It was late evening in Ramallah when the news hit: another settlement expansion, rubber-stamped by a coalition that treats peace as a four-letter word. A Palestinian official, voice flat with exhaustion, told reporters: “We’re going backwards.” Backwards from what? From the last fragile illusion that two peoples could share this land without one side strangling the other. That’s not diplomacy. That’s a slow-motion foreclosure on a nation.
Netanyahu’s decision—fresh housing units in territory the entire world, including his own security chiefs, calls occupied—isn’t an anomaly. It’s the logical endpoint of a decade of policy that has systematically dismantled any conceivable Palestinian state. Every new settlement is a nail in the coffin, and the coffin is now so full of nails it looks like a porcupine.
But here’s the part that should make you angry: the international community watches. It issues statements. It clucks its tongue. It expresses “deep concern.” Then it moves on to the next trade deal, the next arms sale, the next photo-op. We’ve become so numb to the ritual that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to demand consequences.
The Peace Process Is a Carcass—And Nobody’s Mourning
Let’s call it what it is. The Oslo Accords, the Camp David summits, the endless “negotiations” — they weren’t a path to peace. They were a treadmill designed to give the appearance of movement while the ground beneath the Palestinian position was quietly stolen. Every round of “talks” produced more settlements, more checkpoints, more land seizures. At some point, you have to stop calling a process that only goes in one direction a “process.” It’s a pretext.
“We’re going backwards.” — A Palestinian official, encapsulating two decades of diplomacy in three words.
What’s the actual goal here? If the answer is “two states living side by side,” then the state of Palestine has been reduced to a series of Bantustans—fragmented, besieged, and economically dependent on the very power that’s eating it alive. If the answer is “one state,” then it’s an apartheid state by definition, because you can’t have a democracy where one group has all the rights and the other is a permanent underclass. There is no third option left. And the world’s silence is a vote.
The Settler Floodgates Are Open—And the World Shrugs
Let’s get specific. The latest approval is for thousands of units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. That’s not “natural growth.” That’s a land grab, executed with the precision of a surgeon and the moral clarity of a drunk. The settler population has swelled to nearly 700,000—up from around 100,000 at Oslo. In the time it takes to sign a memorandum of understanding, another caravan appears on a hilltop, another road is paved, another village’s access to water is cut.
And what does the United States do? It mumbles something about “unilateral actions” being “unhelpful.” The European Union issues a statement that reads like it was written by a committee of indifferent interns. The United Nations holds a vote, and Israel, backed by its patron, simply ignores it. At some point, “concern” is just a synonym for complicity.
What Right Do We Have to Talk About Peace?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the international community has been an accomplice. Every time we refuse to sanction settlements, every time we veto a resolution condemning them, we’re saying that Israeli security trumps Palestinian rights, that the occupied have no claim to justice. We’ve turned “peace” into a euphemism for “stability”—meaning the stability of the occupation, not the stability of a just order.
I’ve covered this conflict long enough to know there are two narratives, and both are soaked in blood. But there’s a difference between a narrative and a reality. The reality is that one side has all the power, all the guns, all the support. The other has international law on its side—and what good has that done? It’s like bringing a legal brief to a bombing.
The Grim Arithmetic of Demographics and Time
Demographics don’t lie. Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, the population is roughly half Jewish, half Palestinian. If you want a Jewish democracy, you can’t rule over millions of stateless people forever—unless you’re willing to admit that “democracy” is a word you use only for some. The settlements are making a two-state solution physically impossible. The math is simple: you can’t divide a cake that’s already been eaten.
So what’s left? The Palestinians are talking about “going backwards” because there’s nowhere else to go. Forward is a wall. Backward is the sea. And the world’s response is to tell them to be patient, to be peaceful, to wait for the right moment. They’ve been waiting since 1948. They’ve been waiting since 1967. They’ve been waiting since Oslo. How many generations must wait before we admit that the waiting is the point?
Stop Clapping for the Ritual
I’m tired of the empty gestures. I’m tired of the “peace summits” that produce nothing but photo opportunities. I’m tired of hearing leaders speak of their “commitment to a two-state solution” while their settlements grow like tumors. Either you want peace, which means equality and a viable state, or you want what you have now, which is a slow-motion ethnic cleansing—not genocide, but the quiet kind, where you take the land and the water and the hope until the other side simply has nothing left to fight for.
Every new settlement is a nail in the coffin, and the coffin is now so full of nails it looks like a porcupine.
Netanyahu’s decision is just the latest example. The “peace process” is dead. It’s not wounded; it’s not on life support. It’s a corpse, and the vultures are circling. The only question left is whether the international community will have the courage to call it what it is—or keep pretending that a funeral is a negotiation.
The Verdict We Keep Avoiding
Here’s my bottom line: If you believe in peace, you have to be an equal-opportunity critic. And if you can’t bring yourself to criticize the side that holds all the cards, then you’re not for peace—you’re for the status quo. And the status quo is a slow death for the Palestinian dream. So let’s stop calling it a “process.” Let’s call it what it is: a deliberate, ongoing dismantling of a people’s right to a homeland. And then, maybe, we can start talking about what justice actually looks like—because until we do, “we’re going backwards” will be the most optimistic thing anyone can say.
