The Case for Hope for Palestinians

The current reality for Palestinians is nothing short of cataclysmic.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to health authorities there. Ninety percent of its 2.3 million people have been uprooted and most civilian infrastructure reduced to rubble. Israel’s ongoing assault on the enclave is already the deadliest episode and largest forced displacement in Palestinian history.

Although less apocalyptic, the situation is also disastrous in the West Bank, where at least 800 Palestinians have been killed in frequent raids by the Israeli Army and Israeli settlers’ unchecked terror since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. It is the deadliest violence in the territory in more than two decades, and Palestinians’ feckless, ossified and visionless leadership has failed them throughout.

These are all grim realities, whose long-term consequences remain unknowable. But there are also powerful forces working in Palestinians’ favor that cannot be overlooked. The rapidly growing international solidarity movement, the historic prospect of the international community holding Israel to account and the Palestinians’ own extensive reservoir of talent and resilience hold out the promise that there is, despite the depth of the current crisis, a better future ahead.

Like other cataclysmic moments in Palestinian history, the continuing Gaza catastrophe will leave an indelible imprint on Palestinians’ national consciousness. A war that has killed more than 17,000 children and unleashed widespread starvation and disease could do nothing less. Left to fester, the human suffering and collective trauma, combined with a breakdown in social order in Gaza and a growing sense of despair, are precisely the conditions that could lead to generations of instability and violence.

In the near term, Palestinians will also face a new challenge: the incoming Trump administration. Donald Trump’s record during his first term as president and since his re-election leave little to the imagination. Despite positioning himself as “antiwar,” Mr. Trump has reportedly vowed to place even fewer constraints on weapons to Israel than the Biden administration. Mr. Trump’s recent proposed appointments, including the former governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and the former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, not only seem to believe in a “Greater Israel” and oppose Palestinian self-determination but also appear to share the messianic zeal of the most extreme elements in Israeli politics, embodying a worldview that actively erases Palestinians. Meanwhile, many in Mr. Trump’s circle are vowing to clamp down on pro-Palestinian activism across the United States.

But there is an opportunity for a different future. Such attempts to silence Palestinian voices are themselves a response to one of the Palestinians’ most powerful tools: the global recognition of the justice of their cause. Unlike in 1948, when the state of Israel was founded and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled, or in 1967, when Israel occupied Palestinian lands after the Arab-Israeli War, today there is an international solidarity movement committed to Palestinian liberation. It is mobilized like never before.