Image courtesy of Rachel Corrie Fund.

We have long argued that the Israeli war and genocide in Gaza must catalyze a change in the overall political discourse on Israel and Palestine, particularly regarding the need to free Palestine from the confines of victimhood. This shift is necessary to create space where the Palestinian people are seen as central to their own struggle.

It is unfortunate that centering a nation in a conversation about its own freedom from colonialism and military occupation requires years of advocacy. But this is the reality Palestinians face—often due to circumstances far beyond their control.

As outrageous as US President Donald Trump’s comments about purchasing Gaza were, they were a crude interpretation of a pre-existing culture that viewed Palestinians as marginal actors in their own story. While previous US administrations and their Western allies didn’t use such blatant language as Trump’s “taking over the Gaza Strip” they did treat Palestinians as irrelevant to how the West perceived the “solution” to the “conflict,” a language that rarely adhered to international and humanitarian laws.

For many Palestinian intellectuals, the fight for justice has been waged on two fronts: one to challenge global misconceptions about Palestine and the Palestinian people, and the other to reclaim the narrative altogether.

Recently, I have argued that reclaiming the narrative by centering Palestinian voices is not enough. Many of these supposedly “authentic” Palestinians do not represent........

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