The Greatest Historical Error of Palestinian Leaders

Ricardo Mohrez Muvdi, 16/1/2025
Translated by Tlaxcala

Ricardo Mohrez Muvdi is Palestinian, born in Beit Jala, Palestine (1952). A refugee in Colombia, he is a business administrator and president of the Palestinian Union of Latin America (UPAL), established in 2019 in San Salvador, El Salvador. He is also president of the Colombo-Palestinian Cultural Foundation.

The greatest mistake Palestinian leaders have made over decades of failed negotiations has been making concessions to Zionism in the belief that surrendering fundamental rights would bring peace, justice, or genuine recognition. History has shown precisely the opposite.

From the beginning of the modern conflict, the demand should have been clear: one single, democratic State with equal rights for all its inhabitants throughout historic Palestine. Accepting—and continuing to defend—the idea of “two States” was not only a poor strategy; it has been a progressive surrender of Palestine, legitimizing colonization, territorial fragmentation, and covert ethnic cleansing.

The so-called “two-State solution” was born already mutilated. It was not a proposal of justice, but of managing dispossession. Every Palestinian concession was met with more settlements, more walls, more checkpoints, and more racial laws. Negotiating under occupation was never negotiating: it was accepting the rules of the occupier. Persisting today in the fantasy of two States is not only naïve but politically suicidal. On the ground, there is no territorial continuity, no real sovereignty, and no control over borders, water, or resources.

What is being offered to the Palestinian people is not a State but fragmented, dependent, and surveilled reservations. Meanwhile, the Zionist project has been consistent: advancing without retreating, consolidating faits accomplis, and demanding international recognition without granting equality. In this sense, continuing to speak of two States is de facto endorsing the permanence of the occupation and accepting the transformation of territorial theft into international legality.

The only ethically, historically, and legally sustainable proposal is a single State in which Palestinians, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, live with equal rights, free from ethnic or religious supremacy. A state where the right of return, equality before the law, and historical justice are non-negotiable.

This is not utopian; it is a matter of consistency. Apartheid regimes are not to be reformed—they are to be dismantled. And liberation does not arise from concessions to the oppressor but from steadfastness in principles. The Palestinian people have not survived decades of expulsion, exile, and resistance to settle for crumbs. Dignity is not negotiable—it is exercised.