Isabel Infantes/Reuters

Protesters demonstrate in support of Palestinians, at Oxford University, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Oxford, England, May 23, 2024.

Israel’s sense of international isolation is deepening as its war against Hamas in Gaza drags on.

Protests erupted around the world after an Israeli strike in Rafah ignited a fire that killed dozens of displaced Palestinians. The International Court of Justice, already weighing South Africa’s genocide allegation against Israel, had ordered Israel to limit its offensive there.

Spain, Norway, and Ireland unilaterally recognized a Palestinian state.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at The Hague is seeking the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the starvation of Palestinian civilians.

And the United States, the Jewish state’s closest ally, is calling on Israel to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas and set out a day-after plan for the Gaza Strip. On Friday, President Joe Biden challenged both Israel and Hamas to accept the latest proposal, which is creating sharp divisions inside the Israeli Cabinet.

“We are slowly becoming outcasts, and that is a very difficult feeling,” says Amit Schwartz, a left-leaning tech employee who works in Tel Aviv.

For young liberal Israelis like Mr. Schwartz, the war has triggered a crisis of belonging, of sorts. While the Hamas-led massacre Oct. 7 led many across the political spectrum to harden their views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these young liberals say the subsequent stream of accusations against Israel has created for them a sense of abandonment, even betrayal.

Israel’s plight is misunderstood, they say, the global isolation unwarranted.

“I really disagree with the opinion that we are committing genocide,” Mr. Schwartz says, adding that many in the West are “disconnected from reality.”

“I feel frustration that there is such misunderstanding about the situation here,” he says. “Islamic extremists are trying to take over, and Israel is fighting this.” 

Mike Blake/Reuters

Law enforcement officers deployed to the University of California, Irvine and demonstrators face off, after protesters against the war in Gaza surrounded the physical sciences lecture hall, in Irvine, California, May 15, 2024.

Growing up with social media has enabled young liberal Israelis to feel like citizens of the world. They identified with sweeping global movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter; they rooted for LGBTQ+ rights, protested capitalist greed, traveled the world, and made friends with like-minded people abroad.

Then came the horrors of Oct. 7. Many around the world expressed sympathy with Israel, but attention in some quarters pivoted almost immediately to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, caught in the path of Israel’s retaliation against Hamas. As the civilian death toll soared into the tens of thousands, so did expressions of rage against Israel, including on university campuses.

The global backlash isn’t unfamiliar to older Israelis, and indeed Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government is parlaying the criticism into growing political support. But it has shaken many in younger age groups who see friends abroad identify with the Palestinian cause without, they say, showing empathy for them or even trying to understand the complexities of the war.

“When I suffer, it doesn’t count”

“I am truly sorry for any innocent people in Gaza that are suffering or who were killed,” says Daniela Yoeli, a Ph.D. student of computational neuroscience at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “But the war in Gaza is justified, because Israel is obliged to provide safety to its citizens.”

The Israeli army has sought to minimize civilian casualties, even at the cost of soldiers’ lives, she says, arguing that Hamas bears a lot of the blame for using the civilians as human shields.

Ms. Yoeli, who says she no longer feels safe following Oct. 7, says she has identified over the years with global progressive causes such as LGBTQ+ and women’s rights and animal welfare.

“I cared about all their suffering,” she says. “But when I’m in danger, and when I suffer, it doesn’t count. ... And when I say I, I mean me, my people, and my friends and everyone here in Israel.”

Dr. Ofir Sheffer, of the Kaye Academic College of Education in Beer Sheba, researches the lives of young Israelis and their civic participation. She says progressive millennials are among those who took to the streets last year to protest against the right-wing government’s proposed judicial overhaul.

Ammar Awad/Reuters

Supporters of bereaved family members and the families of hostages held in Gaza demonstrate against the government in a "Day of Disruption" outside the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem, May 20, 2024.

“They see the judicial reform and now the October war as a clash between liberalism and traditionalism, the old world and the new,” she says. “Many of them are in reserve duty fighting for what they perceive as a war for a more liberal Middle East and a more progressive world. They don’t understand why the liberal world is not standing with them.”

Many young Israelis have moved to the right since the start of the war and hardened their views of Palestinians, she says. But those on the left still hold their liberal values. When they see the destruction and the devastation in Gaza, they feel a huge amount of “dissonance,” she says.

