From Vision to Reality. The excursion is part food tour, part history lesson, part concert, and part dialogue; the brainchild of longtime peace activist Maoz Inon.
Warm and welcoming, Inon has a habit of greeting everyone he meets, friend and stranger alike, by pressing his hands together in a prayer pose and bowing his head slightly. He repeats the gesture so often that by the end of the tour several participants adopted it for themselves.
In between bites of my Layali Lubnan, I listen to Inon explain what he means by the phrase "making hope."
"Hope isn't something that happens to us," he tells the group of 30 or so Israelis, mostly retirees, that joined the tour. "Hope is active. It is simple and it is collaborative. We make hope when we join together in the bold act of imagining a better future."
"And we are going to make this dream a reality by 2030," Inon declares as some participants begin to chuckle, assuming he is being facetious. "Don't worry, I'll tell you exactly how a bit later. But for now, does anyone need to pee before we continue on?" he asks.
"The best advice I was ever given for how to make this tour a success is to treat the participants as if they've all just finished potty training," he says. "There will be another bathroom stop in about five minutes." Now the group is fully laughing.
Inon has been running this particular tour since 2020, near the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, when air travel was still restricted but citizens were allowed to move around the county. Inon, together with scores of partners he has collected along the way, believes that tourism is one of the most powerful paths to coexistence.
The personal and the collective
As we begin to walk through the stony alleyways of the Old City of Nazareth, Inon recounts two stories. The first is his personal one, which he tells backwards to forwards, starting on October 7 when Hamas terrorists murdered his parents, Yakov and Bilha, burning down their home with the two of them inside of it. "For a long time," Inon says, "I told people that nothing could have ever prepared me for the death of my parents."
"But I have come to realize that isn't true," he continues as we sip freshly squeezed orange-carrot juice. "Actually, my entire life has been preparing me for this moment. For this journey that I have embarked on."
Inon describes an idyllic childhood spent on two small communities, kibbutz Nir Am in the north-western Negev and then, at the age of 14, Moshav Netiv Ha'asara, just next to the Israeli border with Gaza. As young newlyweds he and his wife went on backpacking adventures, first throughout the world, and then back in Israel. The couple dreamed of bringing the hostel culture they had encountered during their travels to underserved Palestinian communities with the idea that hospitality could be a conduit through which local populations can preserve their culture and tradition while fostering economic prosperity. In 2005, he and his wife opened the Fauzi Azar Guesthouse, the first of its kind in Nazareth.
"It will be our last stop on the tour," Inon informs the group.
Inon's personal story of tragedy and redemption is interwoven with the second one he tells, the story of Nazareth itself. This time, Inon starts at the very beginning, with the city's most famous resident – Jesus of Nazareth. Here is where, according to the New Testament, Mary was first told she would conceive the son of God through a virgin birth, also known as the Annunciation. It is also where Jesus spent his youth, where he learned carpentry from his father and where he began his public ministry, which would lead to his eventual crucifixion at the hands of the Romans.
Inon then jumps ahead a millennia or so to 1948. Unlike other Palestinian enclaves where entire communities were wiped out or chased away during the Nakba (the Arabic term for "catastrophe," what Israeli Jews call the War of Independence), Nazareth experienced a surge in growth as 25,000 refugees descended on a population of 17,000 people at the time. In the seven decades that followed, Nazareth has seen it all – expansion, urban sprawl, military rule and, in the last few years, a city overtaken by organized crime and police corruption. As proof, Inon points to the bullet ridden doors of those businesses who refused to pay the extortion fees demanded of them by mafia bosses.
"But today, Nazareth has become something else, something brand new," he tells the group, which is listening with rapt attention. "A city on the precipice of hope."
The peace entrepreneurs of Nazareth
Inon brings us to four businesses scattered throughout the Old City, though that descriptor does not do these projects justice. The people we encounter, much like Inon himself, are not so much owners as peace entrepreneurs. They have created their initiatives, many of them while holding down a second or even third job, with the specific intention of reviving this once-vibrant city.
We meet Souad Abed Zoabi, a teacher who opened Basata, an art gallery and studio, to show her students that they are capable of expressing themselves through art and creation rather than violence and destruction.
A few doors down, we speak to Zahi Greib who runs the most famous corner store in the city. When Inon is called away for a second, Greib steps in, recounting the entire history of Pope John Paul II's famous visit to Nazareth in 2000. The charming shop owner is also an expert in arak, the anise-flavored spirit he's been drinking every evening for the last 50 years. He runs workshops where participants can sample from his impressive arak collection and learn the secrets to making the best version (Hint: Start with the highest quality anise, which is found in Syria.)
We drink mint-infused lemonade with Sami Jabil, who co-founded Liwan Culture Cafe as a hub for young Palestinian artists, many of them women. Liwan Cafe regularly hosts concerts, lectures, film screenings, book readings and exhibitions featuring up-and-coming artists, but its walls are lined with giant works painted by the world-famous Palestinian artist Asim Abu Shakra. "We did this deliberately," Jabil explains. "We realized how many Palestinians didn't know Abu Shakra, despite his notoriety. We wanted to share our culture first of all with ourselves then with the outside world."
