"Palestine as Problem": How a Phrase Colonizes the Imagination

Mahmoud Andrade Ibrahim

The Grammar of Dehumanization

The phrase "Palestine is a problem to be solved, never a people to be liberated" is not merely a rhetorical flourish. It is a precise diagnosis of how the Palestinian question has been framed in Western and Israeli discourse for over a century. The framing is not accidental. It is the linguistic architecture of dispossession, the grammatical structure that makes ongoing colonization appear as a technical dilemma rather than a moral crime.

When a people is transformed into a "problem," several things happen simultaneously. The people disappear as subjects with aspirations, rights, and history. The land disappears as a homeland with meaning and memory. The conflict disappears as a relationship of power and becomes instead a puzzle, a riddle, a headache. And the colonizer disappears as an agent of dispossession, becoming instead a frustrated problem-solver, a well-meaning mediator, a reluctant occupier.

This transformation is not unique to Palestine. It is the standard operating procedure of settler colonialism. The "Indian problem" in the United States, the "native question" in South Africa, the "Negro problem" in the Jim Crow South, the "Jewish question" in Europe, all of these phrases performed the same function: they transformed human beings into abstractions, peoples into categories, and rights into administrative challenges.

But the Palestinian case is particularly instructive because the "problem" framing has been so totalizing, so pervasive, and so enduring. It has shaped diplomacy, media coverage, academic scholarship, and even the language of humanitarian aid. To understand how the erasure of Palestinian peoplehood operates, we must examine how the "problem" framing works across multiple domains.

The Diplomatic Domain: From Liberation to Conflict Management

The modern diplomatic discourse on Palestine is built on the premise that Palestine is a "conflict" to be "managed" rather than a people to be liberated. This framing is not neutral. It presupposes that there are two equal sides, that both bear responsibility, and that the goal is not justice but stability.

The Oslo Accords of 1993 enshrined this logic. The agreement did not recognize Palestinian sovereignty. It created the Palestinian Authority as a subcontractor of Israeli occupation, responsible for policing Palestinians while Israel retained control over borders, airspace, water, and settlement expansion. The "peace process" became an industry, a permanent negotiation without end, a mechanism for managing the "problem" rather than resolving it.

The language of the "peace process" is instructive. There is no "peace process" for the French resistance to Nazi occupation. There is no "peace process" for the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. There is only a "peace process" when the colonizer wants to negotiate the terms of the colonized's submission while maintaining the fiction of moral equivalence.

The Quartet, the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations, describes its goal as a "two-state solution." But the "solution" is framed as a concession, a compromise, a favor. It is never framed as the recognition of a people's right to self-determination. The Palestinian is the object of the "solution," never its author. The Palestinian is the subject of the "problem," never the agent of its resolution.

This diplomatic framing has material consequences. It delegitimizes armed resistance as "terrorism" while legitimizing state violence as "security." It demands that Palestinians recognize Israel's "right to exist" while never demanding that Israel recognize Palestine's right to exist. It condemns Palestinian "incitement" while ignoring Israeli incitement. The asymmetry is not a flaw in the "peace process." It is the "peace process."

The Media Domain: From Subject to Spectacle

The media representation of Palestine is a case study in how the "problem" framing colonizes the imagination. Palestinians appear in Western media primarily as objects of violence, either as victims of Israeli bombs or as perpetrators of "terror." They rarely appear as farmers, teachers, poets, engineers, or parents. They rarely appear as people with ordinary lives, ordinary aspirations, ordinary joys.

The vocabulary of media coverage reinforces this dehumanization. Palestinians "die" while Israelis are "killed." Palestinian violence is "terrorism" while Israeli violence is "retaliation" or "operation." Palestinian homes are "demolished" while Israeli settlements are "built." Palestinian resistance is "incitement" while Israeli occupation is "security."