“Within Israel, they go to the anti-government protests,” she adds. “But on Twitter, they fight the European trolls and defend their country.”

Evenings on social media

Ori Zehngut, an engineering master’s student at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, says the harrowing images from Gaza are “being taken out of context,” and blames anti-Israel and antisemitic forces for inflaming sentiment.

The war, he says, was inevitable after Oct. 7. “Maybe we could have managed it differently,” he says. “But ... we would have anyway had difficult images from Gaza.”

Mr. Zehngut, who identifies as a centrist, served in the reserves for four months with his artillery unit on the Lebanese border at the start of the war. These days, after studies and work, he spends many of his evenings on social media, to “counter the huge amount of anti-Israel spin that exists out there.”

Amid the global criticism of Israel, meanwhile, support for Mr. Netanyahu and his hard-right coalition partners, who portray the dispute over the war in “us-versus-antisemitic-them” terms, has increased, according to a poll last week.

The global criticism “gives glue to the coalition,” says Dr. Yonatan Freeman, an international relations specialist at Hebrew University, who dismisses talk of Israeli isolation as just a “perception” generated by the loud “megaphone” of social media.

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives for a meeting of his Likud party's parliamentary faction at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, May 20, 2024.

Nevertheless, the isolation feels real to Israelis like Yotam, a Tel Aviv resident in his late 30s who works for a local tech firm and has been connecting with people through social media since he was a teenager.

He identified more with liberal-thinking friends in the U.S. and Europe than with his Sabbath-observing Orthodox Israeli neighbor, says Yotam, who asked to withhold his full name, in a phone interview.

“They had me to talk to”

His Northern California friends identify with the Palestinians and have not bothered to inquire about him or his opinions of the war, he says, leaving him “feeling a little betrayed” and “very alone.”

“I understand why they chose [the Palestinian] side,” he says, because as a “left-wing Jewish person” he, too, always roots for the weaker side.

But he says he expected his friends to at least try to dig a little deeper, to understand the complexity of the situation. “They had me to talk to, to ask questions to,” he says. “But they passed.”

Yotam has not let go of his left-wing convictions.

“We have to stop the war in Gaza; I still think we must talk about a Palestinian state,” he says. “We must destroy Hamas, of course, but not how we are doing now.”

He hopes global opinion will change, but Israelis like him will have to work for it, Yotam says.

“We will have to make a correction here in Israel,” he says. “That is why I go to protest twice a week, because ... if we don’t show the world that there are very many forces within Israel that still fight for this place and for its moral equality, this will be our end.”

In a highly anticipated hearing, Dr. Anthony Fauci today testified before a House panel that largely centered on who is most responsible for the loss of trust in public health officials. 

This marked the first time that Dr. Fauci, the veteran director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has appeared before Congress since retiring in 2022 after a half-century career in public health. 

In many ways, Dr. Fauci became the face of the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, he became perhaps one of the most polarizing figures of the greatest public health crisis in a century: a hero to supporters and a villain to critics. His previous appearances before Congress therefore became flashpoints, particularly those involving GOP Sen. Rand Paul. 

This panel, led by two doctors – one Republican, one Democrat – has arguably established greater credibility than other congressional efforts. Known as the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, it demonstrated last month an ability to work in a serious, bipartisan way to investigate transparency and compliance concerns around U.S.-funded work on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began.

Today’s hearing was more contentious. Here are three key takeaways:

1. GOP and Democrats disagree on why trust in public health declined  

Republicans on the committee today alleged that a lack of forthrightness about what officials knew – and didn’t know – undermined faith in public health policy. They argued that understanding if and why officials were not transparent is necessary to implementing reforms needed to strengthen the country’s pandemic prevention and preparedness.

Democrats took a starkly different view. They accused their GOP colleagues of undermining trust in public health officials by attacking Dr. Fauci, whose policy recommendations such as vaccine mandates they oppose and resent.

Dr. Raul Ruiz, the panel’s top Democrat, said the committee had a choice: Fuel mistrust in public officials and the interventions they advocated amid a major crisis, or “work constructively on the forward-looking policies and solutions” needed to prevent and prepare for future public health threats.  

Both sides pointed to the need to rebuild trust in order to improve pandemic prevention and preparedness.

“What should have been a 9/11 moment for this country was turned into a political nightmare,” said GOP Chair Brad Wenstrup. “We need to do better.”

