A peace that never sees the light: Rethinking the mirage of peace in Palestine
In our world today, the term “peace” gets thrown around more than ever before—yet it feels like it’s lost a lot of its real weight. Leaders, big countries, and the news outlets keep talking about this “peace process,” but what we actually see on the ground is often just violence dressed up in a more polished, institutionalized way. The situation in Gaza really highlights this strange historical twist: where stopping a war doesn’t actually kick off any real peace, and every ceasefire is just a short break in what seems like an endless loop of pain and hardship.
Real peace goes way beyond just quieting down the guns and bombs; it means shaking up how power is distributed, bringing back basic human rights, and making sure there’s true political freedom. This piece takes a hard look at the usual “crisis management” strategies we see, and it uncovers how this fixation on wrapping up conflicts—while clinging to some fake idea of peace—actually keeps inequality going strong and blocks any shot at authentic, lasting peace.
The first part of this whole illusion shows up in the way global diplomacy talks about things—a narrative that sees war as something temporary, like a storm that passes, and peace as the default state that just happens naturally. But this ignores how violence is baked right into the system itself. For years now, Gaza hasn’t been so much a war zone as a testing ground for control, blockades, and handling crises. When world leaders talk about “bringing back calm,” what they’re really doing is giving a thumbs-up to keeping this shaky, unfair setup in place. In this mindset, Palestinians stop being real people with political voices and turn into just numbers in some aid report. So, peace isn’t about freedom being born; it’s more like putting a pause on any resistance—and that pause only lasts until the violence ramps up again.
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The second layer of this deception is tied up in the power dynamics of the region. Israel’s approach to security, with full backing from Western countries, has built a system where peace basically means giving in and adjusting to life under occupation. In this setup, any push to change how power works gets labeled as “extremism” or a “threat to security” right away. This kind of peace isn’t built on fairness; it’s all about keeping control. Every time Gaza gets rebuilt after a round of destruction, it’s not really about bringing life back—it’s about rebuilding the same dependencies that keep the political and economic chains in place. Peace, in this case, turns into a tool for enforcing political order.
The third angle on this mess involves the big global players and those who claim to be neutral mediators in the peace process. The US, the EU, and various international bodies wave the flag of “diplomatic neutrality,” but in reality, they’re just propping up an uneven power balance. They keep chanting things like “two states living side by side,” but without any real drive to end the occupation, they’ve made peace into this never-ending, pointless endeavor. Anything that actually puts justice at the center gets pushed to the sidelines fast. Being neutral in a world that’s already lopsided just keeps things as they are; so, peace, when it’s shielded by the powerful, ends up being nothing but oppression in disguise.
The fourth aspect digs into the ethical and human side of the crisis. In Gaza, everyday life has been stripped down to just getting by—where politics overshadows actual humanity. Aid from around the world looks like a kind act on the surface, but it often just holds up the inequalities and keeps people reliant. This turns peace into something decorative, a fancy word that, without real justice and respect, is just violence repackaged in nicer language. As long as Palestinians don’t have their sovereignty, freedom, and safety locked in, no deal or agreement can truly count as peace.
Looking at it through a theoretical lens, this setup is what you’d call negative peace—where the outright violence stops for a bit, but the underlying systems that create oppression stick around untouched. Positive peace, on the other hand, calls for rebuilding justice, sharing power more evenly, and acknowledging each other as equals. But the world we live in is stuck in that negative mode. What’s going on in Gaza is basically the ongoing recreation of an unfair system, where one side’s safety comes at the cost of wrecking lives on the other side. In this trade-off, justice gets thrown under the bus for peace—but peace without justice just becomes another way to inflict harm.
The fifth element points to a bigger crisis in world leadership. The major powers aren’t out to actually end wars anymore; they’re more interested in keeping them manageable and predictable. All those mediations, summits, and short-term deals have become platforms for haggling over influence, not for building peace. In the talk of international politics, peace has morphed into a kind of symbolic currency—valued for how it looks in the headlines, not for what it does for people’s dignity. In this environment, bringing up justice gets brushed off as dreamy idealism, while the “realism” of global affairs boils down to accepting a setup that hides violence behind diplomatic smiles.
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Against this backdrop, Donald Trump’s comeback to the world stage has sparked fresh arguments about America’s place in the Middle East. His 20-point “peace plan” for Gaza, which is supposed to bring stability via economic deals and security measures, isn’t really a fresh idea—it’s just recycling the same old “top-down crisis management” approach. If it’s pushed without a real grasp of the occupation’s history or a solid commitment to justice, it can only keep the current imbalances alive. A peace that’s forced from a position of strength is really just a forced quiet; as long as Palestinians are denied their sovereignty and right to decide their own fate, no plan—even one with Washington’s stamp—can lead to enduring peace.
In the end, the Gaza situation mirrors how the global system has failed at handling justice. Those international organizations that were set up in the name of peace and human rights now stay quiet in the face of Palestinian struggles. This quiet isn’t from not knowing; it’s a calculated choice. In a world where power logic has overtaken morals, peace has turned into a tradable item in politics. So critiquing peace in Gaza means critiquing the whole international setup that’s sidelined justice and turned humanity into a tool.
Genuine peace in Palestine won’t come from quick fixes or temporary pacts; it needs a whole new take on what justice means. As long as the world settles for juggling crises instead of tackling the deep-rooted causes of oppression, it’ll just keep spinning the same wheel of violence. Ceasefires and surface-level talks might offer a moment of quiet, but they don’t create peace. Lasting peace demands going back to basic human values, respecting self-determination, and putting an end to occupation—ideas that the current world order seems to blur on purpose. The core truth is this: peace can’t just be the guns going silent; it has to spring from justice. Only when Palestinians can live free on their own land will the word “peace” ring true without any sarcasm. Until that day, every “peace” pushed by the powerful is just violence wearing a different mask.
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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.