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For two years, the international audience has witnessed as the Israeli state has methodically devastated the Gaza region, killing countless of Palestinians and injuring an uncounted multitude more. Just as dangerously, Israeli forces continues to deliberately assault healthcare, educational, water supply and sanitation infrastructure to guarantee that normalcy cannot return in the territory.

Western Governments’ Responses

Western governments’ responses to the ongoing situation have included enthusiastic support and full endorsement in the opening phase of hostilities on the Gaza Strip after 7 October 2023, then came expressions of worry and public consternation, to, more recently, occasional expressions of consternation and hollow warnings that continued Israeli attacks may, at some future moment, lead to an military supply halt or a weakening of economic links. In the last few months, there have also been greatly celebrated proclamations of conditional recognition of a sovereign Palestinian entity. The contradiction is stark: tepidly recognizing a nation as it, and its citizens, are being erased without mercy.

Present Circumstances

Currently, uncertainty surrounds Donald Trump’s plan to end the war and hope is mounting for a reciprocal release. Though stopping the attacks, the freedom of captives on both sides and enabling assistance into the territory would bring a degree of solace in an profoundly dismal situation, it would be a mistake to view the plan as a landmark achievement for Palestine. The proposed framework is yet another joint U.S.-Israel creation formulated without any input from Palestinians that would preserve ongoing Israeli dominance over Gaza’s future.

The world has never listened to what Palestinians have to say or adequately considered the existential threat presented by Israel to Palestinian life, and this has not substantively altered despite the growth in symbolic concern. On the opposite, For over 75 years, Palestinians have endured the world insisting that Israeli “security concerns” – as interpreted by Israel – are more important than our rights and lives.

Parallel Systems of Force

Consequently Palestinians experience two constant manifestations of force: Israeli violence directly inflicted upon our bodies, land and society, and international complicity, where only our elimination leads international actors to notice us and acknowledge our basic rights – but only barely.

This understanding comes from observing up close, for a quarter-century, how this mode of western thinking and operating plays out. Even after prolonged violence in Gaza, and everything the world has learned about underlying Israeli objectives, that mode is repeating itself as I write this, with world leaders supporting a initiative that does very little to make certain inclusion of Palestinian voices over their destiny.

Rhetoric without consequence has been the west’s modus operandi for a long time. The consequences have been devastating.

An Illusory Solution

At the end of September 2000, I entered the Palestinian negotiating team as a legal advisor participating in the negotiations with Israel. This was a big journey for me: I am the descendant of Palestinians born prior to the 1948 events, the forced expulsion of Palestine. My parents’ families, in contrast to most of Palestinian people, did not flee in 1948 and later gained legal status, living in Nazareth, in a country that did not want them. In that year, they opted to relocate to abroad, where I was born and raised, raised and educated. I had not lived in Palestine before becoming part of the delegation except for a short stays. Then, I had chosen to being in the region for a twelve-month period. I became involved as a attorney after a friend, also a part of the legal division, told me that one of the flaws of the peace talks was its vagueness. I had assumed, naively, that the team could correct that problem.

This marked the culmination of the negotiation period, as it was called, which began under the U.S. leadership in that year with the memorable moment between Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, the head of government, and Yasser Arafat, the head of the PLO. Via multiple accords, the administrative structure was formed and the occupied lands were additional partitioned, with additional military posts established around. Critical matters such as frontiers, outposts, the claims of displaced people and the holy city were deferred without timeline.

The negotiation framework evolved into a magic pill rendering the occupation invisible to the global powers.

These matters were now matters between two parties for Israel and the Palestinian leadership to resolve between them, with the global actors nominally present as uninvolved parties. But they were not impartial, and the key players were not equals. The America was then and remains the main provider of military equipment and diplomatic support and European nations is Israel’s largest trading partner. Before entering into this negotiations process, representatives asked for commitments, mainly from Washington, that the disparity would be considered. These commitments were implicitly given but consistently broken, during extended diplomatic engagement.

From the early 1990s, international praise for negotiations was widespread. But what ultimately happened is that endless calls for a partition plan that circumvented actual establishment of Palestinian sovereignty and freedom replaced calls for an cessation of Israeli control. The “peace process” became a magic pill concealing the reality to the west, disguising its metastasizing, ever-present and ever more violent form. The Palestinian cause was now diminished to a subject of “negotiation” demanding compromises, with the historical displacement of the land concealed to be overlooked.

Colonial Growth

Having accepted this narrative, Israel used the guise of diplomacy to create and develop Israeli settlements, rightly assuming that these territorial changes would strengthen their position at the discussions. And following construction appeared colonists and obstacles and an {expanding