Giving Peace a Real Chance Must Include Refusing to Normalize Genocide

And what about peace? Despite his delusions of grandeur, Trump did not achieve “peace in the Middle East.” Nor, as he ridiculously claimed, did it take “3,000 years to get to this point.” Instead, what we have is a ceasefire agreement that may largely hold if heavily enforced—and then a bunch of outstanding questions. Actual peace requires dealing with the question of Palestinian self-determination, which Israel and Washington remain unwilling to do. This week, however, did provide an interesting foreshadowing of how things may play out moving forward.

While Trump traveled to the region for his glorious peacemaking achievement, it was noteworthy that he couldn’t get everybody around one table. Instead, he had to go to Israel separately, then join the rest of the world in Egypt. The international community, except for Israel, the United States, and perhaps Micronesia, are more united than ever behind the principle of Palestinian self-determination. Israel, however, seems more opposed to that than ever, setting itself on a course for continued confrontation with, and isolation from, the rest of the globe, even if it has hit pause on the genocide.

While there is no clear path toward a broader peace at this moment, there is a far more dangerous dynamic evolving that could put finding a path to peace even further away: the normalization of genocide. For two years, the world has witnessed a daily cadence of war crimes by the Israeli military, from the wanton killing of civilians to the deliberate starvation and collective punishment of the population, the mass destruction of civilian infrastructure, and gruesome crimes and sadistic celebrations of them posted by Israeli troops themselves. We cannot simply turn the page from this after a photo op in Egypt.