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Throughout this period, the global community has seen as Israel has deliberately razed the Gaza Strip, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians and maiming an unknown quantity more. Equally alarming, Israeli forces continues to systematically attack healthcare, educational, water supply and sewage systems to guarantee that life cannot resume in the Gaza Strip.

Western Governments’ Responses

Western governments’ responses to the ongoing situation have varied between vocal backing and unconditional support in the opening phase of Israel’s attack on Gaza after 7 October 2023, followed by statements of concern and handwringing, to, in recent times, occasional expressions of dismay and hollow warnings that ongoing military actions may, at some unspecified time, lead to an weapons restrictions or a reduction in commercial ties. In the last few months, there have also been greatly celebrated proclamations of conditional recognition of a Palestine as a state. The irony cannot be more profound: half-heartedly acknowledging a political entity as it, and its citizens, are being obliterated ruthlessly.

Current Developments

As I write this, uncertainty surrounds the proposed initiative to conclude hostilities and optimism is growing for a exchange of captives. While an end to the bombing, the freedom of captives on both sides and allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza would bring some relief in an exceptionally grim scenario, it would be a error to consider the proposal as a landmark achievement for the Palestinian cause. This approach is yet another joint U.S.-Israel creation cooked up without any inclusion of Palestinian voices that would retain Israel’s perpetual control over Gaza’s future.

Global powers have consistently ignored to Palestinian voices or given due weight the survival risk presented by Israel to Palestinian existence, and this has not materially changed despite the growth in symbolic concern. To the contrary, For over 75 years, Palestinians have endured the world telling us that Israeli “security concerns” – as interpreted by Israel – are more important than our rights and lives.

Two Forms of Violence

Consequently Palestinians experience two ever-present types of force: direct Israeli force imposed on our persons, territory and community, and western violence, where only our destruction prompts the world to recognize our existence and acknowledge our basic rights – but just marginally.

This understanding comes from firsthand observation, for a quarter-century, how this mode of western thinking and functioning unfolds. Even after prolonged violence in the Gaza Strip, and all that has been revealed about underlying Israeli objectives, that mode is repeating itself as I write this, with global powers endorsing a proposal that does almost nothing to ensure inclusion of Palestinian voices over their what lies ahead.

Unenforced declarations has been the standard procedure for many years. The consequences have been devastating.

An Illusory Solution

During the final days of September 2000, I joined the negotiating committee as a attorney participating in the negotiations with Israel. This was a big journey for me: I am the daughter of Palestinian parents born prior to the 1948 events, the systematic removal of Palestine. My family, in contrast to most of Palestinians, did not flee in that year and later became Israeli citizens, making their home in Nazareth, in a state that did not want them. In 1967, they opted to relocate to Canada, where I was born and raised, educated and educated. I had not lived in Palestine before joining the negotiating team except for a brief periods. At that point, I had decided to being in the region for a extended time. I became involved as a lawyer after a friend, also a legal representative, informed me that one of the shortcomings of the Oslo negotiations was its vagueness. I had thought, ideally, that the team could correct that problem.

This was the height of the peace process, as it was described then, which was initiated by the U.S. leadership in that year with the historic handshake between the Israeli leader, the national leader, and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader. By means of various understandings, the governing body was formed and the West Bank and Gaza Strip were further subdivided, with additional military posts placed across. Fundamental questions such as frontiers, colonies, the claims of displaced people and Jerusalem were deferred without timeline.

The ‘peace process’ evolved into a illusory solution rendering the occupation invisible to the global powers.

These issues were now matters between two parties for the Israeli government and the Palestinian leadership to work out together, with the international community theoretically standing by as uninvolved parties. But they were taking sides, and the primary parties were not equivalent. The US was at that time and continues Israel’s biggest supplier of weapons and diplomatic support and Europe is the main economic partner. Before entering into this diplomatic efforts, Palestinians sought assurances, mainly from Washington, that the asymmetry in power would be considered. Those promises were informally offered but never honored, throughout decades of negotiations.

Beginning in the 1990s, global applause for negotiations flourished. But what ultimately happened is that continuous demands for a “two-state solution” that evaded explicit realization of Palestinian self-determination and autonomy replaced calls for an termination of Israeli control. The “peace process” transformed into a deceptive remedy concealing the reality to the international community, hiding its growth, omnipresent and ever more violent form. The Palestinian cause was now diminished to a topic for discussion requiring concessions, with the forced expulsion of the land ignored to be disregarded.

Colonial Growth

Having accepted this narrative, the Israeli government used the guise of diplomacy to create and develop outposts, rightly assuming that these facts on the ground would enhance their leverage at the bargaining table. And following construction appeared settlers and checkpoints and an {expanding