Palestinians have always rejected peace with Israel.

What Palestinians have rejected was never peace, but surrender. They rejected the partition of their homeland, the denial of their rights to return and to self-determination, and the demand to accept permanent dispossession and colonial domination.

The "Palestinian rejectionist" trope is a racist colonial narrative portraying Palestinians as irrational and opposed to peace, while concealing that the "peace" offered to them means surrendering their land, rights, and freedom. Israel presents symbolic gestures as acts of generosity while continuing occupation, dispossession, siege, and genocide, then blames Palestinians for refusing their own subjugation. In this framework, submission to colonial domination is called moderation, while the struggle for liberation is framed as extremism.

This myth strips away the colonial reality and manufactures a false equivalence between a nuclear-armed colonial power and a colonized people under military rule, as though both sides hold equal power and responsibility. Genuine peace does not come from managing oppression, but from ending occupation, apartheid, and colonization, and realizing Palestinian rights, including return and self-determination.

For over a century, this narrative has been central to Zionist propaganda to justify the colonial project. Palestinians were portrayed as "rejecting peace" when they opposed the 1917 Balfour Declaration that paved the way for Zionist colonization, when they rejected the partition of their homeland in 1947, and now as they oppose the Trump 20-point Gaza plan, which seeks to place Gaza under repackaged Israeli-US colonial control. In every case, Palestinians are blamed for refusing colonial subjugation while the colonial project itself is rewarded with international diplomatic, military, and economic support.

This narrative conceals Israel's long record of bad faith in so-called "peace processes." A stark example is the Oslo process in the 1990s, when the Palestinian leadership accepted a state on only 22% of historic Palestine and agreed to defer core issues such as refugees and settlements for resolution within five years. Instead, Israel nearly tripled its settler population in the West Bank, doubled settlements, built the apartheid wall, imposed more than 920 checkpoints and gates, fragmented Palestinian lands into Bantustans, and intensified its military raids, killings, and arrests, culminating in the ongoing genocide since 2023. The "peace process" became cover for deeper colonization.

Every Israeli accusation is a confession. Israel has repeatedly rejected, violated, and sabotaged even the most compromising negotiations. A look at Israel's conduct since the genocide began exposes the myth completely. Israel repeatedly rejected ceasefire proposals, then assassinated Hamas political leaders, who were central figures in those negotiations. It violated the January 2025 ceasefire at least 1,000 times before collapsing it, then violated the October 2025 ceasefire more than 3,000 times, killing 922 Palestinians by April 2026. A state that rejects deals, assassinates negotiators, and bombs during ceasefires is not seeking peace, but using negotiations as a tactic of extermination.