The structural biases are equally telling. When was the last time a Western news outlet ran a story about Palestinian fashion, Palestinian cuisine, Palestinian music, or Palestinian technological innovation? When was the last time a Palestinian was interviewed as an expert on anything other than the "conflict"? Palestinians are permitted to speak only about their "problem." They are not permitted to speak as full human beings.

This media framing has a long history. Edward Said documented it in Covering Islam and Orientalism, showing how the Western media constructs the "Muslim" and the "Arab" as threatening, irrational, and fundamentally other. But the Palestinian case is particularly extreme because the "problem" framing is so complete. The Palestinian is not merely misrepresented. The Palestinian is rendered invisible as a subject and visible only as a symptom.

The consequences are profound. Western publics are systematically prevented from seeing Palestinians as a people deserving of liberation. They are permitted to see Palestinians only as a "problem" deserving of a "solution." The imagination is colonized before the land is.

The Academic Domain: From History to "Conflict Studies"

The academy has not been immune to the "problem" framing. Palestinian history is rarely taught as history. It is taught, if at all, as "conflict studies," as a subfield of international relations, as a case study in terrorism or peace-building.

This academic framing has several effects. First, it dehistoricizes the Palestinian experience, severing it from the broader history of settler colonialism. The Nakba is treated as an event rather than a structure. The occupation is treated as a "situation" rather than a system. The resistance is treated as a "response" rather than a struggle for liberation.

Second, it depoliticizes the Palestinian cause, transforming it from a national liberation movement into an object of study. Scholars analyze Palestinian "narratives" without acknowledging that one narrative is backed by the most powerful military in the region and the other is backed by nothing but memory and stubbornness. The "conflict" is presented as a clash of narratives rather than a clash of power.

Third, it legitimizes the Israeli perspective as the default. Israeli scholars are quoted as experts on Palestine. Israeli "security concerns" are treated as legitimate while Palestinian security concerns are treated as nonexistent. Israeli "democracy" is celebrated while Palestinian statelessness is normalized. The academic gaze is structured by the colonial relationship it claims to analyze.

There are exceptions, of course. Scholars like Rashid Khalidi, Ilan Pappé, Nur Masalha, and Joseph Massad have produced important work that challenges the "problem" framing. But they operate on the margins of a discipline that is structurally hostile to Palestinian liberation. The center holds.

The Humanitarian Domain: From Rights to Needs

The humanitarian framing of Palestine is perhaps the most insidious because it appears benevolent. Palestinians are represented as a people in need, of aid, of development, of humanitarian assistance. The language of rights is replaced by the language of needs. The language of liberation is replaced by the language of relief.

This framing has several consequences. First, it transforms political demands into charitable appeals. The Palestinian right of return becomes a "humanitarian issue" to be "addressed" rather than a legal right to be enforced. The siege of Gaza becomes a "humanitarian crisis" to be "mitigated" rather than a crime to be prosecuted. The occupation becomes a "humanitarian situation" to be "monitored" rather than a system to be dismantled.

Second, it depoliticizes the Palestinian struggle by transforming it into a problem of suffering rather than a problem of injustice. The question becomes "How can we help Palestinians?" rather than "How can we end the system that produces Palestinian suffering?" The humanitarian gaze focuses on the symptoms, poverty, displacement, trauma, while ignoring the cause, settler colonialism.

Third, it creates a hierarchy of victimhood in which Palestinians are permitted to be victims but not resisters. They are permitted to suffer but not to fight. They are permitted to receive aid but not to demand rights. The humanitarian framing disciplines the Palestinian into the role of the grateful recipient, the passive sufferer, the object of compassion.

This is not to say that humanitarian aid is unnecessary. Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank face desperate conditions that require immediate relief. But humanitarian aid is not liberation. It is a bandage on a wound that requires surgery. The "problem" framing ensures that the wound is never healed.

The Cultural Domain: From Representation to Erasure

The cultural domain is where the "problem" framing does its deepest work. It is where the imagination is shaped, where common sense is produced, where the boundaries of the thinkable are drawn.

