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For two years, the world at large has observed as the Israeli state has methodically devastated the Gaza Strip, claiming the lives of many thousands of Palestinian people and harming an uncounted multitude more. In a similarly perilous move, Israel continues to systematically attack healthcare, education, water and sanitation infrastructure to ensure that life cannot resume in the Gaza Strip.

International Reactions

International reactions to Israeli operations have included enthusiastic support and unconditional support in the initial 12 months of hostilities on Gaza after 7 October 2023, followed by voiced apprehensions and handwringing, to, lately, intermittent declarations of consternation and empty threats that persistent assaults may, at some future moment, lead to an military supply halt or a reduction in commercial ties. In the last few months, there have also been highly publicized announcements of provisional acceptance of a sovereign Palestinian entity. The paradox is deeply troubling: half-heartedly acknowledging a state as it, and its citizens, are being erased without mercy.

Current Developments

As I write this, confusion swirls around Donald Trump’s plan to end the war and hope is mounting for a reciprocal release. While an end to the bombing, the freedom of captives on each party and permitting relief supplies into Gaza would bring some relief in an exceptionally grim scenario, it would be a misjudgment to regard the initiative as a monumental step for the Palestinian cause. The proposed framework is an additional joint U.S.-Israel creation formulated without any Palestinian participation that would retain ongoing Israeli dominance over the territory’s destiny.

International actors have routinely disregarded to what Palestinians have to say or given due weight the existential threat presented by Israel to Palestinian life, and this has not significantly shifted despite the increase in performative angst. On the opposite, For over 75 years, Palestinians have suffered through the world insisting that Israel’s safety considerations – however defined by Israel – are of greater significance than fundamental human rights.

Two Forms of Violence

Therefore Palestinians live with two ever-present types of force: physical aggression directly inflicted upon our bodies, territory and society, and western violence, where only our elimination prompts the world to notice us and recognize our human dignity – but just marginally.

This understanding comes from observing up close, for a quarter-century, how this pattern of international approach and functioning manifests. Despite two years of carnage in the Gaza Strip, and all that has been revealed about the actual goals, that mode is repeating itself as I write this, with global powers lining up behind a initiative that does almost nothing to guarantee Palestinian participation over their destiny.

Unenforced declarations has been the standard procedure for many years. The impact has been ruinous.

An Illusory Solution

In late September 2000, I joined the Palestinian negotiating team as a attorney participating in the discussions. This marked an important transition for me: I am the daughter of Palestinian parents born prior to the 1948 events, the systematic removal of historic Palestine. My family, in contrast to most of Palestinian people, did not leave in that year and later became Israeli citizens, making their home in Nazareth, in a nation that did not want them. In that year, they decided to emigrate to Canada, where I was brought up, educated and educated. I had not lived in Palestine before entering the process except for a short stays. At that point, I had committed to being in the region for a twelve-month period. I became involved as a legal expert after a acquaintance, also a part of the legal division, told me that one of the defects of the Oslo negotiations was its vagueness. I had assumed, optimistically, that the team could correct that problem.

This was the height of the negotiation period, as it was described then, which was initiated by the Clinton administration in the early 1990s with the historic handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, the national leader, and Palestinian leader Arafat, the head of the PLO. Via multiple accords, the administrative structure was established and the West Bank and Gaza Strip were increasingly fragmented, with new Israeli checkpoints scattered throughout. Critical matters such as frontiers, outposts, the status of exiles and the holy city were taken off the table indefinitely.

The ‘peace process’ became a deceptive remedy rendering the occupation invisible to the west.

These matters were now matters between two parties for Israel and the Palestinian leadership to address directly, with the international community supposedly observing as impartial monitors. But they were taking sides, and the key players were not equals. The United States was at that time and continues Israel’s biggest supplier of arms and political backing and the EU is the primary commercial ally. Earlier in this negotiations process, the Palestinian side requested guarantees, especially from America, that the power imbalance would be rectified. Such assurances were tacitly provided but consistently broken, during extended diplomatic engagement.

Beginning in the 1990s, international praise for peace talks flourished. But what ultimately happened is that continuous demands for a “two-state solution” that evaded explicit realization of Palestinian self-determination and freedom supplanted calls for an end to Israel’s military occupation. The negotiation framework evolved into a magic pill concealing the reality to the global powers, hiding its growth, ever-present and increasingly brutal form. The Palestinian cause was now reduced to a bargaining chip needing sacrifices, with the historical displacement of the land swept under the rug to be overlooked.

Colonial Growth

With this magic pill swallowed, the Israeli government used the guise of diplomacy to establish and enlarge Israeli settlements, rightly assuming that these facts on the ground would strengthen their position at the bargaining table. And along with colonies arrived residents and obstacles and an {expanding