(Photo by The White House via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
Note: This article is the first part of a three-part article series analyzing the history and deception of Israel’s occupation of Palestine on the domestic and international stage.
On October 9th, 2025, the United States (U.S.), Hamas, and Israel signed Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan. The plan stated that if both parties accepted the proposal, the war would cease immediately. Israeli troops would then pull back to the designated boundary in preparation for the release of hostages. Throughout this period, all military activities would halt, and the front lines would remain fixed until the terms of a phased withdrawal were met. Israel would commit to neither occupying nor annexing Gaza. Importantly, the plan established a viable process toward Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which is fundamental to the Palestinian Peoples.
Israel has brazenly continued military activity in Gaza while actively trying to occupy it to prevent Palestinians from ever forming a state. Despite repeatedly claiming it is committed to the ceasefire, Israel violated the ceasefire nearly 2000 times, killing at least 713 Palestinians. The Israeli government states it is committed to peace and a two-state solution, while making achieving these goals impossible.
The reality is that Israel has never sought a two-state solution. It adheres to ceasefires or peace agreements only after securing strategic objectives, such as expanding territory and weakening its opponents. For over 80 years, even before its founding, Israel has used the rhetoric of a two-state solution to mask its atrocities, justify ongoing conflict and land theft, and evade accountability.
Israel’s Violent Birth
Israel officially declared statehood at midnight on May 15th, 1948. The declaration followed the United Nations Resolution 181, which partitioned British Mandatory Palestine into two states under an economic union, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under UN administration. While Israel nominally accepted the proposal, it had its own plans that called for the ethnic cleansing and occupation of the entirety of Palestine.
Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, set these plans in motion even before Israel declared itself a state. Over 300,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their land. Most emblematic of this pre-declaration carnage was the Deir Yassin massacre.
On April 9th, 1948, the Stern Gang and Irgun, two Zionist militias, descended on the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and shot, burned, raped, murdered, decapitated, and dismembered people. The militia members even stole jewellery and other valuables from the villagers. Two future Israeli Prime Ministers were part of these barbarities, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. As news of this vicious attack spread, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled their villages, fearing theirs would be next.
Zionism itself is a political ideology that calls for the creation of Jewish ethno-state in the land of Palestine. A particularly horrifying element of this Zionist attack was that Deir Yassin had a non-aggression agreement with the Haganah, another Zionist militia. This peace agreement did not protect them.
The Nakba and the 1948 War
After the British occupation forces left Palestine, on May 15th, 1948, an all-out war broke out between the self-declared Israeli-state and the surrounding Arab states. Many Zionists claim that it was an inevitable defensive war, where the Arab states outnumbered Israel and attacked them. This could not be further from the truth.
In all credible troop estimates of the war, the Israeli forces outnumber the Arab forces, on the high end by a factor of 6 to 1. Israel also disrupted peace negotiations, before and during the war, even assassinating a UN mediator. Zionist militias ignored U.S.-mediated efforts in March 1948, seeking to prevent a declaration of statehood and stop all fighting, while the Arab countries accepted the efforts.
When Arab delegations met with their Israeli counterparts for peace negotiations during the war – often offering generous concessions to the Zionists – Israel would attack the delegations’ respective countries, rendering the talks useless.
(Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
These are not the actions of a peace-seeking party. Israel was founded on this practice of breaking peace agreements, and continues it to this day. Ultimately, Zionist attacks forced 750,000 Palestinians out of their homes. Palestinians call this year-long tragedy the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe.
First Intifada
After nearly 40 years of brutal colonization and occupation, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza revolted in December 1987. Palestinians dubbed this 6-year-long revolt the First Intifada, Arabic for uprising. The Intifada started after an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) truck crashed into a Palestinian civilian vehicle in the Gaza Jabalia Refugee Camp, killing 4 passengers. Palestinians saw the crash as deliberate and emblematic of the general disregard and violence Israel displayed towards them.
In the crash’s aftermath, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians rallied in the streets to protest, boycott, engage in civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent resistance. Palestinians refused to pay Israeli taxes, burned Israeli products, and most importantly, engaged in mass strikes, refusing to work in Israel. At the time, over 40% of the Palestinian workforce laboured in Israel.
The Palestinians organized themselves into “popular committees,” protecting their communities from Israeli violence and promoted Palestinian self-reliance and self-determination. These committees reclaimed some degree of control and independence from the Israeli occupation. Israel, enraged and fearing it was losing its grip on the occupied territories, reacted with the Iron Fist policy.
This openly called for beating Palestinians, including breaking their legs and arms, as then Defense Minister Yithak Rabin ordered. Rabin would later serve as Prime Minister and sign the Oslo Accords. Israeli soldiers and settlers went above and beyond Rabin’s orders. Israel killed over 1,100 Palestinians, injured another 100,000, and jailed another 175,000, of whom a large percentage Israel tortured.
Deceptive Mutual Recognition
Israel continued its aggressive tactics for the first three years of the Intifada. Only slowing in 1991 as President George H.W. Bush threatened to withhold 10 billion USD in loan guarantees if Israel did not stop settlement expansion. In Madrid, Israel started negotiating with Palestinian representatives from the occupied territories because it refused to talk to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), considering them terrorists.