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup, chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, with Rep. Raul Ruiz (left), the committee's ranking Democrat, listens to testimony by Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, at the Capitol in Washington, June 3, 2024.

2. Virus “gain of function”: Parties still divided on whether Fauci misled Congress 

A key issue in today’s hearing was whether the U.S. had funded “gain of function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the same city where the pandemic broke out in late 2019.

Since early in the pandemic, Republicans have voiced concern about a National Institutes of Health grant, approved by Dr. Fauci’s agency, to study the potential for bat coronaviruses to jump to humans. It was awarded to a New York nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, which was to carry out the work with its partners at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

In a May 11, 2021, Senate hearing, Dr. Fauci told GOP Sen. Rand Paul that “The NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Five months later, the NIH told Congress in a letter that EcoHealth had violated the terms of the grant by not immediately reporting virus growth that exceeded a stipulated threshold. To Republicans, that virus growth sounded like the common definition of “gain of function.”

But Dr. Fauci told the committee that the appropriate definition to use, which guided his answer to Senator Paul, is found in a regulatory framework known as P3CO that was introduced in 2017. According to that more specialized definition, he said, the work did not constitute gain-of-function research.

Essentially, Democrats – who pulled no punches in grilling EcoHealth’s president last month – have sided with Dr. Fauci. Republicans maintain that the research was risky and admonished Dr. Fauci that he should have been clearer with Congress – and the public.

The backdrop is a debate over whether this line of questioning helps to expose weaknesses with NIH’s grant approval and compliance processes, enabling them to be addressed, or whether it represents a politically motivated vendetta against Dr. Fauci.

The veteran official, normally stoic, choked up when asked about the death threats he, his wife, and three daughters have received. It’s a “powerful disincentive” to young people going into public health, he added.

Dr. Fauci praised the value and integrity of the U.S. public health system, distancing himself from a top adviser who last month appeared before the committee to discuss emails that appeared to show efforts to circumvent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by conducting government business on his private email. Dr. Fauci said they didn’t work in the same building, and denied wrongdoing, calling his colleague’s conduct “unbecoming.”

Republicans, however, sought to make the case that this example of malfeasance, together with bipartisan concerns around the EcoHealth grant, illustrate the need for reform at Dr. Fauci’s former agency.

“This joint investigation has shown just how little oversight NIAID does of risky experiments involving potential pandemic pathogens,” said GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia, who leads oversight for the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over public health agencies.

3. Democrats want a serious investigation into COVID origins 

For more than a year after the pandemic shut down America, Democrats described the “lab leak” hypothesis as a conspiracy theory, witch hunt, or – at best – highly implausible. They pointed to prominent researchers who argued that scientific evidence favored a natural spillover from animals to humans. During their 2021-22 majority in Congress, Democrats largely refused GOP requests to investigate the COVID-19 origin question.

So it’s noteworthy that now Democrats on this committee are urging the GOP chair to use their remaining half a year to seriously investigate how COVID-19 began. 

They say the committee has wasted taxpayer money by focusing so narrowly on whether the EcoHealth grant may have started the pandemic – a hypothesis for which no scientific evidence has emerged. (A footnote of the Democrats’ minority staff report acknowledges, however, that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has withheld lab notebooks and other records needed for a complete analysis.) They would like to see more thorough investigation into the spillover hypothesis.

Claiming that misconduct by two public health figures – Dr. David Morens, senior adviser to Fauci, and EcoHealth president Peter Daszak – amounts to proof that the U.S.-funded research caused the pandemic is an “extreme narrative’’ and betrayal of the public trust, Dr. Ruiz said today.

He committed, however, to keeping an open mind about how the pandemic started as the committee finished out its work this year. 

“Understanding whether the novel coronavirus emerged from a lab or from nature is essential,’’ he said, “to better preventing and preparing for future public health threats and to better protecting the American people.’’

The group gathered around the small TV in an abandoned Cape Town hospital on Sunday evening crackled with nervous energy. They had squeezed into one of the old patient wards, now the bedroom of a woman named Zubeida Brown, to watch the official announcement of the results of South Africa’s May 29 election.

Already, the outcome was clear: The country’s ruling party, the African National Congress, had lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in history. But as dramatic music swelled from the TV and an election official announced the final vote tally, one woman in the room, Faghmeeda Ling, sighed. “I wonder if we will see any change now,” she says. 

