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palestinians
The Israeli Government Is the Real Threat to Peace and Stability in the Region
Instead of placing the burden of reform solely on the Palestinians, the U.S., Western Europe, and the Arab states should take concrete measures to force Israel to end its occupation.
Jul 08, 2025
Last week, the United Nations was scheduled to convene a special session promoting a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Israel’s attack on Iran and the deadly exchanges that followed resulted in a postponement. While the rest of the world may have the luxury of tuning in or out to the plight of the Palestinian people, the situation in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem only worsens. Their dire state is compounded by the feckless response of most nations to the ongoing tragedy. Instead of definitively condemning the genocide and the occupation, the best they can muster are hollow and sometimes banal pronouncements urging the parties to negotiate (as if there were something about which to negotiate) or professions of their support for a two-state solution (as if that were even possible at this point).
This hasn’t stopped some from proposing “peace plans,” calling for international peacekeepers, a “reformed Palestinian Authority,” and a disarming of Hamas. But these proposals also ignore two important realities: Israel’s rejection of every element of every plan put forward to date, and the fact that the Israeli occupation is so entrenched and has so distorted the realities on the ground in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem that the way forward to Palestinian independence has become far more complicated than it was at the time of the Oslo accords.
To better understand where we are and what must be done, my company has conducted annual polls in the occupied lands in order to assess Palestinian attitudes toward their current situation and their hopes for the future. What comes through quite clearly in these surveys is that the Palestinians in all three areas are in deep distress. As a result of the unique burdensome conditions Israel has imposed on them, there are distinct differences in the opinions of respondents in each area—toward their governance, the threats they face, and their hopes for the future. These cannot be ignored.
The bottom line from our three years of polling is that the unique circumstances that Israel has imposed on Palestinians have created greater complexity in finding a path forward.
For two decades, Gaza was severed from the rest of the Palestinian population and economically strangled by Israel, with Hamas being both punished and then rewarded by the Israeli government which sought to foster a division in Palestinian ranks. This was accomplished, enabling Hamas to grow in strength.
Israel’s war on Gaza has had devastating consequences for Palestinians. Our findings were able to quantify the magnitude of their losses. Almost two-thirds report having been forced to evacuate their families four or more times in the first 18 months. Most have lost family members. A full 70% say that their homes have been totally destroyed, with majorities reporting extreme scarcity of food, water, medical services, and adequate shelter.
The three-decades-long enforced closure of East Jerusalem has severed the city’s Palestinians from their compatriots in the rest of the occupied territories. Before closure, Palestinians from the West Bank came to Jerusalem for employment and services. After closure, Palestinians in East Jerusalem lost their customers, clients, and income, and were forced to become incorporated into the Israeli economy. Since October 7, our polls show majorities reporting heightened levels of economic and political distress.
There is also increased economic insecurity in the West Bank. Because Israeli policies retarded independent economic development, the two largest employers of Palestinians in the West Bank became securing permits to work as day laborers in Israel or Israeli settlements or working for the Palestinian Authority. After the war, Israel suspended work permits and restricted the transfer of Palestinian tax revenues to the PA, forcing the PA to reduce salaries. As a result, there has been a tripling of unemployment in the West Bank and an increased impoverishment of the population.
What has also grown are the severity of threats experienced by Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, emanating from settler violence, home demolitions, land seizures, forced expulsions, and raids from Israeli security forces. As a result, Palestinians report feeling increasingly threatened and insecure.
Our findings also demonstrate a Palestinian crisis of confidence in their own leadership. Palestinians in Gaza want little to do with Hamas, while those in the West Bank have diminished regard for the role of the PA. Gazans increasingly blame both Hamas and Israel for the war, and three-quarters of West Bank Palestinians are dissatisfied with the PA’s overall performance in response to the conflict. The PA, which once conveyed the promise of a Palestinian future, has increasingly come to be seen as humiliated by Israel, or even as an agent of the occupation.
These factors combined—the devastation created by the war and Israeli policies that have negatively impacted and created a loss of confidence in their leadership—define the crisis confronting Palestinians today. They know what they want—independence, security, an improved economy and better jobs, and improved services—but don’t see a clear path forward.
