Palestine’s past is our present: Why its story matters to us all
A new story has emerged out of the ashes of Gaza. It is the narrative of a people who have fought bravely and who have stood firm against the overwhelming military power and genocidal violence of the Israeli and US regimes.
Many Americans have begun to awaken from the US-Israeli Svengali-induced sleep. Israel's cruelty and injustice have been exposed, while Palestinian sumud (perseverance, steadfastness) has inspired.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. After more than eight decades of unimaginable hardship and suffering, the Palestinian people have refused to be removed from their land. The two largest militaries with the most lethal weapons have been unable to enforce, exact submission, or end the resistance.
What is uncertain, however, is whether humanity's conscience will be lulled back to sleep, or Gaza will be forgotten, as it was before October 7, 2023, and whether there will be any accountability for the US-backed Israeli genocide.
The Israeli propaganda network, abetted by the Western media, is currently focused on insuring that happens, that the world "moves on," and Israel returns as the occupying force that it was on October 6, 2023. Within one day of the "peace summit" in Egypt in October this year, for example, Israel violated the terms of the agreement, killing seven Palestinians and limiting the amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Tel Aviv's propaganda machine was swiftly set in motion with claims that Hamas violated the terms by failing to hand over the bodies of remaining prisoners. This, despite the fact that all sides, including Israel, acknowledged it would take time to retrieve the bodies buried beneath the rubble the Zionists had created.
Since the start of the October 10 ceasefire of this year, Israel has violated the agreement numerous times. Within nine days of the "declared end to the war," its forces had flouted the ceasefire 47 times, killing 38 Palestinians and wounding another 143.
For eight decades, Israel has been attempting to erase the history of Palestine, its culture, and its landmarks. In the last two years in Gaza and currently in the occupied West Bank, it has been mutilating the land to eliminate all that sustains life. Nearly 92 percent of Gaza has been turned into 60 million tons of debris, containing the remains of countless innocents.
How can people who claim they have a historic and biblical bond to the ancient land of Palestine, as Israelis have, completely destroy the "Holy Land" of the West Bank and Gaza, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world?
The answer is rooted in their perception of and relationship to the land. For Israelis, it is an exploitable resource, a source of potential wealth accumulation. For Palestinians, it is home.
The zeal and ferocity of its destruction can also be explained by the fact that modern Israel is an imperial-inspired foreign infliction transplanted into the heart of the Arab world.
To establish legitimacy for their political project in Palestine, Israel's European secular founders provided dubious links between past and present. They strategically and selectively used religious narratives and historical connections as tools in building an Israeli national identity and to legitimise the establishment of a Jewish state on alien land, strategies that continue to this day.
Hence, Israel and its American enablers are unable to appreciate that Palestine is the locus of Palestinian nationhood. They will never comprehend that the land has been a living archive of Palestinian history, language, and culture for 5,000 years. As an agrarian society, land has provided a shared sense of belonging and foundation for collective consciousness and national identity. Palestine has been a unifying force, especially since their homeland was recast as Israel in 1948.
Olive cultivation, engaged in for thousands of years, has been a vital part of the Palestinian economy, culture, and heritage. The ancient, deeply rooted olive trees, able to survive harsh conditions, are the perfect symbol of the Palestinian refusal to be displaced.
Since 1967, to further humiliate and break the back of Palestinian resistance, the Israeli army has illegally uprooted an estimated 800,000 to over one million Palestinian olive trees. In addition to land appropriation for the expansion of illegal colonies, economic control and intimidation, the destruction of orchards is the regime's attempt to undermine their connection to the land and to break Palestinian sumud.
Palestine is unique in the Arab world. When history began to be recorded in what is often referred to as the Middle East or West Asia, there was no Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, or any of today's Persian Gulf Arab states. But there was Gaza; there was Palestine.
The recorded history of Gaza spans 4,000 years. Under the administration of various empires, including the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Achaemenid Persian, and Roman, Gaza prospered. During the third century, it became part of the province of Palaestina Prima.
After it seized and occupied Gaza in 1967, Israel reduced the Strip to a concentration camp. Palestinians have, since then, been serving life sentences behind the sophisticated surveillance-equipped "iron wall" that surrounds Gaza. For them, the wall is a daily reminder of occupation and that their hopes and dreams for a future are out of reach.
Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif captured the essence of Palestine in his message to the world written prior to his assassination by Israeli forces: "I entrust you with Palestine—the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person." According to the United Nations, as of August 11, 2025, Israel, determined to suppress the truth, had killed 242 journalists.
From the Balfour Declaration (1917) to Trump's 20-point Gaza "peace" plan (2025), imperial powers have, for 108 years, manipulated and deceived to control Palestine. They have failed.
The future is uncertain unless the wrong committed a century ago, when an imperious British government technocrat gave away a land he did not own to European Zionists, is made right.
There are no ambiguities. Not only has Gaza revealed Israel's cruelty and lawlessness, it has also exposed the hypocrisy and ruthlessness of the American and British empires as well as the political, economic, and military systems that have supported it.
Unless those who have made Israel's modern-day genocide possible are held accountable, the global community may find itself living in what the 17th-century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, described as "war of all against all," a state of continuous wars, violence, and insecurity. Failing accountability and consequences for the perpetrators, inhumanity and lawlessness will become the standard.
Additionally, the international community can no longer accept Israel as it currently is—a violent apartheid settler-colonial entity. It is bound by international law to implement the mandate of the International Court of Justice to decolonise the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem).
Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, in 1968, prophetically spoke to where we are today. In his final speech the night before his assassination, he said that there is "no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence."
Palestine is more than a geographical place. It is a compelling idea. It cannot be erased, just as Palestinians' rightful demand to return home cannot be erased.
Dr M Reza Behnam is a political scientist who specialises in comparative politics with a focus on West Asia.
The unabridged version of the article was first published on CounterPunch on October 24, 2025.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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