However, during those talks, Israel covertly negotiated with the PLO, which recognized Israel in 1988, feeling they would be better able to extract concessions from the PLO, which they had exiled to Tunis years earlier, instead of Palestinians living through the occupation’s brutal reality. This cynical Israeli calculation paid off. In 1993, the PLO recognized “the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security”. Yet, in return, Israel only acknowledged the PLO as the Palestinian people’s sole representative.
The PLO renounced the armed struggle and recognized Israel. Israel merely stated they had to negotiate with the PLO and did not recognize a Palestinian state.
This “mutual recognition” amounted to an Israeli victory. This agreement between the two parties essentially amounted to a Palestinian capitulation to Israeli demands and power. This was not a peace accord. It was a declaration of Israeli domination. They would later codify this capitulation in the Oslo Accords.
Oslo Accords
Media often cites the Oslo Accords as the moment Palestine and Israel were closest to peace. However, the late Palestinian-American academic and activist, Edward Said, recognized the Oslo Accords for what they were: Palestinian capitulation to Israeli dominance.
The Oslo Accords cemented Israel’s power and control over all of Palestine, all while appearing to work towards a two-state solution. The initial Oslo Accord, signed in 1993, outlined the path forward to a state solution. It would be agreed over 6 years, ending in 1999, with a “final status agreement” that would “achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace” between Israelis and Palestinians.
(Photo by Vince Musi via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
What the Oslo Accords actually did was outsource Israel’s occupation of Palestine to the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA was intended only as a temporary measure that would eventually lead to full self-government in under 5 years. The Accords also called for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 armistice line, leaving the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip under full Palestinian control.
Occupation With a Friendly Face
Many in Palestine and the international community saw the establishment of the PA and Israel’s agreement to withdraw to the 1967 borders as a sign that the “peace process” was working. However, Said’s vision of the Accords was more accurate. Through the PA, Israel was now able to police Palestinians via proxy, maintaining its control without needing to provide the services an occupying power is required to.
Israel outsourced the security apparatus to the PA, saving it manpower and money, all while expanding its control over the occupied territories. The Accords divided the factions in the PLO, leading to a disunited Palestinian movement, enabling Israel to achieve its goals more easily. Israel employed the Oslo Accords as a divide-and-conquer strategy.
While the Palestinian movement fractured in the aftermath of the Accords, Israel expanded settlement activity, making a Palestinian state even less likely, despite ostensibly agreeing to an accord that would create a Palestinian state. These actions show how Israel was not interested in an honest peace process. It wanted to buy time and energy to regroup its forces and cement its domination over Palestine.
Divide and Conquer
The next step in the negotiations – Oslo II – further divided the West Bank into three areas: Area A was to be under complete PA control. These areas were supposed to be free of any Israeli presence. This area accounts for approximately 18% of the West Bank and contains 55% of the Palestinian population. Area B was to be under PA civil administration but under Israeli military control, constituting approximately 21% of the West Bank while containing 41% of the Palestinian population. Yet, Area C was to be under full Israeli control. The majority of the West Bank consists of the land, making up approximately 61% of the land. Area C has the majority of resources, fertile land, and settlement activity.
This division into the three areas was a disaster for any promise of Palestinian independence and statehood. It effectively turned the West Bank into a series of Palestinian islands, cut off from each other by a vast sea under Israeli control. Israel separated parts of Palestine from one another, implementing checkpoints and building walls preventing Palestinian unity and free movement, which was ironically better during the occupation. Israel used the allure of self-governance to cement its own domination and create an apartheid system where Israelis reign supreme.
Economic Colonialism
The Oslo Accords cemented physical control over Palestine and subordinated the Palestinian economy to Israel via the Paris Protocol. The Paris Protocol dictated how the Palestinians could manage their economy, and tied it directly to Israel’s. The economic linkage gave Israel control over the collection and distribution of Palestinian taxes, hollowing out Palestinian autonomy.
The Paris Protocol enabled Israel to change the taxes on a whim. It also established a customs union that gave Israel sole control of borders and forced Palestinian goods to run through Israeli ports. This structure allowed Israel to use port access and tax revenue as a weapon, making the PA even more dependent on Israel.
Since the agreement did not explicitly prevent Israel from stopping workers from entering its territory, it used that as additional ammunition against the PA, subordinating it even further. Like other aspects of the Oslo Accords, the Paris Protocol was meant to be temporary, lasting only five years, yet it remains largely in effect today. With the powers gained through the Oslo Accords and linked agreements, Israel orchestrated one of its greatest coups, the calculated failure of the Camp David Accords.
Lying as Warfare
From the Nakba to the latest “ceasefire”, Israel has deceived and lied to establish and assert its political project. Israeli leaders have repeatedly framed themselves as partners for peace while simultaneously undermining any action that would lead to genuine Palestinian sovereignty. Israel employed the rhetoric of ceasefires and a two‑state solution as a diplomatic shield rather than a roadmap to peace.
It has been a way to deflect international pressure, legitimize ongoing territorial expansion, and portray Palestinian resistance as an obstacle to stability and security. The 2025/2026 Gaza ceasefire violations are the latest iteration of a long‑standing doctrine to advance Israeli strategic aims. Until the international community challenges Israel’s deception and imposes peace, there can be no meaningful accountability, no genuine negotiation, and no path toward a just and lasting peace.
Edited by Gabrielle Andrychuk
