The Elysee Palace reacted in a statement on Monday: “With him dies a humanist voice that carried the hope of peace and gave all its strength to make it happen.”
French-Israeli Ofer Bronchtein, a tireless advocate for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, passed away on Monday in Paris, as announced by the International Peace Forum. “With him dies a humanist voice that carried the hope of peace and gave all its strength to make it happen,” the Elysee Palace responded in a statement.
As a co-founder with his Palestinian friend Anis al Qaq and president of the International Peace Forum based in Paris, Ofer Bronchtein “for decades was this bridge between two peoples.” In 2011, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had given him a Palestinian passport, “thus honoring a promise from (his predecessor) Yasser Arafat,” as the Elysee Palace recalls.
Born on March 27, 1957, in Beer-Sheva, in southern Israel, he lived between Israel and France. The Peace Forum highlights that the activist notably “defied in the 1980s a ban by the Israeli government that refused any contact with representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).”
The funeral will take place on Wednesday at Pere-Lachaise Cemetery. He later participated, in the 1990s, in the Oslo peace process, working with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before Rabin was assassinated by an ultranationalist religious Jew, as the Forum continues.
“Since then, Ofer Bronchtein had made the recognition of a Palestinian state the fight of his life, succeeding in convincing President Emmanuel Macron to take this step at the UN in 2025,” on behalf of France, it points out. The head of state had entrusted him with “a mission to open paths of reconciliation between Israeli and Palestinian civil societies,” it also recalls.
“While the terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, committed by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas plunged the region into chaos, he was one of those who wanted to see the recognition of the state of Palestine by France come true, affirmed by the president on September 22, 2025, at the United Nations tribune,” said the Elysee Palace. Ofer Bronchtein’s funeral will take place on Wednesday at the Pere-Lachaise cemetery.