Flowing from this, our poll findings point to some disturbing signs of despair. When asked for their preferred strategies moving forward, the plurality of respondents in the West Bank and Gaza say they just want the situation to revert to pre-October 7 but with better paying jobs, and improved services and quality of life. And despite the finding that a majority of Gazans and a plurality of West Bank Palestinians still favor a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, almost two-thirds of respondents in all three areas say that, given current political conditions and facts on the ground, they believe the situation is now close to a one-state reality in which Israel controls Palestinians throughout Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.
The bottom line from our three years of polling is that the unique circumstances that Israel has imposed on Palestinians have created greater complexity in finding a path forward. Current efforts of the international community focus on what Palestinians must do. But the real threat to peace and stability is the Israeli government which has rejected any and all proposals that call for an end to their assault on Gaza, withdrawal of their forces, a role for the PA in Gaza, and any suggestion that Palestinian independence or sovereignty be on the agenda. It is this intransigence that must be addressed. Instead of placing the burden of reform solely on the Palestinians, the U.S., Western Europe, and the Arab states should take concrete measures to force Israel to end its occupation, impose an international trusteeship with a peacekeeping force in the occupied territories, and make a long-term commitment to assisting Palestinians in establishing representative governance in an independent sovereign state—all of which our polling shows majorities or pluralities of Palestinians support.
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The US and Israel’s War on Iran and the Lie of ‘Peace Through Strength’
It may be strength, but it is the antithesis of peace. Unless peace means butchered children, shredded international treaties, destroyed TV news buildings, and mass famine.
Jun 23, 2025
Israel’s plan after October 7, 2023 was to take out Hamas and Hezbollah, crush Palestinians through genocide and starvation, and conduct repeated crackdowns in the West Bank. Once these goals were met and Iran’s “forward defense” was neutralized, the next in line was to go after the one country in the Middle East whose government actively (albeit mostly rhetorically) opposes U.S.-Israeli control of the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially claimed that Israel launched war on Iran to take out its nuclear industry, which was supposedly on the verge of building nuclear weapons, a false claim he has parroted for over 30 years. However, now as before, U.S. intelligence and international experts have said that Iran is three years away from making a bomb.
Yet after the U.S. entered the fray and attacked three underground facilities in Iran on June 21, Israel has expanded its goal to not only destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities but also to eliminate its military capability, including its ballistic missile arsenal. Apparently, when Israel attacked Iran unprovoked earlier in June, Iran should not have retaliated but rather accepted what the new rising hegemon had in store.
Throughout Iran’s modern history, it has never started a war, unlike Israel, the U.S. and Arab countries, such as Egypt and Iraq.
Netanyahu thanked U.S. President Donald Trump, the so-called anti-interventionist (wasn’t that W.’s stance in the 2000 campaign, too?) for doing Israel’s dirty work and invoked the Reagan “peace through strength” adage.
Yet, beside Israel’s keeping the non-Jewish population under its control without any rights, partially in an outdoor prison and partially on land that can be confiscated by settlers at any minute, before Israel conducted more targeted strikes in October 2024, there was peace (though uneasy) between the two countries. The only related semi-proxy conflicts between the two were in 2006, when Hezbollah fought Israel, and after October 7. In each case, although largely armed by Iran, Hezbollah made its decisions according to its own interests; in 2006, Hezbollah fought Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon after killing three Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two to gain the release of Lebanese prisoners and, more recently, against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Throughout Iran’s modern history, it has never started a war, unlike Israel, the U.S., and Arab countries, such as Egypt and Iraq. While Iran may have fiery, anti-imperialist rhetoric that, under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, verged on the antisemitic, and an unorthodox defensive strategy of arming non-state actors, such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, it is a rational state actor concerned with its own regime survival that does not seek international conflict. Even when Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in July 2024 or in response to other unprovoked Israeli attacks in April and October 2024, Iran offered only minimal responses to avoid escalation.
The “peace” that Netanyahu claims he wants through strength existed between the countries before Israel’s attacks in 2024. Rather than deescalating and solving its problems with all of its neighbors in one fell swoop by ending the Gaza genocide and offering the Palestinians a shred of rights, Israel chose more illegal violence. Knowing that the most spineless and most beholden U.S. government—to the anti-peace, pro-Israel Evangelical and Zionist lobbies—would back it, Israel determined the time was right to pursue its advantage to the utmost. It would pursue greater control of the Middle East during the U.S. imperial pullback. This would allow it to create Greater Israel, by expanding its borders permanently into Syria and Lebanon, and complete the second Nakba by dispossessing remaining Palestinians from their homeland. Israel’s strategy of regional hegemony looks closer to the 13th-century invasions of much of Eurasia by the Mongols than a nation-state doing “forces of civilization” a favor.
