‘Iran Deal’ Dominates Headlines, but Palestine Still Burns
As Global Attention Shifted, Palestinians Remained Under Fire
Most people in the West, including many who closely follow international affairs, have probably never heard of Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, the seven-month-old Palestinian infant who was reportedly shot in the face and killed by Israeli forces near Hebron in the occupied West Bank earlier this month.
Nor are they likely to be aware of the continuing and intensifying violence taking place throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. Western media outlets rarely focus on villages such as Sinjil, where residents are effectively confined behind barriers and denied access to their own land. News reports seldom highlight how Israeli settlers continue to burn homes and vehicles, intimidate and assault Palestinian communities, and act with the backing or protection of the Israeli military. Likewise, the reality that more than half of Gaza has effectively come under Israeli control in recent months, while its population continues to face severe deprivation and hunger, is often overshadowed by narratives centered on Israel’s security concerns.
Consequently, many people across Western countries from the Us to Europe have come to view Palestine as yesterday’s story. As tensions and conflict involving Iran dominated global headlines, media attention shifted away from Gaza even as the deaths and destruction continued. Many have been left with the impression that Israel’s campaign in Palestine ended with the so-called Gaza ceasefire, and that its focus has now moved entirely to a broader confrontation with Iran and groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Now that Iran and the United States have announced a new agreement, public discourse increasingly revolves around the idea that the region is entering a period of peace. Yet Israel’s war is far from over, because its primary theatre was never Iran alone. Iran represents only one dimension of a much longer and broader conflict whose central focus remains Palestine.
Since the ceasefire took effect in October, Israeli military fire has continued in Gaza on an almost daily basis. By spring, thousands of violations had been documented, and hundreds of Palestinians including many children had reportedly been killed. Buildings continue to collapse. Civilians continue to lose their lives. Snipers remain deployed. Drones continue to operate overhead. Bulldozers continue to reshape the landscape. Yet this situation is still described as a ceasefire.
The humanitarian crisis has not subsided either. Access to aid remains tightly controlled, treated less as a humanitarian necessity and more as a strategic calculation determining how little assistance can enter, how slowly it can be delivered, and how long a population can survive without being allowed to truly live.
In mid-March, as international attention increasingly focused on Iran, aid organizations reportedly received maps from the Israeli military indicating a further expansion of restricted areas within Gaza. What had previously been 53 percent of the territory under Israeli control during the ceasefire reportedly increased to 64 percent. By late May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a gathering of settlers that Israeli forces already controlled approximately 60 percent of Gaza and that he had instructed them to expand that control even further.
As a result, Palestinians are now unable to access large portions of their own territory, including most of Gaza’s agricultural land, much of which lies within these restricted zones. Geography itself has become a mechanism of deprivation. Farmers attempting to reach their fields face the risk of being shot. Fishermen venturing into the sea are targeted. Families trying to return to the remnants of their homes come under fire. Children searching for food are treated as threats for crossing boundaries imposed within their own neighborhoods. In this way, the landscape itself becomes an instrument of control.
Meanwhile, the focus on Iran helps obscure these realities. When crossings into Gaza are closed, the explanation is security. When aid is blocked, the justification is regional instability. When Palestinians are killed, their deaths are often folded into broader narratives about Iran or terrorism. Victims are frequently portrayed as militants, collaborators, or security threats after the fact, as though such labels could retrospectively justify the violence inflicted upon them.
As a consequence, Palestine repeatedly disappears beneath larger geopolitical narratives. Palestinians are no longer presented as victims of a specific policy or action but as casualties of a vague and complex regional conflict. Their deaths become part of a broader story about instability, Iran, and security rather than being understood on their own terms. Each life lost is absorbed into explanations that overshadow the individual tragedy itself.
A similar pattern can be observed in southern Lebanon. There, too, developments are framed primarily through the lens of Hezbollah and Iran rather than as a humanitarian crisis involving displacement and destruction. Evacuation orders have uprooted communities throughout areas south of the Litani River. Vast numbers of people have been forced from their homes. Hospitals, ambulances, and civilian infrastructure have come under attack. Agricultural land has been damaged, and entire communities have been displaced. Those who attempt to return despite Israeli warnings are often treated as security threats. In both Gaza and Lebanon, returning home itself can become grounds for suspicion.
The devastation in Lebanon does not render Palestine irrelevant. Rather, it demonstrates a pattern that critics argue emerged after Gaza: populations are instructed to leave, what they leave behind is destroyed, and the emptied territory is redefined as a security zone. By framing these developments through the prism of Iran and regional security, each theatre of conflict appears isolated, each victim becomes incidental, and each displaced community is viewed as part of someone else’s war.
The same logic follows displaced people wherever they go. If they remain in place, they are accused of acting as human shields. If they flee, their departure is used as evidence that the area has been cleared. If they return, they are portrayed as threats. In every scenario, their presence becomes a problem.
No agreement with Iran should be interpreted as the conclusion of conflict in the Middle East while Palestinian land continues to be seized, Gaza remains under conditions of severe deprivation, and the West Bank continues to be fragmented by settlements, military checkpoints, barriers, and armed enforcement. Lasting regional stability cannot be achieved by treating Palestine as a secondary issue or merely a by-product of other conflicts.
Palestine remains at the center of a struggle that repeatedly re-emerges despite changing headlines. It is a place where ceasefires can become mechanisms of control, where hunger becomes institutionalized, and where the death of a child can be reduced to a footnote in a much larger geopolitical narrative.
Sam Abu Haikal was laid to rest wrapped in a Palestinian flag, carried by his father as the hopes and dreams of a young life ended before they could begin. In many ways, his story reflects the broader reality of this conflict a reality that is continually overshadowed by larger political and military narratives. In the end, forgetting, and allowing others to be forgotten, may be among the most powerful weapons of all.
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