Indeed, it was a moment of deep uncertainty. Although the ANC still received the highest count of any party in the race – just over 40% – the result marked a seismic shift in South Africa’s political landscape. The ANC, which led the anti-apartheid movement, came to power in the country’s first democratic elections in April 1994, and the party has never gotten less than an absolute majority of the vote in any national election since.

Now, for the first time, South Africa will be ruled by a coalition government, which many political experts consider a pivotal moment in the young democracy’s “consolidation,” or coming of age. Equally encouraging, they say, is the fact that the ANC accepted the results without a fight.

Emilio Morenatti/AP

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa speaks during the announcement of the country's election results in Johannesburg June 2, 2024.

“It’s clear that there’s not going to be massive undemocratic actions and pushback, like in many other countries” after a liberation movement loses its hold on power, says Melanie Verwoerd, a former ANC member of Parliament and political analyst. 

For Ms. Ling, like for many other South Africans, the moment was deeply symbolic – but also unsettling. She is one of the leaders of a community of about 1,000 people squatting in the rundown hospital complex because they cannot find an affordable place to live in Cape Town.

“We have had many empty promises,” from the ANC government over the years, she says. But now, after hearing the results, she felt equally unsure what the future would bring. 

Breakaway politics

There’s good reason for that. Going forward, much remains uncertain. With 159 seats in the 400-member National Assembly, the ANC will need to negotiate a coalition with one or more smaller parties to reach a majority. And its choices could not be more different. 

On the one hand is the pro-business Democratic Alliance, the ANC’s closest challenger with 87 seats, or just under 22% of the vote. Many see the DA as the most likely coalition partner, despite its reputation as a party favoring South Africa’s white minority. 

But the ANC may also choose to align itself with two parties run by its own former leaders, and whose supporters are largely its own disgruntled former voters. One is the Economic Freedom Fighters, a Marxist-leaning party run by former ANC Youth League President Julius Malema, that received just under 10% of the vote. 

But the election’s kingmaker may be the other ANC breakaway party, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), which was founded only six months ago by controversial former president Jacob Zuma. It stormed to a nearly 15% share of the vote, the third-largest tally of any party. 

“This is the ANC cannibalizing itself,” says Rekgotsofetse Chikane, a lecturer at the Wits School of Governance at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. This is in line, he says, with a “gradual decline in its ability to hold people accountable and to provide services, and a distancing between the party and citizens.” 

Dr. Chikane himself knows what it is like to lose faith in the ANC. The son of a prominent former freedom fighter, the Rev. Frank Chikane, he grew up in the party and was a member of its youth league. But he left five years ago after becoming “disenchanted” with the lack of internal change. “I still have a deep love for the organization, but I also believe you can help the ANC from the outside,” he says.

Emilio Morenatti/AP

A woman casts her ballot at a polling station during general elections in Eshowe, South Africa, May 29, 2024.

“Victory for democracy”

For many South Africans, the five years since the last presidential election have been painful ones, marked by soaring unemployment and crime rates, crumbling infrastructure, and endemic political corruption. Many put the blame for that on the current administration of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

“When Jacob Zuma was president, things were better,” explains a street vendor named Ntuthuzelo Majaza, citing lower unemployment and a stronger economy during Mr. Zuma’s tenure, which ran from 2008 to 2019. 

Thirty-year-old MK voter Benjamin Zondo, who works as a tour operator, agrees. He says these election results are a welcome “lesson” for the ANC, which he had always voted for in the past.

“It’s a new system that is coming in place, and people want new hands,” he says.

But others are wary of the comeback of Mr. Zuma, whose time in power was marred by rampant theft of state money by the president and his associates.

“There isn’t necessarily an understanding that a lot of what we’re seeing today actually originated from Zuma’s presidency,” Ms. Verwoerd, the political analyst, says. For instance, she says the regular power cuts that have hit the country hard in the last few years can be partly traced to the poor management and corruption in the state-run energy provider, Eskom, during Mr. Zuma’s tenure. 

On Saturday night, Mr. Zuma cast a dark cloud on the electoral process by alleging vote rigging and threatening “trouble” if the results announcement went ahead.

But it did anyway. And afterward, as Mr. Ramaphosa addressed the country in the shadow of his own party’s dramatic free fall, he offered a different take on the disappointing results. 

