Between the Erasure of Rights and the Entrenchment of Occupation, the Palestinian Cause in Danger

The dangerous juncture through which the Palestinian cause is passing is perhaps the most critical since the Nakba of 1948 — not only because of the erasure of the principle of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination, the confiscation of their land, and the establishment of another state on that land, but also because of the nature of the Israeli project, which has assumed an expansionist colonial character and relentlessly seeks to devour ever more territory, thereby nullifying the two-state solution and preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state even within its minimum borders — those of 1967.

The settlement projects successively approved by the Israeli government represent merely the tip of the iceberg of what is being planned; these projects aim to transform the face of the West Bank, in which more than 800,000 settlers have spread to this day, with the dual purpose of fulfilling the expansionist objective and eliminating any serious prospect for the establishment of a Palestinian state. As international rejection of settlement expansion recedes to the level of verbal condemnation alone, the situation in the West Bank grows ever darker: settlers, shielded by the Israeli army, storm villages and towns, wreaking destruction upon homes, property, and crops.

It is true that Arab and Islamic positions condemning these successive measures have not subsided, yet they remain incapable of changing the prevailing reality — or even freezing it at a minimum — particularly since they continue to reiterate their adherence to the Arab Peace Initiative adopted at the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2002, to which Israel has paid no meaningful attention since that date. On the contrary, Israel has sought to weaken its presumed Palestinian "partner" — the Palestinian National Authority born of the Oslo Accords (1993) — and has deliberately averted its eyes from the rise of its historical adversary, the Hamas movement.

As successive American administrations boast of their alignment with Israel and compete over who has rendered it the greatest political, military, and material support, the current president, Donald Trump, considers himself to have covered considerable ground in this domain. It was he who, during his first presidential term, decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — dismissing the city's pluralistic nature and its religious and historical symbolism — and transferred his country's embassy there; he also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied since 1967.

Though the Palestinian cause has garnered widespread popular sympathy, expressed in protest demonstrations that swept through numerous European capitals over consecutive months, this popular indignation has not been fully reflected in the policies of Western governments, which have turned a blind eye to the massacres committed in the Gaza Strip. They have thereby exposed a policy of double standards toward the situations in Ukraine and Palestine, suggesting as though Palestinian blood were cheap, while Ukrainian blood deserved every form of support in the world. Naturally, every drop of human blood is precious, and its shedding must never be treated lightly.

These policies have, in practical terms, led to the "demonization" of the Palestinian — branded with the charge of terrorism even as he strives to liberate his land — while "humanizing" the Israeli, invariably framing his conduct within the context of "self-defense," even though it is he who occupies the land. While the targeting of civilians is an act rejected, condemned, and denounced in every time and place, what is happening in Palestine did not begin on October 7, 2023 — a fact noted by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who declared that these events "did not come from a vacuum," an observation that has since earned him considerable political and media harassment from Israel and its supporters inside and outside the United Nations.

Israeli propaganda, backed by its enormous capabilities across the globe, has managed to invert many truths and even to fabricate narratives serving its interests and those of the overriding discourse it has persistently advanced — namely, that it is defending itself in everything it does, even if this has resulted in the death of more than 70,000 civilians in Gaza, some of whom died deliberately of hunger and thirst, and even if it has bombed hospitals, medical and healthcare centers, schools, universities, cultural clubs, and sports facilities.

Social media platforms, which constitute the broadest space for youth and adolescents, have likewise failed to rectify the narrative — also because of the stringent censorship exercised by the corporations that own and operate those platforms, which have blocked hundreds of accounts and sites reflecting pro-Palestinian opinion and dissenting from the prevailing current that supports Israel and its relentless war against the Palestinian people.

Here, too, the problem of narrative presents itself — if the expression is apt: Israel has always claimed that it is fighting the Hamas movement, whereas in reality it has been waging war against the Palestinian people as a whole, as evidenced by the fact that the rate of destruction in the Gaza Strip has exceeded 80 percent. Likewise, the slogans raised about liberating the captives by force proved hollow: despite total devastation, Israel was unable to achieve this, and was compelled to resort to political mediation in order to secure the release of its captives — both living and dead — through exchange deals.

Figures published by the Institute for Palestine Studies indicate that the number of hospitals destroyed or rendered non-functional in the Gaza Strip has reached 38; the number of universities and educational institutions destroyed, 165; the number of schools destroyed, 670; and the number of mosques destroyed, 835. The alarming statistics continue: 1,670 members of medical staff were killed; 140 from civil defense teams; 787 from the police and those securing humanitarian aid; 203 from UNRWA employees; 254 journalists; and 1,023 scholars, academics, and teachers.

It is clear that the conflict has taken new directions under the shadow of impunity and amid an unprecedented violation of international laws and norms — placing the entire world on trial and raising fundamental questions about the slogans that certain states have long brandished and celebrated: human rights, democracy, equality, and justice. It raises equally profound questions about the nature of the new international order, dominated as it is by the survival of the strongest and a contemptuous disregard for the fundamental rights of oppressed peoples.