When a group of Israeli peace activists, including Uri and Rachel Avnery, created Gush Shalom in 1993, it came at a time of great upheaval in the Occupied Territories. Since then, the volunteer organization has grown to include some 450 core activists and a circle of 1,400 supporters. It has coordinated hundreds of demonstrations, rebuilt Palestinian houses demolished by the government, and worked tirelessly toward the peaceful establishment of a Palestinian state. The Avnerys and their colleagues have been regularly arrested and frequently abused by Israeli soldiers and police.

Today, the situation in the Occupied Territories and throughout Israel is once again in a perilous state. Yet Uri Avnery remains unbowed. "I was born an optimist and will die as an optimist," he said in a recent interview. "The present is but a stage—albeit a sad one—in the inevitable march toward peace and conciliation. After 55 years of a struggle for Israeli-Palestinian peace, I can see the immense progress we have made. The present throws us a long way back, but we shall move ahead again."

Steadfastness is a thread that connects all the winners of the 2001 Right Livelihood Awards, presented at the Swedish Parliament last December. In addition to Gush Shalom, the jury recognized Trident Ploughshares, a British anti-nuclear weapons group; Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian professor and former Roman Catholic priest who was one of the founders of liberation theology; and José Antonio Abreu, who created the Venezuela National System of Children and Youth Orchestras.

"The jury has chosen these recipients from the many outstanding people and organizations who were nominated for this year’s awards in order to show positive ways forward at this time of grief, fear, and insecurity," said Right Livelihood Awards founder and chairman Jakob von Uexkull. "It is imperative to recognize that the only remedy for terror is justice and reconciliation and the promotion of human rights—civil, political, economic, social, and ecological—for all peoples of the world. This is what our award recipients this year, in their different ways, have committed their lives to doing. Theirs are examples from which we can all learn much."

Since its first mass action in 1998, Trident Ploughshares and its founder, Angie Zelter, have pursued a nonviolent and "fully accountable" mission to disarm the Trident nuclear missiles (about 50 of them) in the United Kingdom’s arsenal. The group has damaged equipment on submarines, put a missile-related research laboratory out of action, and coordinated dozens of demonstrations, all the while creating such a rational case for disarmament of the missiles that a court acquitted Zelter and two of her colleagues in the research laboratory incident.