Peace is both a moral imperative and a subject of endless political dispute, nowhere more so than in the wars on Ukraine and on Gaza. How to deliver peace, let alone a just peace, in both conflicts, is more than challenging. It cannot be considered without addressing the question of power, especially the power of political elites in Russia and in Israel (and in the latter’s international supporters), which have vested interests in continuing hostilities or in enforcing an imposed peace on their own terms. There is a deep chasm between President Putin’s goal of a victor’s peace which would disempower and dismember Ukraine and President Zelensky’s vision of a just and sustainable peace, which ceasefire negotiations have come nowhere near to resolving. Likewise Prime Minister Netanyahu seeks an even more brutal victor’s peace, that would re-subjugate Gaza at best and expel its Palestinian inhabitants at worst. Yet neither Israel nor Gaza and the West Bank will be secure unless there is a political settlement which recognises the rights of Palestinians, whether in two separate states or within a single democratic framework. How to resist and speak peace to power is the central question in both conflicts.