The election, he said, “represents a victory for our democracy, for our constitutional order, and for all the people of South Africa.” 

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo’s decisive win in Mexico is a milestone for women and an endorsement of the populist political project of the nation over the past six years.

But the same forces that propelled Mexico’s first female president to office could also pull her back, as she faces a polarized society, record levels of violence, concerns over democratic rollbacks, and the double standards that many women leaders around the globe must navigate once they become heads of state.

The climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor won about 60% of the vote, according to preliminary results, a wider margin than expected.

Buoyed by the popularity of her charismatic predecessor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is known popularly as AMLO, Dr. Sheinbaum will have to both continue his poverty alleviation policies to maintain support and fight to stake her own political space.

“She can stand her ground. But you can’t ignore she is arriving in the shadow of AMLO,” says Lila Abed, acting director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, in Washington, of the president-elect.

“She will face a very difficult security and economic situation, climate change, water shortages, heat waves,” she adds. “It’s going to be a very difficult country she’s going to lead.”

The president-elect has expressed blanket support for the continuation of the political agenda launched by AMLO, who leaves office with approval ratings of over 60%. She promised to build the “second floor” onto his government transformation plan, which has leaned into poverty alleviation with mixed results.

Fernando Llano/AP

People line up outside a branch of Banco Bienestar, or Welfare Bank, in Irapuato, Mexico, Feb. 29, 2024. The bank was created by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as a vehicle to get payments from his administration’s programs directly into the hands of Mexicans.

AMLO’s administration ditched a number of long-standing social programs, replacing them with his party’s own, and increased social spending overall – particularly for older adults, students, unemployed youth, and farmers. But despite the higher spending, the universal nature of his social programs has translated to the poorest Mexicans receiving less financial support than they did under previous governments.

Despite high levels of personal appeal, Mr. López Obrador also leaves office with many concerned about his heavy reliance on the military to fulfill traditionally civilian-led duties, and his pending proposals to change the constitution in ways critics find concerning for Mexico’s democratic health.

In her acceptance speech early Monday morning, Dr. Sheinbaum promised to “walk in peace and harmony to continue building a fair and more prosperous Mexico.”

Dr. Sheinbaum also gave a nod to a historic moment for women in Mexico, which saw two women as the leading candidates on the ballot.

“For the first time in 200 years of the republic, I will become the first female president of Mexico,” she said. “I do not arrive alone. We all got here, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our ancestors, our mothers, our daughters, and our granddaughters.”

Political activism

Dr. Sheinbaum, the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants, grew up in a leftist, politically active, and intellectual family. Her mother is a biochemist, and her father a chemical engineer. They protested in the brazen 1968 military massacre of student demonstrators in Mexico City.

“I was brought up with ... a belief that politics can transform the world alongside an academic and scientific mindset,” Dr. Sheinbaum said in a 2023 documentary directed by her son.

Dr. Sheinbaum first joined a political movement when she was 15 years old. It was in support of mothers searching for children who went missing at the hands of government repression. She was an active part of university student demonstrations in the late 1980s speaking out against rising tuition, arguing that education was a right – not a commodity. Her participation grew as Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held exclusive control of the government between 1929 and 2000, began to show fissures.

She has a long track record of successful public service, working as secretary of environment in the Mexico City government from 2000 to 2006, and as mayor from 2018 until just last year. She dramatically cut crime in the capital, with homicides dropping by 50% at a time when nationwide homicides have reached an all-time high. Her campaign platform builds on that success, with proposals like setting up a national intelligence unit or professionalizing the police.

Marco Ugarte/AP

Maria Hochihua Perez marches for justice for her disappeared daughter Nimbe during a protest in May in Mexico City. Most femicides go unpunished in Mexico due to its inefficient justice system that frequently dismisses reported crimes or fails to properly investigate and prosecute them.

“There are some areas where there is high potential for change,” including security and the energy sector, says Ms. Abed.

Across Latin America, from Colombia and Brazil in 2010 to Ecuador in 2017 and Argentina in 2019, high-profile leaders ushering in mentees have resulted in drastic shifts away from the continuance outgoing presidents had hoped for.

Gender politics

Expectations are high for a new kind of leadership in Mexico. “My hope for this next administration is that it’s democratic,” says Alberto Medina, a civil lawyer waiting in a line of roughly 50 people to cast his ballot in Mexico City Sunday morning. “We’re traditionally machista. [She’s] going to have ideas and perspectives that differ from past leaders” because she is a woman.

