Timor-Leste and the Future of Palestine: Lessons in Freedom and the Failure of Power |
Image Source: Alvaro1984 18 – CC BY 3.0
“We will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state.” With those words, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich abandoned any remaining pretense. What he announced on February 10, 2026, was not merely another policy adjustment, but a deliberate escalation, one that is designed to make it even easier for Jewish settlers to dispossess Palestinians of their land, permanently and irreversibly. Smotrich’s declaration reads less like public policy than a declaration of war on political reality itself: On Palestinians living under occupation, and on any Israeli who still dares to believe in the possibility of a two-state solution. Examined one by one, Israel’s current policies reveal a power imbalance so extreme that it can no longer be obscured by diplomatic language, especially in the wake of Gaza’s catastrophic devastation. One side is armed, sovereign, and protected; the other is fragmented, encircled, and endlessly punished.
One does not need to live in Ramallah or anywhere else in the West Bank to see what is coming. Israeli forces already besiege most of the Palestinian territory, negociated under the imfamous Oslo Accords, as they besiege city after city across the West Bank. Raids, closures, checkpoints, collective punishment—this is not a temporary security posture, but the daily architecture of control, structually normalized over time. Watching this unfold, I am increasingly reminded of Jamsheed Marker—an old colleague of my father’s and a family friend, whom UN Secretary, General Kofi Annan appointed as Special Envoy to East Timor between 1997 and 1999. Tasked with quietly helping broker peace and eventual independence, Marker worked largely outside the public spotlight. Yet the parallels between his overlooked mission and today’s hollow diplomatic choreography around Gaza and the West Bank are striking and deeply unsettling.
Since the atrocities of October 7, 2023, a number of American and Israeli negotiators — among them Robert Malley and Daniel Levy — have spoken openly about how deeply flawed and performative past peace efforts have been. Behind closed doors, they acknowledge what was long known: that the so-called “peace process” was never designed to deliver a Palestinian state.
Timor-Leste is not a wealthy country, but it is free — a functioning democracy with open debate, competitive elections, and a deeply scarred yet resilient sense of national selfhood. That, in itself, is no small miracle. The story of East Timor’s fight for statehood — its abandonment, its massacres, its years of silence — mirrors in haunting detail the story of Palestine. The comparison is not rhetorical; it is instructive. East Timor teaches us what it takes for a people to become free, and what happens when the international community finally decides that moral rhetoric must be matched by political will.
For decades, the Timorese, like the Palestinians, were told to be patient, to negotiate with their occupiers, to accept “facts on the ground.” For decades, Western governments justified atrocities in the name of geopolitical stability. The Timorese paid for the Cold War with their blood; Palestinians are paying for a post–Cold War order........