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Over the past 24 months, the world at large has witnessed as the Israeli state has methodically devastated the Gaza region, claiming the lives of many thousands of Palestinian people and harming an untold number more. In a similarly perilous move, Israel continues to methodically target medical, education, water and sanitation infrastructure to ensure that life cannot resume in the territory.

International Reactions

Global stances to Israeli operations have included enthusiastic support and complete alignment in the opening phase of the military campaign on Gaza after the events of October 2023, subsequently shifting to voiced apprehensions and anguished deliberation, to, lately, occasional expressions of alarm and hollow warnings that persistent assaults may, at some undefined point, lead to an military supply halt or a drop in trade relations. More recently, there have also been greatly celebrated proclamations of provisional acceptance of a Palestine as a state. The irony cannot be more profound: half-heartedly acknowledging a nation as it, and its citizens, are being obliterated ruthlessly.

Current Developments

At this moment, uncertainty surrounds the outlined strategy to conclude hostilities and expectations are rising for a hostile and prisoner swap. Though stopping the attacks, the freedom of captives on each party and permitting relief supplies into the territory would bring a degree of solace in an otherwise unbearably bleak landscape, it would be a misjudgment to regard the initiative as a monumental step for the Palestinian cause. This approach is yet another collaborative effort formulated without any inclusion of Palestinian voices that would preserve Israel’s perpetual control over Gaza’s future.

Global powers have consistently ignored to the perspectives of Palestinians or adequately considered the survival risk Israel poses to Palestinian existence, and this has not significantly shifted despite the rise in superficial worry. On the opposite, Through multiple generations, Palestinians have experienced the world asserting that Israel’s safety considerations – however defined by Israel – are take precedence than our rights and lives.

Two Forms of Violence

Consequently Palestinians face two ever-present types of violence: Israeli violence experienced by our bodies, territory and community, and western violence, where only our erasure causes global powers to acknowledge our presence and acknowledge our basic rights – but only barely.

This understanding comes from direct personal experience, for a extended duration, how this mode of western thinking and behaving plays out. Notwithstanding extensive destruction in the Gaza Strip, and all that has been revealed about Israel’s true intentions, that pattern is happening again at this very moment, with international actors lining up behind a proposal that does almost nothing to ensure Palestinian participation over their destiny.

Empty statements has been the west’s modus operandi for decades. The cost has been catastrophic.

An Illusory Solution

At the end of September 2000, I entered the Palestinian negotiating team as a legal advisor participating in the talks with Israeli counterparts. This represented a significant step for me: I am the descendant of Palestinian parents born preceding the displacement, the forced expulsion of Palestine. My family, differently from many of Palestinians, did not leave in 1948 and later became Israeli citizens, living in Nazareth, in a nation that did not want them. In 1967, they opted to relocate to abroad, where I was born and raised, educated and schooled. I had not resided in the region before joining the negotiating team except for a short stays. Now, I had committed to being in the region for a year. I entered the process as a attorney after a acquaintance, also a member of the legal team, explained to me that one of the shortcomings of the Oslo negotiations was its lack of clarity. I had assumed, ideally, that the team could correct that problem.

This marked the culmination of the diplomatic efforts, as it was labelled at the time, which began under the U.S. leadership in 1993 with the memorable moment between the Israeli leader, the Israeli prime minister, and Yasser Arafat, the head of the PLO. Through a series of agreements, the administrative structure was created and the West Bank and Gaza Strip were increasingly fragmented, with additional military posts established around. Fundamental questions such as boundaries, colonies, the rights of millions of refugees and the holy city were taken off the table indefinitely.

The ‘peace process’ became a deceptive remedy concealing the reality to the global powers.

All of these were now bilateral issues for the Israeli government and the Palestinians to resolve between them, with the rest of the world theoretically standing by as uninvolved parties. But they were not impartial, and the key players were not equivalent. The America was then and remains the primary source of military equipment and international advocacy and the EU is the primary commercial ally. Before entering into this negotiations process, representatives asked for commitments, mainly from Washington, that the asymmetry in power would be considered. Those promises were tacitly provided but never honored, during extended diplomatic engagement.

Beginning in the 1990s, worldwide approval for negotiations flourished. But what ultimately happened is that continuous demands for a two-state framework that avoided concrete implementation of Palestinian sovereignty and liberty replaced calls for an termination of Israeli control. The diplomatic process transformed into a deceptive remedy concealing the reality to the west, hiding its growth, pervasive and ever more violent form. Palestine was now reduced to a topic for discussion requiring concessions, with the forced expulsion of Palestine swept under the rug to be overlooked.

Territorial Encroachment

Once this framework was embraced, Israel used the guise of diplomacy to create and develop colonies, accurately thinking that these facts on the ground would enhance their leverage at the negotiating table. And with the settlements came colonists and obstacles and an {expanding