For the first few decades of Israel’s existence, Middle Eastern musical traditions, viewed as “other,” were marginalized and largely excluded from dominant musical media (i.e., radio, musical festivals, national performances). The decade of the 1990s, however, marked the beginning of a new era for the performance of Arab and Middle Eastern music in Israel with optimism toward peace at an all time high. Israeli Jews and Palestinian Israelis began forming a range of Middle Eastern-and Arab-influenced bands. The violence of the 2000s—with the second intifada underway—stood in sharp contrast to the unfettered hopefulness of the previous decade. Yet performances of Middle Eastern music set in motion in the 1990s continued to flourish during the turbulent period of the 2000s. For example, the biggest Middle Eastern music festival in Israel, the Oud Festival, began in 2001 and grew steadily each year as it continued gaining global sponsors. This festival and others like it always included several concerts of collaboration between Palestinian Israelis and Jewish Israelis. Hearing lyrics sung in Arabic and Eastern modes containing quarter tones performed by Jews and Arabs on Israel’s most prestigious stages evoked glimmers of hope for peace to diverse Israeli audience members—Palestinian and Jewish—who were in desperate need of a respite from the violence. Though their political views, age, and ethnic make up differed from one another they engaged actively in “listening for peace” together with one another—often exiting the performance space more hopeful about prospects for peace than when they entered. As I will also illustrate, however, the impetus for these musical collaborations of coexistence between Palestinian and Jewish Israelis only rarely came from the musicians themselves. Because the (often global) funding for these concerts and festivals were based on the premise of coexistence, some collaborative projects were specifically created for that purpose by festival organizers. This paper—like other recent scholarship—points toward the powerful ways that musical audition can uniquely transform diverse audiences. Yet it also reflects upon the meaning of these affective moments (when these sonic imaginaries of peace are co-opted and truly imaginary), theorizing on ways in which aural culture can obscure conflict and issues of power at play.