A nation punished with hope
by Tsandrina Nemer
“Where should we go after the last frontiers?
Where should the birds fly after the last sky?
Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air?
We will write our names with scarlet stream.
We will cut off the hand of the song to be finished by our flesh.
We will die here, here in the last passage.
Here and here our blood will plant its olive tree.”
Mahmoud Darwish, “The Earth Is Closing on Us”
Let me take you back in time and tell you a story about Palestine and its people who are punished with hope. A seed of hope, planted by their ancestors of this land. But before I begin the story…What dreams do you have?
“I dream of my brother coming back to life.”
“I dream of my father returning.”
“I dream of breaking the siege.”
“I dream of seeing my mother and eating bread.”
Those are the most cherished dreams of the children in Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp, captured by Abdullah Al-Khatib in his movie Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege.
The right to life, freedom, and safety will remain mere words on a page until the children of Palestine no longer carry goodbye letters, fearing they may be killed before they can say a final goodbye to their parents or friends. Or until they no longer write their names on their forearms, so they can be identified if a bomb takes their lives (1).
Dreams can shatter like glass, the shards piercing straight through the heart.
The year is 1897. The first Zionist congress is being held in the city of Basel, Switzerland.
The Zionist movement is set to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. Later, Zionist leaders characterize the essence of their movement as “A land without a people for a people without a land”. However, Palestine was far from being “a land without a people” – in 1919, the Jewish population there numbered 57.000 (9.7% of the total population), while the Arab population was approximately 533.000 (90.3%) (2).
“… He (Joseph Chamberlain) listened with interest, then, as Herzl, in his stumbling English, indicated that Palestine was still the ultimate goal of Zionism, but the negotiations were dragging. ‘Now I have time to negotiate’, the Zionist leader explained, ‘but my people have not. They are starving in the Pale.’ Chamberlain, in turn, professing his ‘friendship’ for the Jews, suggested that if Herzl could show him ‘a spot among the British possessions which was not yet inhabited by white settlers, then we could talk.’ “ (A History Of Israel – From The Rise of Zionism To Our Time, Howard M. Sachar)
February 7, 1917.
Negotiations take place between the British authorities and the leaders of the Zionist movement. On June 19, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour requests the banker Rothschild and Chaim Weizmann to draft a proposal for a public declaration. The discussion continues with the participation of Zionists and opponents of Zionism; however, representatives of the Palestinian population are not present. The result of this discussion is the Balfour Declaration, which is a personal letter from the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, to Rothschild.
Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
November 29, 1947. The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to partition Palestine, which is under British mandate, and to establish two states on its territory – one Jewish and one Arab.
1948. On the night of April 9-10, extremists from two terrorist Zionist organizations – “Stern” and “Irgun Tzvai Leumi”(3) – carried out ethnic cleansing in the Palestinian village of Dier Yassin. 254 people, including women and children, are killed. In April, Zionist armed forces occupy Haifa, Jaffa, and the Arab neighborhood of Katamon in Jerusalem. In May, Safad, Beisan, and other cities are captured. By May 1948, up until the declaration of the State of Israel, approximately 700.000 Arabs are expelled (4).
The displacement of Palestinians from their homeland continues even after the establishment of Israel.
A former member of the Israeli parliament, Uri Avnery, writes in his book “Israel Without Zionism”: “I am convinced that at this stage the expulsion of the Arab civilian population became the goal of David Ben-Gurion and his government.” According to the English historian Arnold Toynbee: “The Palestinian Arabs did not leave their homes voluntarily or in response to orders from the governments of neighboring Arab countries. They left, driven by the fear of death.”
From 1948 to 1957, the United Nations General Assembly adopted 19 resolutions confirming the right of refugees to reparations and compensation for lost property, if they do not wish to return.
Israel rejects their implementation.
The situation of the Palestinians worsened after the Six-Day War of 1967 when Israel occupied the remaining parts of Palestinian territory – the Gaza Strip, the West Bank of the Jordan River, and East Jerusalem. Hundreds of thousands of new refugees are forced to leave their homes – from the West Bank of the Jordan River, from Jerusalem, from the Gaza area, from the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula – territories occupied by Israeli forces.
In her book “With My Own Eyes”, Felicia Langer writes about the events of the Six-Day War: “Some of the refugees wanted to return to their homes after the fighting ended. They had to pay with their lives. Their blood stained the waters of the Jordan River.”
Regarding some of the mechanisms for the displacement of Palestinians from the occupied territories, Professor Israel Shahak from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights adds: "Representatives of the authorities arrive around midnight. They give the person half an hour or an hour to gather a few belongings, while not allowing him to contact any of the neighbors. A group of such people is taken to the Jordan Valley, and with the help of beatings and gunshots, they are forced to cross into Jordan..."
