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For two years, the world at large has seen as the Israeli state has deliberately razed the Gaza Strip, killing countless of Palestinian people and maiming an unknown quantity more. In a similarly perilous move, Israeli forces continues to methodically target medical, educational, water and sewage systems to ensure that normalcy cannot return in the territory.

Global Stances

Global stances to the ongoing situation have ranged from vocal backing and complete alignment in the initial 12 months of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip after 7 October 2023, subsequently shifting to statements of concern and public consternation, to, in recent times, sporadic statements of consternation and hollow warnings that persistent assaults may, at some future moment, lead to an military supply halt or a drop in trade relations. In the last few months, there have also been widely touted declarations of conditional recognition of a Palestine as a state. The paradox is deeply troubling: half-heartedly acknowledging a political entity as it, and its population, are being systematically destroyed.

Current Developments

As I write this, ambiguity clouds the proposed initiative to conclude hostilities and optimism is growing for a reciprocal release. While an end to the bombing, the release of detainees on the two factions and enabling assistance into the territory would bring some relief in an exceptionally grim scenario, it would be a error to consider the proposal as a monumental step for the Palestinian cause. The proposed framework is yet another American-Israeli concoction developed without any Palestinian participation that would maintain ongoing Israeli dominance over Gaza’s future.

The world has never listened to what Palestinians have to say or adequately considered the survival risk presented by Israel to the Palestinian people, and this has not substantively altered despite the growth in symbolic concern. To the contrary, Palestinians have for three-quarters of a century, Palestinians have suffered through the world asserting that Israel’s safety considerations – however defined by Israel – are of greater significance than fundamental human rights.

Two Forms of Violence

Therefore Palestinians face two ever-present types of aggression: direct Israeli force experienced by our bodies, land and community, and global indifference, where only our elimination prompts the world to notice us and see our humanity – but just marginally.

This perspective emerges from firsthand observation, for a 25-year period, how this framework of global diplomacy and behaving plays out. Notwithstanding extensive destruction in the Gaza Strip, and everything the world has learned about underlying Israeli objectives, that approach is recurring at this very moment, with world leaders endorsing a plan that does little to ensure Palestinian participation over their destiny.

Unenforced declarations has been the west’s modus operandi for a long time. The consequences have been devastating.

A Deceptive Remedy

During the final days of September 2000, I joined the Palestinian negotiating team as a attorney involved in the talks with Israeli counterparts. This represented a significant step for me: I am the descendant of Palestinian parents born before the Nakba, the forced expulsion of historic Palestine. My parents’ families, differently from many of Palestinians, did not leave in the time of Nakba and later gained legal status, living in Nazareth, in a nation that excluded them. In the time of the Six-Day War, they opted to relocate to abroad, where I was brought up, raised and schooled. I had not resided in the region before joining the negotiating team except for a brief periods. Now, I had committed to being in Palestine for a extended time. I became involved as a lawyer after a colleague, also a member of the legal team, informed me that one of the flaws of the Oslo negotiations was its lack of clarity. I had assumed, optimistically, that the team could correct that problem.

This was the height of the diplomatic efforts, as it was called, which was initiated by the Clinton administration in the early 1990s with the symbolic gesture between Yitzhak Rabin, the national leader, and Palestinian leader Arafat, the representative. Through a series of agreements, the governing body was established and the West Bank and Gaza Strip were increasingly fragmented, with additional military posts established around. Major issues such as borders, settlements, the claims of displaced people and the holy city were postponed permanently.

The ‘peace process’ became a deceptive remedy concealing the reality to the international community.

These matters were now bilateral issues for the Israeli government and the Palestinian leadership to address directly, with the rest of the world nominally present as impartial monitors. But they were not impartial, and the primary parties were not equivalent. The United States was historically and currently the main provider of arms and diplomatic support and the EU is the primary commercial ally. Before entering into this negotiations process, the Palestinian side requested guarantees, especially from America, that the power imbalance would be considered. Those promises were tacitly provided but never honored, during extended diplomatic engagement.

Beginning in the 1990s, global applause for peace talks was widespread. But what ultimately happened is that endless calls for a two-state framework that evaded explicit realization of Palestinian self-determination and autonomy supplanted calls for an end to Israel’s military occupation. The “peace process” evolved into a illusory solution obscuring the situation to the west, disguising its metastasizing, ever-present and progressively harsh form. Palestine was now limited to a subject of “negotiation” requiring concessions, with the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine swept under the rug to be disregarded.

Territorial Encroachment

Having accepted this narrative, the Israeli government used the cover of the “peace process” to create and develop outposts, accurately thinking that these territorial changes would improve their standing at the discussions. And following construction appeared colonists and checkpoints and an {expanding