What Do Israelis Really Want to Achieve?

Phalapoem editor, 2/11/25

Since 1948, when Britain handed over Palestine to form the state of Israel, Palestinians have faced one of the longest and most painful experiences of ethnic cleansing , illegal brutal occupation, and erasure in modern history. More than 550 Palestinian towns and villages were wiped off the map by Israeli occupation army ; countless massacres were committed, and today, the tragedy continues in Gaza, where more than 68,000 civilians have been killed and over 250,000 injured. The Gaza Strip has been nearly erased from existence, and an entire population of 2 millions has been condemned to live in rubble, starvation, and despair.

Israel has built an apartheid state—one where rights and freedoms are reserved for Jews under laws designed to privilege one group and exclude another. Palestinians, on the other hand, live under illegal military rule, restricted by endless checkpoints, separation wall, and curfews, their land stolen for the construction of illegal settlements. What is left for them? What is left of their freedom, their dignity, or their homeland?

Palestinians tried everything. They resisted militarily for decades. Then, in 1992, they put down their weapons and signed the Oslo Accords, choosing peaceful negotiation over confrontation. But what did that bring? More illegal settlements. More walls. More humiliation. More checkpoints. Israel continued to steal land, refusing to recognize the Palestinians as a people with a right to exist, let alone the right to self-determination.

Israel rejects both the two-state and one-state solutions. What does that mean? It means a deliberate policy of maintaining the occupation indefinitely — a slow-motion ethnic cleansing disguised as “security.” It means a future in which Palestinians are expected to quietly disappear behind walls, stripped of hope and humanity, while the world looks the other way.

Are Palestinians supposed to thank their occupiers for stealing their land? Are they expected to protect illegal settlements, surrender their national identity, and live as second-class citizens in their own homeland? Israel crushes both armed resistance and peaceful initiatives like the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. If neither violence nor nonviolence is allowed, what options are left?

Israel declares itself a “Jewish state” — a homeland for one people only — as if God Himself granted them exclusive ownership of a land already inhabited by another nation. But faith should never justify oppression. No ancient scripture can legitimize the destruction of homes, the killing of children, or the denial of another people’s right to exist. The “Promised Land” does not give the right to erase those who have lived there for generations.

The painful question remains: what do Israelis really want? Do they seek peace or permanent domination? Do they want coexistence, or a land emptied of its native people? And what do Palestinians do now — after trying every possible path to justice, only to meet a wall of silence and indifference?

Israel has failed to erase the Palestinian identity, just as Palestinians have not succeeded in ending the occupation. Both peoples are trapped in a tragic cycle of fear and resistance. But while Israelis live behind walls of power, Palestinians live behind walls of concrete. One side fears losing privilege; the other fears losing existence itself.

How long can this continue before it explodes beyond repair? How safe will Israel ever be when millions of Palestinians remain stateless, dispossessed, and desperate — yet deeply attached to their land and history? Unlike many Israelis who came from Europe, Palestinians have no other home to return to. Their roots are buried deep in this soil.

The world once said, “Never again.” Yet it happens again — and again. Every American bomb dropped on Gaza, every olive tree uprooted, every checkpoint humiliation is a reminder that humanity’s conscience is asleep. The world cannot build a better future while repeating the same moral failures.

The question that should haunt every leader, every citizen, and every conscience is simple: what do Israelis really want to achieve — and at what cost to the soul of humanity?