Phalapoem editor , 15/10/25
For more than seventy years, the people of Palestine have lived under occupation, displacement, and constant fear. Yet Israel continues to speak of peace — as if peace can coexist with the daily reality of walls, checkpoints, and military control.
How can a nation claim to seek peace while stealing another people’s land and demolishing their homes? How can anyone justify the coexistence or expansion of illegal settlements and the uprooting of families by invoking divine promises? No true faith can sanctify injustice, and no moral principle can excuse oppression.
Israel often presents itself as a perpetual victim — a small nation surrounded by threats. But how long can that false narrative hold when one side possesses overwhelming power and the other lives under siege? How can the powerful remain victims while the powerless are starved and buried under rubble?
Palestinians are not merely numbers in a headline. They are mothers waiting at checkpoints, children growing up under drones, families forced from their homes, and communities cut off from one another by concrete walls and barbed wire. These are not the marks of peace or self-defense — they are the signs of a people being slowly erased from their homeland.
The separation walls and thousands of checkpoints have not brought safety; they have deepened division. True peace cannot come from fear, domination, or the silencing of another nation’s identity. It must be rooted in justice, in the recognition that every human being — Israeli or Palestinian — deserves freedom, dignity, and security.
The Israeli nation cannot feel safe while making millions of Palestinians live in constant insecurity. It cannot speak of democracy while enforcing apartheid laws and denying basic rights to those living under its control. Peace will not be achieved through might or divine entitlement, but through empathy, equality, and the courage to face uncomfortable truths.
One day, history will ask who stood for justice and who turned away. The answer will depend on whether humanity values compassion over conquest and truth over silence.
Real peace can never be built upon another people’s suffering. It begins only when freedom is shared — not stolen.