The occupied Palestinian territory [OPT] today is a hellscape. In Gaza, Israel has dismantled even the last United Nations function — humanitarian aid — in order to deliberately starve, displace time and again, or kill a population they have marked for elimination. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, ethnic cleansing advances through unlawful siege, mass displacement, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, widespread torture.
Across all areas under Israeli rule, Palestinians live under the terror of annihilation, broadcast in real time to a watching world. The very few Israeli people who stand against genocide, occupation, and apartheid — while the majority openly cheers and calls for more — remind us that Israeli liberation, too, is inseparable from Palestinian freedom.
The atrocities of the past twenty-one months are not a sudden aberration; they are the culmination of decades of policies to displace and replace the Palestinian people.
Against this backdrop, it is inconceivable that political forums, from Brussels to New York, are still debating recognition of the state of Palestine — not because it’s unimportant, but because for thirty-five years, states have stalled and refused recognition, pretending to “invest in the Palestinian Authority” while abandoning the Palestinian people to Israel’s relentless, rapacious territorial ambitions and unspeakable crimes.
Meanwhile, political discourse has reduced Palestine to a humanitarian crisis to manage in perpetuity rather than a political issue demanding principled and firm resolution: end permanent occupation, apartheid, and today genocide. And it is not the law that has failed or faltered — it is political will that has abdicated.
But today, we are also witnessing a rupture. Palestine’s immense suffering has cracked open the possibility of transformation. Even if this is not fully reflected in political agendas yet, a revolutionary shift is underway —…
Auteur: Francesca Albanese
