12/10/2026
A Letter from Gaza to Navi Pillay
What If a Nobel Joke Became a Challenge for Justice?
Dear Ms. Navi Pillay,
Greetings from Gaza, where the word peace remains too important to be reduced to a political soundbite, and too weighty to be separated from justice, human dignity, and the right of peoples to freedom.
I am writing as a Palestinian living in Gaza and as the founder of Al-Manarah, an independent Palestinian media project. I write with respect for your long-standing commitment to human rights and for your work as Chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
On 16 September 2025, the Commission, under your chairpersonship, concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces had committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. This was a grave finding based on the Commission’s assessment of acts, evidence, and intent. It placed the international community before questions that must not be buried beneath political noise or calculations of power.
I followed with interest your joking remark about the possibility of sharing the Nobel Peace Prize with Donald Trump. I am not writing to judge your intentions or to assume that you meant to diminish Palestinian suffering. Rather, I see an opportunity in that remark to ask a more serious question: What does it mean to deserve recognition as a peacemaker when justice remains out of reach for a people living under occupation and enduring destruction, displacement, and suffering?
The United States’ military and political support for Israel raises serious moral and political questions, particularly as Palestinian civilians continue to suffer. Raising these questions does not amount to a predetermined judgment about any individual’s legal responsibility. It means insisting that political power must also be measured by what it does to protect lives, stop violations, and end impunity.
With that in mind, allow me to offer a symbolic challenge, inspired by the spirit of the joke but placing justice at its centre:
If Donald Trump wishes to be remembered as a genuine peacemaker, he should make justice for the Palestinian people a real priority; help bring an end to impunity; and support the independence of international judicial institutions and their ability to hold accountable anyone whose responsibility for crimes is established through due process, regardless of position or power. Only then can the language of peace become more than a political slogan.
To be clear, I am not proposing a literal transfer of the Nobel Peace Prize, nor suggesting that anyone can award or dispose of it at will. This is a symbolic moral challenge: if peace deserves recognition, the path toward it must pass through justice, not around it.
Dear Ms. Pillay,
Palestinians do not need to remain the subject of a symbolic debate about prizes. They need their lives and rights to be protected, their suffering to end, responsibility to be established through evidence and law, and a future no longer defined by war, occupation, and displacement.
Lasting peace cannot be built on silence in the face of injustice, on equating the powerless with those who hold power, or on replacing accountability with political courtesies. It begins with recognition of rights, respect for international law, fair accountability for those responsible, an end to the occupation, and the Palestinian people’s right to freedom and self-determination.
I write from Gaza not to ask for a political courtesy, but to urge that words become positions, and positions become meaningful action for justice.
May a message from Gaza reach someone capable of making the voice of justice louder than the noise of politics.
With respect,
Hassan A. Falyouna
Founder of Al-Manarah
Gaza, Palestine
Al-Manarah | المنارة
