The world is finally watching Palestine. But who gets to narrate its story?
Nour A Munawar, James Symonds, and Ihab Saloul write in Middle East Eye on 6 September 2026:
Palestine did not qualify for this summer’s Football World Cup. It hardly needed to. Activists opened the tournament by forming a human Palestinian flag in Mexico City, and at the Egypt-Iran match in Seattle, Palestinian flags flew behind the goals while chanting for Gaza. When Bosnia and Herzegovina, a nation that survived its own genocide, reached the knockout rounds, its supporters filled stadiums with choruses of “Free Palestine” for a people enduring another.
Palestine had no team on the pitch, yet became one of the tournament’s defining presences. In the past three years, the Palestinian flag has emerged not only as a symbol denouncing Israeli genocide, but as a global gesture against victimisation, injustice and colonial oppression. The tournament ended in July, with Palestine emerging as its true winner.
That visibility now comes with a measure of accountability. Last September, a UN commission of inquiry concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, where the health ministry has recorded more than 73,000 dead, around half of them women and children. Some 2,700 families have been wiped from the civil register.
The world’s highest court is weighing a genocide case brought by South Africa and joined by more than a dozen states. The International Criminal Court, meanwhile, has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starvation as a method of warfare.
Likewise, Palestine’s growing visibility and support are reflected in global public opinion. Gallup found in February that, for the first time in a quarter-century of its polling, more Americans sympathise with Palestinians than with Israelis, while majorities in most of the 36 countries surveyed by Pew this spring view Israel negatively.
And yet, simultaneously, Palestinians are being exterminated; their homes and hospitals, schools, archives and universities are being destroyed – and with them the means to tell their own story.
This is the paradox of Palestine in a polarised world: never so widely seen, and never so thoroughly written about by others. The question is no longer only whether Palestine will be free, but who will have the permission and power to narrate it.