From Gaza to the World: How Resistance Became a Global Conscience

​By Dyab Abou Jahjah
As the world holds its breath to see whether Israel will respect the deal brokered by Donald Trump — a deal that could at least pause the genocide in its direct killing form — many are asking an uncomfortable question: Is this a capitulation? Should the Palestinian resistance not continue fighting?

For nearly two years, the resistance in Gaza has fought with unmatched courage against overwhelming odds. It has not fought Israel alone, but the entire power of a global order complicit in its crimes — complicit through the flow of weapons, technology, money, and, above all, impunity.
And yet, despite the destruction, Israel failed to achieve its goal. Gaza has been turned to rubble, but the will to resist remains unbroken. Israel’s objective was never merely to punish Gaza; it was to erase it — to depopulate the territory entirely and end the Palestinian presence there once and for all. We all remember Trump’s so-called Riviera Plan and the talk of relocating Palestinians elsewhere. But even that was too modest compared to Netanyahu’s ultimate dream: the total annexation of Gaza and, in time, the West Bank.
That dream has now been blocked.
The current deal, if implemented, closes the door to the full annexation Israel envisioned. And that is precisely why Israel will do everything possible to reignite the war. Because, for Israel’s leadership, stopping the killing is bad politics. Every day of peace undermines its narrative of eternal conflict. Every day that Gaza survives is an act of resistance.
Today, the most vital mission is to secure the survival and dignity of Gazans, to break the siege in practice, and to ensure real international protection. Of course, Israel will attempt to turn any ceasefire into another form of domination. We see it already in Lebanon, where Israel continues its criminal pattern of bombing and assassinations, killing civilians, including children, with impunity.
Ultimately, only deterrence can restrain such violence. But deterrence now takes new forms: international isolation, expanding boycotts, and the relentless pursuit of accountability for genocide and war crimes.
This is the defining struggle of this generation — to end impunity and restore justice. The generation that has witnessed Gaza’s destruction is the same one that will soon shape global politics. It will not forget what it has seen. It will reorder the moral and political world according to its conscience.
Netanyahu understands this, which is why he has launched a “war for hearts and minds.” But it is a war he has already lost. The counterattack of disinformation is coming — yet no amount of propaganda or money can erase the truth that the world has seen with its own eyes. It is our collective duty to ensure it never does.
Soft power — the power of truth, justice, and global solidarity — will ultimately dismantle the genocidal apartheid regime in Palestine. Resistance, in its essence, is an act of survival. But it becomes truly transformative when it connects with a worldwide movement capable of redefining the moral center of humanity.
In my 2016 book The Case for Radicalisation, I wrote:
“Constructive radicals are constructive because they strive not only to build new structures, but also to create new narratives — anti-racist, decolonial, egalitarian, democratic, post-capitalist. All these narratives intertwine into a radical metanarrative that will one day become the liberated mainstream — as opposed to the mainstream of submission to the system.”
That transformation is now unfolding before our eyes.
The struggle for Palestine has become the crucible of a broader awakening. The manufactured culture war — woke versus anti-woke— have collapsed. It died in Gaza.
Palestine has become the incubator of a new global conscience.
But let us be clear: this movement is not united — and that is precisely why it is powerful. It is diverse, contradictory, and often chaotic. It gathers people who disagree on almost everything — economics, identity, culture, even religion — yet who find in Palestine a moral constant.
Palestine has become a code word, a symbol, a common denominator. It represents human dignity, justice, and truth — and the refusal to submit to the brute power of corrupted elites.
In its diversity, this movement mirrors the world itself. It embodies the tension between different visions of freedom, yet it converges on one essential truth: that no people should be massacred, dispossessed, or dehumanized with impunity.
Zionists often tell LGBTQ activists that “Palestinians would kill you.” Even though this is false, the answer from within the movement is simple and powerful: We do not care — we stand for what is right. Likewise, conservative voices who find themselves side by side with LGBTQ activists reply in kind: We do not care — the cause is just.
This paradoxical diversity — this non-unity — is its strength. It resists control, resists labeling, resists co-optation. It is not an organization but an awakening, not a coalition but a convergence of conscience.
The challenge now is to protect this moral convergence from those who will try to fracture it. The counterattack will come — through propaganda, polarization, and manufactured cultural wars. That is why Palestine and the pursuit of accountability for genocide must remain the moral and strategic heart of this global movement.
Because when Palestine is free, the world will be free.
And perhaps that is the greatest fear of all for those who built their power on injustice — that the liberation of a small, besieged land will awaken humanity everywhere to its own power and to the truth that no system of oppression can survive a world that refuses to believe its lies.