A struggle that must persist
The dream of Palestine must not die. It has also to be a realised reality, an enduring historical fact.
The determination and alacrity some Western states have shown in recent months in acknowledging Palestine as a state have changed the nature of international relations. Britain, Canada, and Australia have all recognised Palestine — tragically, long after Israel had killed over 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere. Their belated recognition embodies an inescapable fact: Palestine is a country, and a Palestinian state has become an imperative of the enlightened world.
That fact was driven home at the United Nations when French President Emmanuel Macron announced Paris’s recognition of Palestine. Belgium soon followed. These accolades speak to a simple truth, one that is enshrined in history—there can be no peace in the Middle East without first allowing Palestinians their own state.
But this development deeply upsets the power centres in Washington and Tel Aviv. For them, leadership in the modern age is about coming to terms with the fact that there will be a Palestinian state. Gaza, as well as the occupied territories, must be abandoned. The two-state formula must become more than just words.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might continue to be intransigent, but that cannot be a reason to let progress stop slowly. The West, including Trump’s America, has to exert pressure on Israel to pull out from the Arab lands it occupies and dismantle illegal settlements. The recognition of Palestinian sovereignty by Britain, France, Canada, Australia, and others makes a good beginning. The challenge now is to translate diplomatic support into practical measures toward a geographically defined Palestinian state.
The roadmap is clear. Israeli military actions in Gaza must stop. International law must be upheld to prevent violations such as the bombing of Beirut, Doha, and Ramallah. Sanctions should be readied if Netanyahu’s government continues to flout the consensus of countries around the world.
The West is also justified in demanding the release of all Israeli hostages still in Hamas captivity since October 2023. But it must also address Israel’s genocide in Gaza. To insist on the emancipation of hostages, but not comment on mass killings, famine, and displacement, would strip any Western recognition bare. The correct way to support Palestine is to condemn Israel’s crimes and bring to bear the pressure that would end generations of impunity.
The Palestinians have forfeited much in modern history. There is no healing for a wound like losing a homeland, which they’ve carried since 1948. Once Israel was created, Palestinian legitimacy was interred underneath Zionism’s march away from its birthplace. That injustice was compounded after the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel annexed the West Bank and declared Jerusalem its capital. Annexation of lands that had never been Israel’s prepared the way for decades of occupation.
The Palestinian resistance that arose, from Fatah’s armed struggle on to Yasser Arafat’s peace process, was too often perceived in the West as terrorism. But Arafat’s compromises, including the historic handshake with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, did not change what has long been Israeli policy of simply stalling Palestinian statehood. The injustice has been maintained with the quiet confidence of successive Tel Aviv governments, safe in its Western support.
But Palestine is also about more than politics. It is also about memory, morality, and humanity. It is about the old houses and orchards, the hills, and valleys where generations once lived.” It continues: “Now it’s in foreign hands. It is a state of injustice and occupation. It is the story of a people from whom history has been taken away, yet whose dream is in its way prophetic.
The Palestine dream must go on. “History is bigger than politics and the ‘great’ leaders with Machiavellian designs upon it.” Palestine is one of the last significant open wounds of human rights and justice in our time. And history will not be complete until that battle is won, and a free, independent, and sovereign state guarantees the Palestinians’ destiny.