For as long as the Palestinian question has existed, Pakistan has stood along where many other nations stand: on the side of a people who were displaced, and denied the right to live freely in their own homeland. Our position is not unique. It is part of a wider consensus - shared by countries across the Muslim world, the Global South, and by millions of ordinary people everywhere - that the Palestinians deserve a sovereign state based on the pre?1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

But if we are honest, the world has failed Palestine. Good intentions do not translate into meaningful action on their own. They require genuine and selfless efforts. Whereas the situation is: the UN resolutions have gathered dust; peace initiatives have collapsed; the powerful have looked away; and the powerless have been left to carry the burden of history alone. The question now is not whether the Palestinians deserve a state - that debate was settled long ago. The real question is who will help create the political momentum toward it.

To answer that, we must revisit how Palestine reached this point. The story begins with dispossession. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised a homeland to one people while ignoring the rights of another. The Nakba of 1948 turned that promise into catastrophe, uprooting........

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