Why Betting on the United States and Israel Has Been a Losing Bet for Palestinians

By: Said Arikat

April 27, 2026

News Analysis

Washington, D.C- For seventy-eight years, Palestinians have repeatedly been told to trust the very powers that enabled their dispossession. They were urged to believe that the United States would act as an honest broker, that Israel would eventually choose justice over expansion, and that patience, moderation, and endless negotiations would somehow produce freedom. Instead, this wager has yielded one of the clearest records of betrayal in modern diplomacy.

From 1948 until today, betting on the United States and Israel has not simply failed—it has deepened Palestinian loss. Washington has offered rhetoric while shielding Israel from accountability, and Israel has offered negotiations while entrenching occupation. The result has been a relentless cycle of promises, delay, and irreversible facts on the ground.

The story begins in 1948, when the United States swiftly recognized the new State of Israel while more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled during the Nakba. Their towns were emptied, their properties confiscated, and their national life shattered. Yet while Israeli statehood was affirmed, Palestinian rights were pushed aside. Refugee return, restitution, and self-determination were postponed to an undefined future that never came. Palestinian dispossession was not remedied—it was normalized.

After the 1967 war, Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. The world spoke of temporary occupation and land for peace. Nearly six decades later, the occupation remains, transformed into a permanent system of settlements, checkpoints, walls, raids, and unequal legal structures. The United States had enormous leverage to halt this trajectory. Instead, successive administrations largely financed, excused, or diplomatically managed it. Each year of inaction sent the same message: international law becomes flexible when Palestinians are the victims.

No phrase has damaged the Palestinian cause more than the so-called peace process. Presented as a path to statehood, it often functioned as political cover for colonization. While diplomats convened summits and issued optimistic statements, settlements multiplied and Palestinian land was carved into disconnected enclaves. Palestinians were expected to prove moderation, reform institutions, suppress resistance, and concede in advance. Israel, meanwhile, negotiated while changing realities on the ground. One side talked; the other built.

The clearest example was Oslo. Palestinians recognized Israel and accepted a state on only 22 percent of historic Palestine. In return, they were promised phased withdrawal and sovereignty. What emerged instead was limited autonomy under occupation. The Palestinian Authority received administrative burdens without real power, while Israel retained control over borders, movement, water, airspace, and security. Oslo did not end occupation—it subcontracted parts of its management. Settlements expanded dramatically during the very years supposedly devoted to peace.

The greatest fiction sustaining this process was the notion of the United States as neutral mediator. Washington arms Israel, funds Israel, shields Israel at the United Nations, and coordinates strategically with Israel—then presents itself as referee. No credible mediator bankrolls one side while lecturing the other about compromise. American diplomacy repeatedly pressured Palestinians to accept realities created by force, while asking Israel only to discuss whether it might someday restrain itself.

Nowhere has this failed bet been more brutally exposed than in Gaza. Since the blockade imposed in 2007, Gaza has endured repeated large-scale Israeli wars that destroyed any illusion that negotiations or American guarantees could protect civilians. In 2008–2009, Israel’s assault killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and devastated neighborhoods and infrastructure. In 2012, another war struck the enclave, again leaving death and ruin while the siege remained intact. In 2014, more than 2,200 Palestinians were killed, including hundreds of children, and vast residential areas were reduced to rubble. Again during the March of Return in 2018, then again in 2021. Each time, ceasefires were announced, reconstruction was promised, and the world moved on.

Then came the catastrophe after October 7, 2023. What followed has been described by many legal scholars and rights advocates as genocidal destruction. More than 72,000 Palestinian men, women, and children have been killed, with many thousands more believed buried beneath the rubble. Entire families were erased. Residential districts, refugee camps, hospitals, universities, roads, and water systems were shattered. Hunger, displacement, disease, and trauma became the defining conditions of life. Gaza was not merely attacked—it was systematically broken.

Throughout these wars, Washington voiced concern for civilians while continuing to arm, finance, and diplomatically protect Israel. Calls for restraint rarely became meaningful pressure. Temporary pauses came only after immense devastation had already been inflicted. Gaza became the ultimate lesson: American sympathy, when offered, does not equal protection.

Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, tolerance of settlement expansion, and normalization deals that sidelined Palestinian rights merely stripped away the final illusions. What had long been disguised as mediation became open alignment. Palestinians were asked to accept shrinking horizons while being told this was realism. In truth, it was surrender repackaged as diplomacy.

Why has this bet failed so consistently? Because the structure itself is designed to fail Palestinians. Israel gains territory while talks continue. The United States offers process instead of justice. Delay benefits the occupier, not the occupied. Palestinian concessions become permanent, while Israeli promises remain optional. International outrage rises briefly, then fades without consequence.

The only viable path forward is one rooted not in illusion but in leverage: Palestinian political renewal, democratic legitimacy, national unity, grassroots resilience, legal accountability, and diversified alliances beyond Washington’s monopoly. Diplomacy matters—but diplomacy without pressure is pleading before power.

For generations, Palestinians were told to wait: wait for the next summit, the next envoy, the next election, the next president. While they waited, land disappeared, settlements spread, Jerusalem was transformed, Gaza was strangled, and occupation hardened.

The tragedy is not only that this bet failed. It is that it failed exactly as history warned it would.