It is just heartrending to watch this all.
I do not know what funny, what sarcastic, what ironic, or what simply too sad is.
It is all too sad to watch and live.
I am still reflecting on your words of yesterday, now on TV, another Egyptian analyst was saying your exact words about a state and a group; he was firing all his anger on Nasrallah, and one more time it is all the same story. He was accusing Nasrallah of being a gangster and killing Lebanese, precisely the way you mentioned Hamas stripping Palestinians and throwing them from the 17th floor.
After this crisis is over, all diplomatic engagement will go back; no one will tell anyone that he did or said this or that.
Israel is there continuing its attacks, increasing them, mobilizing its troops and people, and we are fighting.
In the past, individuals and rumors used to be sneaked from behind the scenes of the Arab discretion, which is anything but discreet. The difference between the past and today is that we are watching it all live.
I can scribble into any of those books written yesterday or 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, and I will see what is happening today written by a pen by an Arab scholar.
It is so sad to see it, not just to hear it.
There is nothing more we can justify. It is all there in front of us, and we are still reacting, offending and not doing anything.
I feel in a strange situation. In a way, one more time, being forced to hear you, to go deep inside those words I hear on TV screens. It is stranger, it is people versus governments, and you represent a state, I am sure our whole interaction would have been different if you were just people.
As I try to fight within myself, my emotions that are so blunt and rigid in front of me, I cannot ignore what you say or feel. I can blame you for being senseless and unyielding,
However, I cannot but stop and hear you. It hurts not being able to reach out somewhere. Somewhere where we actually can bend and see through the ground. See the real damages.
Behind every human shed, is a human story, like mine and yours? Those five sisters killed today, that child died in the targeting of the four activists, those children rushing away from schools, those people begging on the borders, all those people killed, all those injured in those hospitals. All have stories not different than ours, and we fail to see.
Why would be Shalit safety more important, why are his mother and family are closer for us to be seen than all those poor victims?
Why is the panic of that Israeli woman in Sderot greater than the fear of these people under the fire?
What more do we need?
Why can’t we see them? Why can’t we see the virtue of those lost lives?
While we are fighting, while we are blaming each other, while you are playing machos in refusing to open the borders. It is true, what did the Palestinians give you in return. Why would you sacrifice Egyptians lives for a Palestinian lost cause, but why would you think opening borders would do to these people. In any regular part of a world, in times of wars and attacks, people tend to run, to run for their lives, maybe if the borders are opened the losses will be reduced. Maybe it will give the enemy a reason to stop or reevaluate his move.
I could understand that your standpoint as a government is pressed to be different from that of a person like me, I know there is no way that Israel will be the ally, but this attitude is not healthy, and only increases our fractions.
Our anger and frustration are healthy, but we need to be wise, in concentrating on our mutual enemy, even if this enemy disguises in different faces, it is all so obvious, we do not need to learn from the past, we need to learn from the present.
Yesterday, while we were arguing, I was seeing my uncle, whom I consider as a fundamentalist in his thinking, meaning one-sided, totally blocked despite his wisdom.
However, then you reminded me of my fight with zafer. This battle that occupied us so much to a level that we forgot that the victims are those children, our children. This egoistic look and attitude, ignoring the core issue and getting hooked with the CARROT.
We need to be wise in the way we calculate our moves and attacking our targets.
Our problem, your problem, is the occupation, the Israeli attacks, not who provoked and why.
Gaza is not Hamas, Gaza is 1.5 million mother, father, husband, sister, brother, wife, son, daughter, elderly, and others. Gaza is a chain of human beings, who need to be treated like regular people; their lives should be dealt with in your life and mine. Moreover, our fight should be for the people, not for the system because at this moment it is individuals who are paying the price, not a system.
With the many pieces of wisdom, I received from you yesterday, was that Hamas cannot be uprooted, the only way Hamas will go out is with a national consensus through the election. These attacks, exactly like your other words of wisdom about how the people in Egypt who could hate their state, would defend it with all that they have if anyone touches its sovereignty. So are the people in Gaza and the States and everywhere. This is how people like Hamas are rooted, through such coercions, people feel urged to believe in these people, because they are all now standing in one line facing the same compulsion, not watching and bullying them.
Our people are in need, not because they are the demanding spoilt Palestinians, but because they are a nation under occupation.
Palestinians are the sacrifice that was given to the western colonization with creating Israel, Israel, who defeated all the Arab troops gathered in many forces in six days.
Israel who is not a colonial settlement only, it is a factual setting occupation. Don’t blame us for this occupation.
It is there, and it is a whole history of an entire nation defeat.
Ever since I knew you, my whole perception of the Egyptian status here changed, in many ways on a more humanistic level, despite all my reservations, honestly, never even wanted to know what you are doing, because it is not my kind of ideologies of what I want as a Palestinian. Part of me understood your striving to make a difference, part of me wanted to see that difference, but a part of me was terrified of solutions based on defeat.
In your world, and views. In the whole world’s views, we are stupid to think of resistance; we are nothing but current and future terrorist foundations. We are stupid to believe that we can defeat Israel . all this …
Yes, Israel is with the power of force. Israel is the modernity in comparison to our backwardness.
Israel is the opportunity, and we are the darkness.
However, Israel is built on our ashes, our bones.
We are the people of this land. Our fight is just. Because our cause is just.
In the past, your people fought to kick out the British despite the tyranny of the monarchy, and you consider it and me as a heroic time in your history.
Don’t blame my people for wanting to live with dignity.
Whatever your efforts lead us is nothing but more oppression and disgrace. Because you stopped seeing Israel as an enemy . and you see us as your spoilt drunk little brother.
It is again like my fight with my ex
When I was fought for doing this and that and forcing me to give up the kids, to the man they all knew was incompatible and untrustable, but can afford what I cannot afford. Instead of backing me up and supporting me I was jut pushed towards the edges of anything. I was denied my inherent right of being a mother, and blamed for leaving an abusive husband, and condemned for not bearing more, and everyone forgot what the origin of all this was, to some extent I did too.
I am too tired again,
Moreover, maybe our debate will never meet at any point because we both are on different parallels of this whole path, you are a government, and I am a community.
To be continued….
Apparently, this tragedy is just at its beginning …
Nadia
29-12-08
(this is an email I must have sent to one of my diplomat friends ( it is embarrassing that I do not remember )))