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Throughout this period, the international audience has seen as Israel has systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip, killing countless of Palestinians and injuring an untold number more. Just as dangerously, Israel continues to systematically attack medical, education, water and sanitation infrastructure to guarantee that normalcy cannot return in the Gaza Strip.

Global Stances

Western governments’ responses to Israel’s actions have varied between cheerleading and complete alignment in the initial 12 months of hostilities on Gaza after the events of October 2023, followed by expressions of worry and handwringing, to, lately, intermittent declarations of consternation and hollow warnings that persistent assaults may, at some future moment, lead to an arms embargo or a reduction in commercial ties. More recently, there have also been highly publicized announcements of conditional recognition of a sovereign Palestinian entity. The paradox is deeply troubling: hesitantly accepting a nation as it, and its citizens, are being erased without mercy.

Ongoing Situations

As I write this, confusion swirls around Donald Trump’s plan to conclude hostilities and expectations are rising for a hostile and prisoner swap. Although cessation of airstrikes, the liberation of prisoners on both sides and allowing humanitarian aid into the territory would bring temporary respite in an profoundly dismal situation, it would be a mistake to view the plan as a landmark achievement for Palestine. Trump’s vision is once more American-Israeli concoction cooked up without any input from Palestinians that would retain ongoing Israeli dominance over the territory’s destiny.

The world has never listened to Palestinian voices or given due weight the survival risk Israel poses to Palestinian existence, and this has not significantly shifted despite the growth in symbolic concern. On the opposite, For over 75 years, Palestinians have suffered through the world asserting that security priorities – as interpreted by Israel – are take precedence than our rights and lives.

Dual Manifestations of Aggression

Therefore Palestinians live with two constant manifestations of violence: direct Israeli force experienced by our persons, land and community, and western violence, where only our elimination prompts the world to recognize our existence and acknowledge our basic rights – but just marginally.

This perspective emerges from firsthand observation, for a quarter-century, how this mode of western thinking and functioning plays out. Even after prolonged violence in the Gaza Strip, and all that has been revealed about underlying Israeli objectives, that approach is recurring as I write this, with world leaders endorsing a initiative that does little to make certain inclusion of Palestinian voices over their destiny.

Empty statements has been the prevailing approach for decades. The consequences have been devastating.

An Illusory Solution

At the end of September 2000, I joined the Palestinian negotiating team as a attorney involved in the talks with Israeli counterparts. This marked an important transition for me: I am the child of Palestinian parents born preceding the displacement, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. My family, in contrast to most of Palestinian people, did not leave in that year and later gained legal status, residing in Nazareth, in a state that excluded them. In 1967, they chose to leave to abroad, where I was brought up, educated and schooled. I had not resided in the region before entering the process except for a few months at a time. Then, I had committed to being in the region for a extended time. I entered the process as a legal expert after a colleague, also a member of the legal team, explained to me that one of the shortcomings of the peace talks was its vagueness. I had believed, ideally, that the delegation could address that issue.

This represented the peak of the peace process, as it was labelled at the time, which was initiated by the U.S. leadership in the early 1990s with the symbolic gesture between the Israeli leader, the Israeli prime minister, and Palestinian leader Arafat, the representative. Through a series of agreements, the governing body was created and the Palestinian territories were increasingly fragmented, with additional military posts placed across. Fundamental questions such as boundaries, settlements, the status of exiles and Jerusalem were taken off the table indefinitely.

The negotiation framework transformed into a deceptive remedy concealing the reality to the international community.

These issues were now bilateral issues for Israel and the Palestinian leadership to work out together, with the global actors supposedly observing as impartial monitors. But they were not impartial, and the two main actors were not equals. The America was at that time and continues the main provider of weapons and international advocacy and European nations is the main economic partner. Earlier in this diplomatic efforts, the Palestinian side requested guarantees, especially from America, that the disparity would be considered. These commitments were informally offered but consistently broken, during extended diplomatic engagement.

Beginning in the 1990s, international praise for diplomatic efforts flourished. But what ultimately happened is that continuous demands for a two-state framework that evaded explicit realization of Palestinian self-determination and freedom replaced calls for an cessation of Israeli control. The negotiation framework transformed into a magic pill obscuring the situation to the international community, disguising its metastasizing, omnipresent and ever more violent form. Palestine was now reduced to a subject of “negotiation” demanding compromises, with the historical displacement of the land ignored to be overlooked.

Territorial Encroachment

With this magic pill swallowed, the Israeli government used the pretext of negotiations to establish and enlarge colonies, accurately thinking that these established realities would strengthen their position at the negotiating table. And along with colonies arrived colonists and obstacles and an {expanding