Peace is possible. Here is the proof.

In September 1978, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin spent thirteen days at Camp David, the US presidential retreat, negotiating face to face. More than once one of them was ready to leave; each time Jimmy Carter talked them back to the table. They signed the Camp David Accords on 17 September 1978, and a peace treaty in Washington on 26 March 1979.

Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from the Sinai, which it had held since 1967, completing the withdrawal in April 1982. Egypt recognised Israel. Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.

Mozambique’s civil war between the FRELIMO government and the RENAMO rebels cost around a million lives, most of them through hunger as fighting cut off food. Talks began in July 1990, mediated not by a superpower but by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic association, together with a Mozambican archbishop and an Italian government envoy.

The General Peace Accords were signed in Rome on 4 October 1992. A UN mission, ONUMOZ, oversaw the demobilisation of more than 76,000 soldiers from both sides and the collection of about 155,000 weapons. Mozambique held its first multiparty elections in October 1994.

Three decades of violence known as the Troubles killed 3,532 people, more than half of them civilians. Talks chaired by the US envoy George Mitchell brought together the British and Irish governments and eight Northern Irish parties. The Agreement was signed on Good Friday, 10 April 1998.

On 22 May 1998 it was put to the people in both parts of Ireland. It was approved by 71.1% of voters in Northern Ireland and 94.4% in the Republic. John Hume and David Trimble received the Nobel Peace Prize that year, and the IRA completed the decommissioning of its weapons in 2005.

The Free Aceh Movement (GAM) fought the Indonesian state for almost thirty years. Two earlier ceasefires collapsed. Then, on 26 December 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated Aceh. GAM declared a ceasefire, the province opened to international aid, and both sides looked at the conflict differently.

Five rounds of talks, facilitated by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari and his Crisis Management Initiative, produced a Memorandum of Understanding signed in Helsinki on 15 August 2005. An unarmed monitoring mission from the EU and Southeast Asian countries watched GAM hand over all 840 of its declared weapons by the end of the year. Ahtisaari received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008.

Colombia’s conflict with the FARC guerrillas lasted more than half a century. After four years of talks, mostly in Havana, the government and the FARC signed a peace agreement in September 2016. On 2 October voters narrowly rejected it, by 50.2% to 49.8%.

Instead of giving up, both sides went back to the table, listened to the “No” campaign and signed a revised agreement on 24 November 2016, which Congress ratified days later. In 2017 the FARC handed over more than 8,000 weapons to a UN mission. President Juan Manuel Santos received the Nobel Peace Prize; the Nobel Committee noted that the voters had rejected a specific agreement, not the desire for peace.