As someone who has witnessed the humiliations daily endured by Palestinians living decade after decade under ‘occupation’ the word occupation was for me an inalterably dirty word. I associated the practice of occupation, especially prolonged occupation of the sort that Israel has imposed on Palestine as synonymous with ‘abuse’ and ‘oppression.’ Having just completed two days of intense discussions between leading Israeli and Palestinian voices for peace at an LSE workshop presided over by Mary Kaldor and Lakhdar Brahimi reached a single Archimedean point of consensus: ‘End the Occupation.’ Personally, I was not so content with this outcome as it tended to narrow the Palestinian agenda to a kind of ‘land for peace’ formula, neglecting the plight, the rights, and the prospects of five million or so territorially dispossessed Palestinians living as refugees or exile, often enduring intolerable situations of vulnerability and deprivation that has continued for generations, whose persistence is incompatible with a sustainable peace or a tolerable future.
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