And then there is Amani Cafe, whose young owner, Amani Tattor, created the Nazareth Coffee Festival, which in 2023 brought over 8,000 people to the tiny town. Tattor is abroad at the moment, so her bright, bubbly sister, Mina, tells us about all that Amani has accomplished in four short years. Amani and Mina represent the younger generation of Nazarenes who have begun to return to the Old City.
The proprietors we met all have one thing in common – with Inon and with each other: They are determined to revitalize the old city of Nazareth by bringing back, not just tourists but residents. "We want them to have a place to talk about and to know and to make their own culture come alive," Jabil says. "And we want our initiatives to be a model for many future businesses."
"This is how hope is made," Inon adds.
As we walk from shop to shop, Inon seems to know every single person who passes by. The wave to him, pat him on the back, call out greetings in Arabic. "Maoz for mayor!" one man declares, before zipping away on his motorbike. It is clear that the love between Inon and this city is entirely mutual, that their fates are inextricably intertwined.
The Nakba Wall
As we sit down to rest from the beating midday sun, Inon brings out trays of fluffy laffa stuffed to the brim with roasted spinach and salty labneh cheese seasoned with bright red sumac. We devour our snack leaning against a partition that we soon learn is called the Nakba Wall, a canvas for public murals that commemorate not only the Nakba but other tragedies that have been etched into the collective Palestinian memory.
Over the last several years, the Nakba Wall has become the site of a game of cat and mouse between Israeli authorities and young activists who are determined to create their murals, which are constantly painted over by police forces. After October 7, the activists made a collective decision to let the wall stand empty as a symbol of Israel's erasure of Palestinian identity.
Currently, Inon tells us, the bright blue words painted along the length of the wall say "Nazareth welcomes you" in Arabic, courtesy of the municipality. Someone has spray painted the word "not" so that it now reads "Nazareth does not welcome you." and added the word "blood" in deep red letters.
Inon tells us that for a long time the Nakba Wall was not a part of his tour route. "I did not feel ready to tell someone else's story," he says. "But then I came to understand something. Something that changed my entire way of thinking."
"As long as we refuse to acknowledge each other's narrative, as long as we refuse to acknowledge each other's loss, grief, pain as well as each other's dreams and hopes, we will never ever be able to build a shared life here. We will never be able to create a cooperative society or a joint future together. We have got to start accepting each other's truths."
Inon shares a story of a tour he gave to the staff of an Israeli hospital. When Inon brought the group to the Nakba Wall, the director of the hospital promptly declared the tour was over. "Half of his employees are Palestinian citizens of Israel. Sixty percent of his patients are as well. But he wasn't willing to hear one word about the Nakba Wall."
But, like every other obstacle Inon has ever encountered, he refused to allow that event to knock him off his path. "I'm not here to convince anyone," Inon recounts. "And I am definitely not here to argue with anyone. I am only here to ask that you open your hearts and your ears to listen."
'Come join me in the future'
As promised, Inon brings us to his guest house for the last stop on our tour. On the doorsteps of Fauzi Azar he tells us that two weeks ago, they were forced to shutter, the sixth time this has happened since they opened in 2005.
"War is not good for business," he explains. "Businesses need peace to survive."
"That's so sad." someone from the group comments. "No," Inon immediately jumps in. "I don't believe in 'so sad.' You know what's sad? Learning your parents were murdered. That's sad. Business is just business. We will open another business and another one after that."
"I am not focused on the past," he tells us. "I am not even focused on the present. I am focused solely on the future."
"Come join me in the future." Inon says, opening the gate to a small and lovely courtyard. You can almost hear the laughter and guitar-strumming of the young people who have stayed here, their glasses clinking as plumes of smoke waft into the night air.
Our tour concludes in the sun-soaked common room of Fauzi Azar, named after the father of the man from whom Inon rented the property exactly twenty years ago. As we sit in a semi-circle, Inon shares more of his parents' story and lays out his six-year strategy for uniting two peoples who have been at war with each other for more than half a century.
As Inon reiterates his powerful plan for peace, my phone vibrates incessantly in my pocket. Just a few kilometers from where we are standing, Hezbollah is raining down over 200 missiles, its heaviest bombardment on northern Israel since the war began, in retaliation for Israel's targeted killing of a senior Hebollah commander. The buzzing on my phone are alerts, meant to warn residents of incoming rockets, a somber reminder that not everyone in this region is on board with Inon's radical vision for coexistence.
Then there are the tour participants themselves. Over the last four hours, they cried and laughed and hugged each other, strangers quickly becoming comrades. Still, some of them are skeptical, insisting that nothing will change until the current government is replaced. Inon refuses to get pulled into a conversation about who is the guilty party. "Why do I care who is in power," Inon argues. "I will sit down with anyone who says they want to make peace. An enemy of the past always has the potential to be a partner in the future."
The day ends with a song by Omer Moskovich, whose music has accompanied us throughout the tour. As her soulful voice fills the room, Inon openly weeps. "Sometimes I feel so sad," he says, wiping away tears. "I cry several times a day."
"But I am also the happiest I have ever been," he tells us. "Because I know how close we are. To a change. To the creation of a society that is equal and equitable. To a society of shared values. To the future."
