Palestinian Political Time... How Did Israel Win It? And How Do We Reclaim It?

There are moments in the history of peoples when not only geography changes, but the direction of time itself changes. And I fear that the Palestinian issue has entered one of those moments.

For many years, Palestinians believed that time was working in their favor. They believed, and many in the world with them, that no matter how long the occupation lasted, it would remain an exceptional situation, that rights do not expire with time, and that the settlement project would ultimately clash with the will of a people clinging to their land, with international law that rejects occupation, and with a human conscience that cannot accept injustice forever.

But politics is not managed by intentions, but by the movement of facts.

Today, Israel appears to be fighting a completely different battle. It no longer seeks only to control the land, but to control the political time of the Palestinian issue, so that the passage of years becomes a strategic gain for it, not a burden.

This is the idea that explains most of what we are witnessing in the West Bank.

Settlement is no longer just about building new housing units, but has become a redrawing of the map. Bypass roads are no longer infrastructure projects, but tools to reshape Palestinian geography. As for the control over historical and archaeological sites, from Sebastia and Bir Haram al-Rama to Solomon's Pools and others, it is no longer a cultural matter, but an attempt to rewrite the narrative, and to confer historical legitimacy on a political project whose proponents know that force alone does not create legitimacy.

Whoever reads what is happening as a series of isolated decisions misses the bigger picture. These policies are not reactions, but parts of an integrated strategy based on one idea: that the occupation, with the passage of time, becomes normal, and that the facts imposed by force turn into realities that the world deals with as a fait accompli.

And here lies the most dangerous equation of the current phase.

The problem is not that Israel has become stronger, as the imbalance of power has been present since the beginning of the conflict. The problem is that political time has begun to work more in its favor than in favor of the Palestinians. And every year that passes, without a comprehensive national vision, turns in Israeli calculations into a new opportunity to consolidate facts, expand settlements, redefine the place, and reduce the space available for any just political solution.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this transformation is that Israel no longer acts as if it is managing an open conflict, but as if it is managing a post-conflict phase. It builds institutions, changes laws, redistributes powers, connects settlements to Israeli infrastructure, and invests in the historical narrative, as if telling the world that the future of this land has been decided, and all that remains is for everyone to get used to it.

As for the Palestinians, they often still manage the daily crises more than they shape the future of the cause. This is not to diminish the scale of sacrifices, nor to ignore the brutality of the occupation, but rather a sincere call to review the way of thinking. The Palestinian issue does not suffer from a crisis of right, for the right is constant, but it suffers from a crisis of transforming this right into a renewed national project, which possesses a vision for the future as much as it possesses loyalty to the past.

The Palestinian national project today needs to redefine its priorities. The battle is no longer fought only in the field, but in schools and universities, in economics and media, in scientific research, in protecting the national narrative, and in strengthening the steadfastness of the Palestinian people on their land. Every successful institution, every outstanding student, every village that endures, every documented narrative, and every economic initiative that reduces dependency, is part of the battle for political time, which is no less important than any confrontation on the ground.

The Palestinian experience has taught us that the occupation can occupy the land, but it cannot occupy the will. However, the will, no matter how strong, needs a project to transform it into an achievement, and a vision that makes time an element of strength, not an element of attrition.

The Palestinian issue stands today at a historical crossroads. Either the Palestinian remains a prisoner of crisis management, chasing a new crisis every day, while his future is silently reshaped, or he moves to a new stage, whose title is regaining the initiative, and building a national project that thinks about the next decade, not the next week, and creates the future instead of merely defending the present.

Israel may be able to add a new settlement to its map, or change the name of a mountain, or impose a law, or re-present an archaeological site as part of its narrative. But it will not win simply because time has passed, because time does not create victory, but rather those who know how to invest time create it.

And if the occupation has succeeded in turning time into one of its weapons, then the Palestinian national task is no longer just to protect the land, but to reclaim political time itself. Peoples are not defeated when they lose a round, nor when the balance of power is against them, but they are defeated when they stop believing that they are capable of shaping their future.

As for Palestine, it has proven over more than a century that its history has never been an ally of those who occupied it, but has always been an ally of those who persevered, stood firm, and in every generation rewrote their story with their own hands. Therefore, the question that should concern us is not: How long can the occupation remain? But: How do we make every day that passes a step towards restoring the national project, not an additional step in consolidating the occupation project?

That is the real challenge... and that is the battle worth fighting.