In film and television, Palestinians appear primarily as terrorists, refugees, or victims. They are rarely protagonists. They are rarely allowed to tell their own stories. They are rarely permitted to be complex, contradictory, or fully human. The Palestinian is a type, not a character. The Palestinian is a symbol, not a subject.

In literature, the same pattern holds. Palestinian writers like Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, and Adania Shibli have produced powerful work, but they are read primarily as "Palestinian writers" rather than writers who happen to be Palestinian. Their work is framed as "testimony" rather than art, as "representation" rather than creation. The Palestinian is permitted to speak only about Palestine.

In art, Palestinian artists face similar constraints. They are expected to produce "political" work, to represent the "conflict," to serve as witnesses to suffering. They are rarely permitted the luxury of abstraction, experimentation, or play. The Palestinian artist is a documentarian, not a visionary.

This cultural framing is not accidental. It is the logical consequence of the "problem" framing. If Palestine is a "problem," then Palestinians can only speak about the "problem." They cannot speak about love, beauty, joy, or the ordinary textures of human existence. They cannot speak about anything that would make them appear as full human beings rather than symptoms of a "problem."

The Psychic Domain: Internalized Colonization

The "problem" framing does not only operate externally. It is internalized by Palestinians themselves, producing what Frantz Fanon called the "colonized psyche." Palestinians grow up knowing that they are a "problem." They grow up knowing that their existence is contested, their history denied, their future uncertain. They grow up knowing that they must be exceptional to be seen as human.

This internalization has psychological consequences. It produces shame, self-doubt, and self-hatred. It produces a desperate need to prove one's humanity to those who deny it. It produces a tendency to internalize the colonizer's gaze, to see oneself through the colonizer's eyes, to measure oneself by the colonizer's standards.

But it also produces resistance. Palestinians have developed a remarkable capacity for sumud, steadfastness, resilience, the refusal to disappear. They have developed a culture of memory, of storytelling, of passing down the names of villages destroyed and the keys of homes lost. They have developed a refusal to be reduced to a "problem," a determination to remain a people.

This resistance is not always visible. It is not always dramatic. It is often quiet, ordinary, daily. It is a mother teaching her children the names of their grandparents' villages. It is a farmer tending olive trees on land threatened with confiscation. It is a poet writing verses that the occupation cannot censor. It is a people refusing to be a "problem" and insisting on being a people.

The Antidote: From Problem to People

The antidote to the "problem" framing is the restoration of Palestinian peoplehood. This means insisting that Palestinians are not a "problem" to be solved but a people to be liberated. It means centering Palestinian voices, Palestinian history, Palestinian aspirations. It means recognizing that the "conflict" is not a conflict but a colonization, and that the "solution" is not a compromise but decolonization.

This restoration is already underway. The global solidarity movement, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the movement for Palestinian rights in the academy, the movement for Palestinian freedom in the streets, all of these are efforts to restore Palestinian peoplehood. They are efforts to break the "problem" framing and replace it with the language of liberation.

The struggle is not easy. The "problem" framing is backed by enormous power: the Israeli state, the American empire, the mainstream media, the academic establishment, the humanitarian industry. But the "problem" framing is also fragile. It depends on the silence of Palestinians, the ignorance of Western publics, and the complicity of liberal elites. All of these are breaking down.

The truth is that Palestine was never a "problem." It was a homeland. The Palestinians were never a "problem." They were a people. The "problem" was always the colonization that dispossessed them. The "solution" was always the liberation that would restore them.

The "problem" framing is a lie. And lies, however powerful, can be defeated by truth. The truth is that Palestinians are a people, with a history, a culture, a homeland, and a right to freedom. The truth is that Palestine is not a "problem" to be solved but a people to be liberated. The truth is that the struggle for Palestine is not a "conflict" but a liberation struggle. And liberation struggles, however long they take, however much they cost, always end in freedom.