Palestine is shrinking every day

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu continue to give a thumbs up for deals aimed at legitimizing genocide. 

Avi Ohayon GPO/Polaris

As a Palestinian in Gaza, I can’t imagine a hopeful future, even if a ceasefire is announced soon. What lies ahead feels even more terrifying than what we’ve already endured, not only because of the vast destruction but because our genocide has become background noise to “peace talks.”

After 21 months of slaughter, in which more than 59,000 Palestinians have been killed, Arab governments appear to still be moving toward normalizing relations with Israel. It is hard to believe that Israel is being rewarded after ruining our lives, instead of being held accountable.

This feels like a betrayal.

When I hear Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump celebrating what they call the Abraham Accords as a historic deal, I feel excluded and humiliated, as if my people and I aren’t worthy of life.

Because simply to normalize relations with Israel at this moment is to ignore apartheid, occupation and state terror. It conveys the message that the daily killing of Palestinians, the starvation of our children and older people, the bombing of hospitals, the torture of prisoners, the theft of land and the ongoing ethnic cleansing can all be justified.

Normalization legitimizes indifference to the shedding of our blood, and Israel sees this indifference as a victory. As Zvi Sukkot, a member of the Knesset – Israel’s parliament – said earlier this year, “Tonight, we killed nearly 100 people from Gaza, and no one cares.”

Erasure

Palestine is shrinking every day. We live under forced displacement, while settlements expand and the Israeli occupation becomes more entrenched.

Ironically, Palestine is becoming a foreign body in its own land.

I have never felt this erasure as I feel it now. I’m currently living in the western part of Gaza City, and the area feels like a sardine can.

Whenever I step outside, all I see are tents. Families who were forced to flee from the north and east now crowd into every corner of this shrinking space.

As the occupation expands, the areas we’re allowed to live in keep disappearing. According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, each person in Gaza is crammed into less space than that allocated to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

Even if the Israeli army withdraws, it wouldn’t mean anything because the places it will leave behind are no longer livable. There are no homes, no hospitals, no schools, no infrastructure.

People would be forced to remain in the west of Gaza simply because it’s slightly less destroyed. This is all compounded by the fact that Israel is pushing for buffer zones that will swallow even more of our land.

This is exactly what settler colonialism means: to remove the Indigenous people, replace them with settlers, normalize their absence, and rewrite the narrative as if they were never there.

Every time a country recognizes Israel, it tightens its grip on the region. That is why Israel does not stop violating and destroying everything Palestinian.

Whether through warplanes and tanks in Gaza, settler attacks in the West Bank or the illegal strangulation of Jerusalem, the goal is the same: to make Palestine disappear and to make the world gradually accept this disappearance as something normal.

Bargaining with our blood

The Abraham Accords, first signed before the current genocide, have taken root from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to Morocco and Sudan. Now, under Trump’s renewed push for normalization in 2025, even more countries are being drawn into this romantic affair with Israel.

On a visit to Riyadh in May, the US president declared that it was his “dream” to bring Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords.

Saudi Arabia reportedly paused talks on normalizing relations with Israel after the Gaza genocide began. The Saudis have made the resumption of talks conditional on a ceasefire.

And the US has indicated it expects swift moves toward normalization once a ceasefire takes effect.

Is Palestinian blood being used as a bargaining currency?

Syria’s leadership also has hinted at possible normalization.

Lebanon is under US pressure to normalize with Israel. Tunisia’s stance appears to be shifting and Algeria’s president has said he would recognize Israel if a Palestinian state is established.

Yet Israeli leaders repeatedly declare that they will never accept an independent Palestinian state. Even the symbolic two-state illusion isn’t required anymore, so what is left?

What comes after genocide?

Normalization is not new. It began with Egypt’s Camp David deal in 1978, followed by Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

Each time, Israel gained more international legitimacy and material rewards, while we – the Palestinians – were only offered symbolic promises that never turned into something real.

The Oslo accords signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1990s were supposed to be a turning point. However, more than 30 years later, we still don’t have a Palestinian state.

Instead, there are more illegal settlements, more military aid from the US to Israel, and deeper internal divisions.

The Oslo accords became a framework that enables or even protects the occupation, rather than ending it.

Then came the Abraham Accords, where Israel no longer needs to hide its apartheid policies or pretend to pursue peace.

The result? Genocide.

It is devastating that, despite all the bloodshed and destruction, these deals continue to advance, met with indifference to everything we have lived through.

So, what comes after genocide?

In Gaza, people discuss the news on Telegram chats.

Some are angry about normalization. Most aren’t surprised.

Some say, “End the genocide first, then do whatever you want.”

We are drowning in exhaustion. The ceiling of our expectations has collapsed.

Survival is the only dream we’re allowed.

Normalization gives Israel a green light to commit crimes against us at will and turns our resistance into a crime. It extinguishes any spark of hope for a better future before that spark can ignite.

After months of bombing, starvation and displacement, I fear what comes next. I no longer dream of a free Palestine.

We may soon lose the last fragments of our homeland, scattered like disconnected islands within a Jewish state that denies our existence.

I am not hopeful. I am terrified.

And I don’t need a crystal ball; I have lived in Gaza long enough to know the Israelis won’t stop.

Malak Hijazi is a Gaza-based writer.

Tags