Peace Now (Hebrew Shalom Akhsav), an Israeli leftist movement aiming at the bringing about peace between Jews and Arabs. "Peace Now" has been responsible, for many of what Palestinians see as positive changes in Israeli policy towards the native Palestinian population.
The movement, whose roots go back to the mid-1970s protests following the Yom Kippur War (against the Israeli government's faulty decision-making before and during it), became a major political power in Israel, following the Lebanon War and in particular, the Sabra and Chatila Massacre, which caused over 400,000 people (10% of Israeli population!) to attend a demonstration in Jerusalem in February 1983, protesting the massacre. The movement hailed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and supported the possibility of an Israeli retreat from the 10 mile-wide security zone in Southern Lebanon (eventually, pressure from such organizations was one of the causes for the Israeli retreat in June 2000).
In the recent years, "Peace Now" has been widely criticized by the Israeli right because of their "immediate" ideology that could mean possibly making concessions to those whose friendliness to Israel has not been tested by time. This criticism only intensified after the outbreak of the Second Intifada, which left the movement in an ideological crisis. However, they are still influential among the Israeli left.