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| Illustration: Edmon de Haro/The Guardian |
For two years, the world has watched as Israel has systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and maiming an untold number more. As dangerously, Israel continues to methodically target the healthcare, education, water and sewage systems to ensure that life cannot resume in the Gaza Strip.
Western governments’ responses to Israel’s actions have ranged from cheerleading and unconditional support in the first year of Israel’s attack on Gaza after 7 October 2023, followed by statements of concern and handwringing, to, more recently, occasional expressions of consternation and empty threats that continued Israeli attacks may, at some unspecified time, lead to an arms embargo or a drop in trade relations. In the last few months, there have also been the greatly celebrated proclamations of conditional recognition of a Palestinian state. The irony cannot be more profound: tepidly recognizing a state as it, and its people, are being erased without mercy.
As I write this, confusion swirls around Donald Trump’s plan to end the war and hope is mounting for a hostage and prisoner swap. 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 otherwise unbearably bleak landscape, it would be a mistake to view the plan as a historic breakthrough for Palestine. Trump’s vision is yet another American-Israeli concoction cooked up without any input from Palestinians that would retain Israel’s perpetual control over Gaza’s future.
The world has never listened to Palestinian voices or taken seriously the existential threat Israel poses to Palestinian life, and this has not materially changed despite the increase in performative angst. To the contrary, Palestinians have for three-quarters of a century endured the world telling us that Israeli “security concerns” – however defined by Israel – are more important than our rights and lives. As a result Palestinians live with two omnipresent forms of violence: Israeli violence directly inflicted upon our bodies, land and society, and western violence, where only our erasure prompts the world to notice us and see our humanity – but only barely.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/oct/05/gaza-palestine-israel-trump-peace-plan