20 years under occupation.
The First Intifada (1987), also known as the “War of Stones” due to the unequal forces on both sides, claims 1.376 Palestinian lives (5), including children. In the Secon Intifada (uprising), the number of casualties is even higher.
The year is 1994.
Israel and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) signed the Oslo Accords – the first attempt to balance the scales of Justice. However, the scales were never balanced. Justice was stripped of her blindfold, which was then used to bind her hands, forcing her to witness the very injustices humans are capable of.
“The words leave my mouth as if they don’t belong to me. Scattered here and there are shell casings from fired bullets – property of the Israeli army and various settler groups. The wounded are collected like souvenirs. Eyes that have seen so little of the word, children’s lips with tormented smiles meant to hide the pain. No, here, any words are out of place, even the ones that speak the truth about the war criminals who will one day be held accountable – those who committed crimes against my people and have lost every trace of humanity.” (The Disempowerment of the Palestinians. 40 Years of Israeli Occupation, Felicia Langer)
In 2002, Israel began building the West Bank wall, which is 8 meters high and more than 700 kilometers long (6).
In his book “Israel’s Apartheid” Israeli anthropologist and philosopher Uri Davis compares the Israeli apartheid policies with those of South Africa: “The apartheid wall separates Palestinian communities from one another and seizes more land from the Palestinians. The wall tears apart communities and deprives Palestinians of the ability to earn a living, cultivate their land, and access schools and other educational and healthcare facilities, while transferring the country’s natural resources to the Israeli side.
Israel strictly regulates the lives of the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem. They are dictated to whom they are allowed to marry, where they can reside, and which schools they are permitted to send their children to. Israel also decides which hospital an individual must go to, if they are even allowed to go at all.
Palestinians living in East Jerusalem are not recognized by Israel as full citizens of the state, even if they were born there – as is the case for most of them. Instead, they are treated as immigrants with “permanent residency permits.” According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, only 5% of the Palestinians in East Jerusalem have received Israeli citizenship since 1967.
Israel and South Africa: Under the current Israeli regime, as under the former apartheid regime in South Africa, the oppressed population is demonized as a “nation of terrorists” to justify the increasing violation of their human rights. In both cases, the regimes attempt to convince the rest of the world of their absurd logic – that the victims of state violence are to blame for that violence. The South African and Israeli apartheid regimes are prime examples illustrating how terrorist states attempt to justify themselves by shifting the blame onto their victims.”
Gaza
Long ago, I was asked, “What is the opposite of faith?” I couldn’t find an answer that couldn’t be disproven – until today. The opposite of faith is doubt.
When your homeland becomes a prison, and when you look up at the sky, the window of this prison, standing among the ruins, and ask, “Where is God?” Has He turned away from you? From someone’s brother or sister? From someone’s mother and father? From the children?
Where is God? Is there a God?
I hope that on Judgment Day, when we stand before God and ask him, “Why did You do it?” we won’t hear our echo as an answer.
The Gaza Strip is 360 square kilometers. It is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth.
Over 60% of the population in the Gaza Strip were refugees. There were eight refugee camps. From 2000 to 2004, through its policy of home demolitions, Israel displaced 24.574 residents of the Gaza Strip. In “Let Us Live Like Humans!”, Felicia Langer writes: “I couldn’t enter this prison called Gaza, whose gates are remotely controlled from not very far away. But spending those precious hours in the corridors of this prison gave me a clear understanding of how it is structured.”
More than 45.000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. According to the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF more than 14.500 children have been killed as many thousands are believed to be buried under the rubble.
From the sky, where the Bethlehem star once appeared, guiding the three wise men to Salvation, today bombs and white phosphorus (7) fall, leading the Palestinians to their demise.
“How sad that the previous victims, and their descendants, today do not respect the elementary rules of human coexistence” – Felicia Langer, “The Disempowerment of the Palestinians. 40 Years of Israeli Occupation.”
It will come a day when the bloodshed in the Promised Land
will remain between the pages,
a day when olive branches will fall from the sky,
a day when the only sound in the streets will be the laughter of children,
and the sun’s rays will heal their wounds.
The day when Palestine is liberated.
References
1. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/23/middleeast/gaza-hospitals-doctors-disaster-intl-hnk/index.html
2. Primakov, E. (1980). Anatomy of the Middle East Conflict. Sofia: Science and Art
4. https://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/201006109359.pdf
5. https://www.btselem.org/statistics/first_intifada_table
6. Langer, F. (2015). The Disempowerment of the Palestinians. 40 Years of Israeli Occupation. Sofia: Multiprint