It may be strength, but it is the antithesis of peace. Unless peace means butchered children, shredded international treaties, destroyed TV news buildings, and mass famine.
Yet whatever the genocidal leader and his U.S. wannabe dictator lackey say, it may increase their popularity at home. Unfortunately, both Israel and the U.S. have a martial culture that creates heroes out of those who perpetrate out-group mass violence. Each country has been fed “patriotic” versions of their history in which their nations could do no wrong in the past, nor, hence, in the present. And most politicians, even many Democrats, follow, wagging their tails.
Although, of course, now the tail has wagged the dog.
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The Next 48-140 Hours Are Critical for the Movement to End the Gaza Genocide
Within days, the Gaza Flotilla Sailboat with 12 onboard will reach the “Danger Zone.” How will the world respond?
Jun 07, 2025
Within 48 hours, the Israeli military will have killed hundreds more Palestinians in Gaza who are being starved to death, many killed this week as they were enticed by food into killing zones.
Within 48 hours, more Palestinian children will die from U.S. bombs dropped from Israeli drones and jets.
Within 48 hours, nations of the world will have again and again refused to take any concrete measures to force the government of Israel to stop the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Gaza Flotilla Sailboat Madleen
Yet, also within 48 hours, a small sailboat named Madleen will arrive near Gaza. (Watch on the https://t.me/FFC_official_channel, follow on Flotilla Instagram, and watch progress on a map here or here.)
Within 48 hours, 12 brave souls in the Madleen—Flotilla Steering Committee members Thiago Avila, Brazil and Yasemin Acar, Germany; Rima Hassan, French-Palestinian member of European Parliament; Dr. Baptiste Andre, France; Al Jazeera Mubasher correspondent Omar Faiad, France; Pascal Maurieras, France; Reva Viard, France; Yanis Mhamdi, France; Suayb Ordu, Turkiye; Sergio Toribio, Spain; Greta Thunberg, Swedish climate activist; and Marco van Rennes, The Netherlands—will carry the solidarity of citizens of the world to those in Gaza and the West Bank for the ending of the genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Within 48 hours, the 12 volunteers on the Madleen will most probably be stopped in international waters, arrested, taken against their wills to a place they do not want to go, imprisoned, and then deported… from Israel.
Only we the citizens can force our governments to isolate, boycott, and sanction the genocidal Israeli government to make them stop.
Within 48 hours, the 12 will be interrogated, possibly beaten and tasered, but probably treated much better than Palestinians in the prison who are stripped, humiliated, and starved.
Within 60 hours, the diplomatic missions of the 12, consular officers of the embassies of France, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Turkiye, Sweden, and the Netherlands will arrive at the prison to talk with the citizens of their country.
Within 60 hours, brave lawyers accredited in Israel who associated with the Freedom Flotilla will arrive to advise the 12.
Within 60 hours, Israelis horrified at the genocidal actions of their government will protest in the cities of Israel.
Within 72-96 hours, an Israeli court will declare that the 12 on the Madleen entered Israel illegally and were a threat to the national security of Israel and will deport the 12.
Within 100-120 hours, the 12 will arrive at their home countries, hopefully to a warm, warm welcome to those who oppose the genocide of Gaza.
Within 120-140 hours, the Global March to Gaza will bring 3,000 persons from 35 countries by air to Egypt to demand food trucks be allowed into Gaza.
Within 120-140 hours, the Overland Convoy to Break the Siege on Gaza—Sumud will bring 7,000 persons by land to Egypt to demand an end to the genocide.
Within 700 days, within 900 days the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza will end?
Or will it?
Only we the citizens can force our governments to isolate, boycott, and sanction the genocidal Israeli government to make them stop killing the last Palestinians and destroying the last of the remains of the Palestinian presence in Gaza.
Keep pushing, protesting, sailing.
The Gaza Freedom Flotilla will sail until the Israeli blockade and genocide of Gaza ends and Palestine is Free.
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