The normalisation of brutality: When will we reclaim our humanity?
April 4, 2026
Displaced Palestinians try to carry on their daily lives under harsh conditions in Khan Younis, Palestine on April 02, 2026. [Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency]
are witnessing today across occupied Palestine is not a glitch in the system of international order, nor is it a sudden detour from the established behaviour of the Israeli occupation. The greatest mistake observers can make is to treat the current escalation of atrocities as a momentary lapse in self-restraint or a chaotic exception that can be managed through diplomatic statements of concern.
In reality, what is unfolding before our eyes is the natural state of a colonial project. When we understand the structural foundations of the occupation, we realise that brutality is not a political choice, rather a functional necessity for its survival.
The infrastructure of cruelty
In the logic of the occupier, it is entirely normal for a Palestinian prisoner and hostage to be tortured, humiliated, and stripped of his or her basic humanity. It is entirely normal for the halls of the Knesset to echo with calls for the summary execution of detainees, turning state institutions into platforms for legislated revenge. This is not a breakdown of democracy; it is the unfiltered expression of a regime that views the indigenous population as a security threat to be eliminated rather than a people with rights.
In occupied Jerusalem, the normal state of affairs is the systematic barring of worshippers from Al-Aqsa Mosque, while the sanctuary is open for radical settlers to perform provocative rituals under military protection. This is a calculated strategy of habituation. The goal is to repeat the violation so frequently that it loses its shock value, transforming the desecration of one of Islam’s holiest sites into a mere routine in the daily news cycle.
Gaza and the West Bank: A laboratory of erasure
The genocide unfolding in Gaza is the ultimate manifestation of this normality. The flattening of entire residential blocks, the systematic starvation of two million people, and the erasure of entire family lineages from the civil registry are carried out with a terrifying sense of entitlement.
This is facilitated by a global diplomatic umbrella that perversely redefines the victim as the aggressor and the executioner as the victim.
Simultaneously, the West Bank undergoes a silent genocide. Through a suffocating network of checkpoints, nightly raids that shatter the peace of families, and the relentless expansion of illegal settlements that devour the land like a cancer, the occupation seeks to make Palestinian life impossible. Such is the behaviour of a thief who can never be at peace nor can rest, as long as the rightful owner of the house remains present.
The true abnormality: Our adaptation
The real crisis, however, does not lie in the occupier’s violence, for that is its inherent nature. The crisis lies in the demand for the rest of us to become abnormal.
It is inherently abnormal to be asked to adapt to this reality. It is abnormal to be told to understand the security concerns of the oppressor while our children are being pulled from the rubble. It is abnormal for normalization to be marketed as a rational choice, or for coexistence with a system of apartheid to be framed as a civil virtue.
We must ask the hard questions: What kind of peace is built upon the ruins of demolished homes? What kind of realism demands that we accept the slow death of a nation as an unchangeable fact? The attempt to redefine the Palestinian struggle as a conflict that can be managed, rather than a crime that must be ended, is a profound moral distortion.
The trap of de-sensitisation
The most dangerous weapon in the occupation’s arsenal is not the missile or the tank; it is our own habituation. The occupation bets on time. It bets that the world will eventually grow tired of the images of bloodied children, that the social media posts will decrease, and that the outrage will be replaced by a weary silence.
When we stop being shocked by the sight of mass graves, and when we begin to view the ethnic cleansing of a people as an unfortunate geopolitical reality, we have lost our moral compass. To “get used to” oppression is to become a silent partner therewith. The natural state for any free human being is to remain in a state of constant, active rejection of injustice.
Redefining realism
For too long, we have been told that realism means accepting the crumbs of sovereignty under the shadow of a sniper’s tower. But true realism is to call things by their real names:
* Settlement is not urban expansion; it is theft.
* Resistance is not terrorism; it is a universal right and a sacred duty.
* Neutrality in the face of genocide is not objectivity; it is complicity.
Our role as intellectuals, activists, and supporters of justice is to shatter this manufactured normalcy. We must remain abnormal in the eyes of a distorted international system. We must refuse to be courteous victims who accept their fate with quiet dignity.
Reclaiming the human spirit
The occupation is a historical anomaly, a remnant of a colonial era that the rest of the world has supposedly moved past. It survives by pretending to be a normal state. But a state that lives on the blood of the innocent and the theft of a land can never be normal; it is a moral deformity.
We will reclaim our normality only when we stop trying to fit into the world’s unjust expectations. We are normal when we refuse to forget. We are normal when we teach our children that the map of Palestine is indivisible. We are normal when our anger remains as fresh as it was on the first day of the Nakba.
The greatest danger is not that the oppressor practices his oppression; it is that we grow accustomed to it. Let us vow never to be normal in the face of the abnormal. Let us remain the voice that screams against the silence, until the natural state of Palestine; free and one, is finally restored.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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