Research shows that women tend to lead differently, from links between gender parity and increased economic opportunity for a population, to a greater emphasis on cooperation when a woman is in charge.

The way Dr. Sheinbaum engages with the population and pushes her ideas will look and feel different from AMLO’s approach, especially given his populist gifts of communication and iconic traditions like a daily news conference in which he sets the political narrative. The more reserved president-elect demonstrated during the campaign that she doesn’t fire up audiences in the same way.

“There are certainly stereotypical expectations of women,” says Karolina Gilas, professor of political science at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

But, one thing that is certain, Dr. Gilas says, is that Mexico’s first woman president will be criticized for her style, whether it’s for “being soft” or trying “to ‘lead like a man.’”

Luis Cortes/Reuters

Supporters of opposition presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz react as the official preliminary results of the presidential election are announced, in Mexico City June 3, 2024.

This moment of a woman breaking the ultimate glass ceiling is a landmark, but Dr. Sheinbaum’s dearth of feminist policies has many women skeptical about how she will work to lift them up specifically.

“Just because a president comes in a woman’s body doesn’t mean she’s thinking about women,” says Dr. Gilas.

A moving ballad released by musician Vivir Quintana just days before the vote underscored this mix of hope and doubt.

Don’t forget your struggle as a woman, don’t tire of being great and being a woman;
Presidenta my friend, whoever you are, presidenta;
You need to call yourself an ally, it’s paramount they call you an ally.

Fer Velazquez paused to take a selfie outside a Mexico City polling center Sunday, holding up her inked thumb as proof she voted. She says she wonders whether democracy will be stronger or weaker after Dr. Sheinbaum’s term at a time of enormous challenge for her country. But she’s also riding a wave of enthusiasm.

“It was emotional casting my vote. I just did something historic choosing a woman,” she says. “But I’m also wary, because it feels like we’re at a crossroads.”

AP

Sudanese students, who fled to Egypt since the start of a civil war in Sudan, greet each others at a school in Cairo, April 17.

Caught in a long civil war between rival generals, the ordinary people of Sudan have begun to chart their own path to a peaceful democracy. Last week, a broad array of citizens and civil leaders gathered in neighboring Ethiopia to set a model of inclusivity for their diverse country bordering the Red Sea in the Horn of Africa.

They included representatives from every state and large delegations of women and people displaced by the war. Called Tagadum, based on the Arabic word for “progress,” the gathering also included political parties, military factions, trade unions, and professional organizations.

Their road map to civilian rule, adopted after four days of dialogue, has familiar elements. It calls for a cease-fire, protection of civilians, delivery of humanitarian aid, and a return of the military to its barracks. Yet the sharper tools in Tagadum’s tool kit are mental.

Members start with humility and a commitment to democratic equality. “The conference did not detail how the conference would be held so as not to separate others,” Abdalla Hamdok, chairman of the assembly, said in his remarks. Sudan’s last civilian prime minister, Mr. Hamdok was deposed in a 2021 coup by the generals now warring against each other.

“Let us sit together ... to stop the war and restore the democratic civil order,” he stated.

The visionary framework that this civilian assembly seeks to sign with both warring factions rests on other values, too. It espouses reconciliation and justice through postconflict truth-telling. It rejects ethnic hatred in favor of freedom of religion and respect for individuality and cultural diversity. And it emphasizes the role that women bring to restoring societies torn by conflict.

Most of all, it does not regard the rebellious generals as enemies but as partners in peace who are willing to serve elected civilian leaders.

“The norms that uphold democratic values are an extremely important part of a healthy system of civil-military relations,” noted a 2021 study in the Texas National Security Review. The study found that a soldier’s honor in serving a nation is a greater adhesive in the military than material incentives. In predominantly Arab societies like Sudan and in many African cultures, honor is rooted in respect for others, integrity, and compassion.

Civilians bear the brunt of war, yet often is it they who are the agents of healing and democratic renewal. In Haiti, for example, a citizen-led coalition wrote the blueprint on how to guide a fledgling civilian-led transitional council in the gang-ruled country.

In Sudan, neither coups nor civil war has dampened a popular demand for democracy. In their pursuit of peace, citizens are showing that the weapons of war are not equal to civic values that unite people with an enduring identity.