The conflict in the Middle East is sustained by the silencing of Palestinians | Ghada Karmi

Throughout history, our story has been narrated by others who treat our rights as less deserving of recognition

The silencing of the Palestinian story is nothing new. In 1950s Britain, a few years after Israel was established, even the name Palestine went out of use. When asked as a child where I came from, people would think I'd said Pakistan.

I remember how frustrating it was that no one wanted to hear our story, as if we had invented it. It's the land of the Jews," I was repeatedly told. The Arabs are only squatters on it." Israel's stunning victory in the 1967 war compounded these attitudes, and the Zionist narrative of Israel's moral right to exist in the Jewish people's ancestral land" became supreme. Constantly made to understand we were second-class human beings with no valid right to someone else's country" was demoralising and intimidating.