Why the Architects of Erasure Will Not Succeed in Gaza

The men in Western capitals who are making decisions about Gaza have no real understanding of its people. They do not know their history, their lineage, their culture, or their deep roots in the land. And now, added to them, are the rich and insulated men who have never associated with ordinary people even in their own countries—men who have never known hunger, fear, displacement, or the sound of bombs in the night.

These are the men who presume to determine the fate of a people who have lost their homes, their family members, and their limbs. They dine together on champagne and caviar, slap each other on the back for their “strategizing,” and congratulate themselves on their cleverness—while entire families are being erased and a wounded people are reduced to numbers in briefing papers.

Yet this is exactly what is happening. Men in Armani suits, taking their directives from a president who does not even know the geography of the region—much less its history—are now presiding over a grotesque tribunal whose real concern is not justice or peace, but real estate, luxury projects, and the protection of the occupiers. It is a scene reminiscent of the Dark Ages of Europe, when humanity was set aside so that a handful of rulers could live in comfort and isolation, untouched by the suffering they decreed for others.

They shuttle back and forth in carefully staged visits, with the media serving as their marketing arm, recording their words as if they were gospel truth, while the victims of this genocide continue to languish in tents, under rubble, and in extreme heat and cold. To make themselves look important—and to pretend they are learners and peacemakers—they “consult” with the occupiers, bribe or threaten the dependent regimes surrounding Palestine in the name of their so-called noble mission, and then announce to the world their “progress” in bringing peace to the region.

What these men do not understand is that even while bombs rain down on us from the sky, we focus not only on surviving, but on succeeding.

Even before they began this so-called mission, these wealthy men were already complicit in the destruction of Gaza. They are on record describing Gazans as barbaric killers who must be “reined in” because a small number of armed resisters refused to submit quietly to life under brutal Israeli occupation. Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump and a close ally of Benjamin Netanyahu, has spoken openly about further ethnic cleansing. He was quoted as saying, “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”

When Steve Witkoff was asked whether a genocide was taking place in Gaza, he replied, “Absolutely not… No, no… there was a war being fought.” This, despite the fact that many major human rights organizations and genocide scholars—including Jewish and Holocaust experts—have described what is happening in Gaza as genocide.

As for Tony Blair, he has never seen a Western war he did not like. He was among the first to support the invasion of Iraq, took part in the Kosovo war, and remains an ardent supporter of Israel and its occupation. These men—and their wealthy Arab collaborators—see no problem in deciding the fate of the Palestinians without a single Palestinian at the table.

Their aim is clear: to keep Israel armed and protected as it continues what it has been doing since 1948—ethnically cleansing, colonizing, and reshaping Palestine in their so-called enlightened Western image and their so-called democracy.

They see Gaza only through maps, military briefings, and political calculations—not through the lives of human beings who carry memory, dignity, and an unbroken history in their very bones. You cannot govern, partition, or destroy a people you have never taken the time to know.

Yet as a Palestinian, I am not shocked or surprised by these delusions. I am not even discouraged by the scale of destruction or the theater of cruelty disguised as diplomacy. After all, our history is riddled with empires and conquerors. Palestine has been subjected to waves of imperial conquest and colonial rule for thousands of years—and yet we, the Indigenous people of this land, remain.

What these men do not understand is that even while bombs rain down on us from the sky, we focus not only on surviving, but on succeeding. While every university in Gaza has been destroyed, surviving professors have continued teaching and training new doctors to replace the many medical workers who were killed. What they will never understand is that children whose limbs were severed by bombs are forming soccer teams and playing the game they love on crutches.

What these so-called peacemakers will never understand is this: The men, women, and children whose fate they are trying to decide come from a lineage that has outlived every empire, outlasted every conqueror, and will still be here long after these architects of destruction have been forgotten.