Hiba Qasas has built common ground where formal diplomacy has stalled.

Drawing on her work convening Israeli and Palestinian leaders after October 7, Hiba argued in her recent TED talk that conciliation does not begin with empathy, but with self interest. The failure to understand this is why many peace efforts fail.

Her starting point: even when wars end and agreements are signed, violence returns within five years. From Afghanistan to the Middle East, the old peacemaking toolbox has shown its limits, but because it fails to engage with the real drivers of breakdown: power, politics, incentives, and the absence of legitimacy and trust. In a world where force is back in fashion, peace must be grounded in hard security thinking and political strategy. 

Her answer is principled pragmatism, the framework at the heart of our work at P4P, which she tested in what she describes as the hardest room of her life: convening 76 Israeli and Palestinian leaders weeks after October 7, when the war in Gaza was raging and no one trusted anyone in the room.

Empathy is not always the entry point. Self-interest is. Rather than starting with shared narratives or moral appeals, she started with what no one in the room could afford to lose: security, dignity, and the future of their children. The methodology she built, STIR, sequences self-interest, transaction, recognition, and humanity to turn mistrust into political possibility, even where power politics and fear had made progress seem impossible.

That process became Uniting for a Shared Future, today the only coalition of its kind, bringing together 550+ Israeli and Palestinian leaders working jointly, even in the midst of war, to advance a political solution and keep a political horizon alive.

“Wherever conflict rules, stir the room, until humanity rises.”