The Gaza peace paradox: Why reconciliation without recognition will fail

Just weeks after burying my six-year-old niece Juri—killed in Gaza by an Israeli airstrike—I found myself speaking at a peace conference in Paris. I had come not to accuse, but to engage. Not to rage, but to reason. I had come in hope.

But before that hope could take root, I received word that my 16-year-old nephew Ali had been killed—torn in half by a drone strike as he sat outside our last surviving family home. He was trying to escape the stifling heat in a house without electricity, water, or safety. His crime? Sitting still. Ali’s death wasn’t an accident. The drone hovered. It watched. It selected. And it struck.

So when I sat in that polished Parisian conference room, across from Israeli delegates who spoke of peace but refused to name what was happening in Gaza, I understood that we were not speaking the same language. I was speaking of bodies and craters. They were speaking of frameworks and timelines. I was asking to be seen. They were asking for patience.

The most disorienting part of the Paris conference wasn’t opposition—it was evasion. I came prepared for disagreement. What I encountered was something quieter, more unsettling: the persistent refusal to look.

No one wanted to talk about the children buried under rubble. About the targeted airstrikes on homes, hospitals, and schools. About the systematic starvation and blockades. Some called them “war crimes.” None called it genocide—even as a growing consensus of legal scholars, human rights organizations, and international bodies have described it exactly that way.

Even Israeli participants who sincerely claimed to support peace—some of whom had lost loved ones in the October 7 attacks—couldn’t bring themselves to acknowledge the scale of violence Gaza has endured. A few whispered agreement in private. But in the plenary room? Silence.

One Israeli woman asked whether Gazans could simply “leave for a while”—a stunningly casual suggestion, as if forced displacement was a neutral solution. I reminded her that exile is never temporary for Palestinians. She stormed out, saying: “You don’t want peace.” This exchange revealed something larger: many peace processes continue to be built around the emotional comfort of the powerful. Palestinians are asked to forgive without acknowledgement. To dialogue without dignity. To sit at tables where their reality is too inconvenient to name.

Denial doesn’t always come in the form of overt rejection. Often, it takes the shape of euphemism. The word “conflict” instead of “occupation.” “Self-defense” instead of “collective punishment.” “Crisis” instead of “catastrophe.”

In Gaza, over 37,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023. Entire families erased. Civilian infrastructure destroyed. Children starved. Journalists targeted. Medical staff overwhelmed. UN officials have warned repeatedly of ethnic cleansing and mass atrocity. South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice alleges genocide—and it is backed by mounting evidence and legal precedence.

And yet, at peace forums and diplomatic gatherings, to say “genocide” is still taboo. Why?

Because the word demands accountability. If this is genocide, then it is not just tragic—it is criminal. And if it is criminal, then those who fund it, excuse it, or fail to stop it are complicit. That is a line many are unwilling to cross, especially in Western capitals where Israeli state violence is often treated as justified, exceptional, or “complex.”

Even among those who speak of “coexistence” and “shared futures,” there remains a psychological resistance to accepting that Israeli policy toward Palestinians—especially in Gaza—is not just flawed but systemically inhumane. This resistance is not just moral failure. It is strategic blindness. Because no peace process can succeed if one side is asked to negotiate while burying its dead, and the other side is unwilling to admit it caused the deaths.

In Paris, I listened to Israeli attendees speak about their fear, grief, and trauma following the October 7 attacks. I did not dismiss it. I honored it. Loss is loss. Pain is pain.

But that same courtesy was rarely extended to me. When I spoke about Juri and Ali—children killed by targeted military action—I was met with quiet discomfort. Eyes averted. Heads bowed. As if my grief was too sharp, too raw, too politically inconvenient. Even some fellow Palestinians—those from the West Bank or the diaspora—seemed hesitant to speak plainly about Gaza. They talked strategy. I talked survival.

This imbalance is not just personal. It is structural. When Palestinian suffering is seen as “complicated” and Israeli suffering as “human,” the entire moral compass of diplomacy tilts. Peace becomes a performance—one that excludes the very people it claims to include. True coexistence requires shared recognition. Not just of history, but of harm. A peace built on silence is no peace at all.

The Paris meeting I attended was meant to lead to a major summit in New York. French President Emmanuel Macron had even promised to push for Palestinian state recognition. But the summit was postponed—quietly, indefinitely. No explanation. No urgency. This diplomatic pause, in the midst of a humanitarian catastrophe, speaks volumes. It tells Palestinians: your survival can wait. Your rights are negotiable. Your lives are not geopolitically urgent.

In truth, the world’s leading powers—especially the U.S. and EU—remain heavily invested in preserving Israel’s security narrative, even as that narrative increasingly relies on apartheid and population control. This is not diplomacy. This is delay dressed up as dialogue. And every day of delay means more death. More children buried. More parents grieving. More rubble where homes used to be.

Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the presence of justice. Real peace would require Israelis to do something extraordinarily difficult: confront the violence done in their name. Not as an abstraction, but in detail. The airstrikes. The displacement. The siege. The deaths. It would require Palestinian leaders to speak to pain without surrendering dignity. To show up, not as victims, but as equal partners with equal rights. It would require a shift in how the world treats Palestinian life. No more euphemisms. No more “both sides” framing. No more treating genocide as a PR issue.

It would mean state recognition. Legal accountability. Reconstruction led by Palestinians, not imposed by international donors. And above all, it would mean the right to stay. To return. To live freely on our land. Until these core conditions are met, the rest is performance.

Peace without recognition is betrayal. Dialogue without truth is denial. And reconciliation without justice is just another form of occupation. The refusal to name what is happening in Gaza for what it is—genocide—is not just cowardice. It is complicity. It is no longer enough to talk about “complexity.” The facts are clear. The suffering is immense. The moral stakes are high.

Those who want peace must be brave enough to tell the truth, even when it implicates their side. Especially then. And those who have lost—children like Juri, teenagers like Ali—must be seen not as statistics, but as reasons to build something radically different. Something based not on who gets to speak, but who gets to live.