Writers campaign for Israel-Palestine peace

Celebrated Israeli novelist David Grossman is working with Boualem Sansal, an award-winning Algerian writer who came under harsh criticism for visiting Jerusalem earlier this year, to launch a writers' drive for peace which calls among other things for a halt to the "inhuman and immoral" situation in Israel.

Supported by some of international literature's most respected names, including Claudio Magris, Antonio Lobo Antunes and Liao Yiwu, the authors will present their appeal at the closing session of the World Forum for Democracy on Thursday. Their document states that there is still a "possible solution" for the Israel-Palestine conflict, where "Israel has maintained the Palestinians under occupation for more than 45 years", but "but maybe not for long". The writers are therefore pushing for a Palestinian state to be created next to Israel, both with secure borders, "on the basis of painful compromises for both parties … such as the abandonment of settlements or their exchange for land, the renouncement of the right of return of the 1948 refugees, the sharing of Jerusalem".

Sansal, whose books are banned in Algeria but who has won prizes for his work in France and took the German book trade peace prize last year, met Grossman, whose son, Uri, was killed in 2006 when a missile struck his tank in southern Lebanon, in May when he travelled to Jerusalem for an international literary festival. The threats and criticism he received for going to Israel led him to the idea of gathering writers to speak up for peace in the world. "Before I went to Jerusalem I came in for a lot of harassment [but] I did not let it intimidate me," Sansal told the Guardian. "I decided to go to Jerusalem anyway, to mobilise people. Our enemies are organised, but we are not. Our way of fighting is literature, it's meeting, it's dialogue. We need to fight with these things."

The appeal from the authors, who include Daniel Pennac, Tomi Ungerer and Peter Esterhazy, also states that it is "urgent" that the international community "intervenes firmly to bring the Iranian nuclear programme under control", warning that Iran is accelerating "its nuclear programme to achieve its hegemonic pretensions on a political, military and religious level, and Arab countries in the region might be driven to follow a similar path".

In Syria, meanwhile, "the Arab Spring has resulted in a crisis of exceptional severity, which threatens the country itself and its people's very existence". "Al-Assad's regime is methodically killing his people. Sixteen months – and almost 30,000 deaths – after the start of the Syrian revolution, he continues his crimes in complete tranquillity, encouraged firstly by Iran, Russia and China, and secondly by the hesitations and procrastination of the international community. Human consciousness will long remember the aftermath of this tragedy," they write.

Laying out their belief that "peace is a common and irreplaceable good and its defence is a common obligation", the authors are urging "all writers in the world" to join them. "Together, we can influence decision makers and public opinion and thereby also the course of events, ensuring that the values of peace are strengthened throughout the world. Our methods in this fight are literature, debate and vigilance," they say.

Sansal believes hundreds of writers will join the cause over the coming months. "In the long term I think we can change things. In the short term not really – it needs three centuries to change things. But if there are writers from many countries who are part of this, then I think that can help. And in the context of today, the young are disoriented. They don't know why they take an extremist route. We must give them a sense of something else, which is not violent, not about hate. I think if there are enough of us, we can make a change, and we are growing every day," he said. "We are lots of writers gathering together and fighting for democracy. Often in this world we are not direct, but we want to be frank, and sincere, to say things clearly … We will make plans, go to London, New York, Moscow, carry the good word, become more numerous, and talk, talk, talk, talk. That can help, I think. In two or three years, that can help."

The authors' next move will be to set up working groups to look at how best to address the most urgent situations. Sansal expects criticism for what the group is saying about Israel, but believes that "the great majority" of Israelis and Palestinians believe peace will be achieved through the creation of two states, diverging only on how this can be achieved. "The role of the writers would focus on this: trying to create a dynamic which promotes dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian society, help them to meet, to debate, to know each other, to take the heat out of the debate, to change, will be our role in the affair."

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is one of the literary organisations helping to spread the appeal around the world. "It's an unbelievably brave thing to do," said director Nick Barley of Grossman and Sansal's project. "Boualem met David Grossman and they realised that together, someone from Israel and someone from an Arab country could form a really powerful voice. They decided they had an obligation [to do it]."

Barley said that "an Israeli writer calling for the creation of a Palestinian state is going to get into a lot of trouble at home, so Grossman's taking a huge personal risk standing up and saying this, as is Boualem Sansal by going to Israel and collaborating with an Israeli writer. This is something very special. They're going to the highest diplomatic places, and want to get the support of other writers, because they believe writers have a voice and can make a difference."

Sansal said it would be "important to see who joins us, and who refuses to join us". But Samir El-youssef, a Palestinian writer, said he would not be signing up. "As a Palestinian writer who for the last two decades believed in upholding the hope for peace, especially when despair and cynicism are prevalent, I should applaud this proposal and indeed scurry to join its initiators. Sadly I shan't," he said. "Rather than maintaining hope for peace, I see here nothing but a further attempt to renew the old failed approach to deal with the Arabic and Islamic world. The implication that the Iranians are more belligerent then the Israelis is a pathetic lie; just review the history of the Middle East in the last three decades and tell me how many countries have Iran invaded and how many Israel?"

El-youssef said there was a "desperate need for any kind of proposal or writers' gathering to renew the hope for peace in the Middle East and many other places", but that "such hope cannot be upheld at this stage by organising an intellectual orgy against Iran, but rather by encouraging honest confrontation of the politics of one's own country and one's own beliefs, especially regarding others".