Ofer Bronchtein

Ofer Bronchtein was born in 1957 in Beersheba

Bronchtein was born in Beersheba on 27 March 1957. His parents' families had lived for generations in Safed and Hebron. At age 9 he moved with his family to France, where he spent his youth.

At 17 he returned to Israel and lived on Kibbutz Beit Keshet. He later moved to the Hatikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv and worked for social justice and reconciliation with Palestinians. In 1987 he met Mahmoud Abbas in Spain, which Israeli law then banned, and was sentenced to 15 days in prison.

In 1989 he co-founded the newspaper HaPatish, a paper of social criticism, and served as its publisher until 1993. He advised Yitzhak Rabin during the Oslo talks and was part of the Israeli delegation at the 1993 signing in Washington. In 2002 he co-founded the International Forum for Peace with Anis al-Qaq.

He lived in France for decades. In 2020 Macron appointed him special envoy to a French taskforce for peace in the Levant, and after the Gaza war began he served as Macron's envoy to the Middle East. He died in Paris on 18 May 2026 of lung disease.