The first Intifada ..29 years after

Each year, and for the last three decades, on this date, the commemoration of the first intifada brings to the Palestinian mind and heart, the pulse of the Palestinian own existence.

When the first intifada erupted three decades ago, after the murder of Palestinian workers from Gaza. A new concept in defining our lives as Palestinians within our own identities was shaped. In many ways it was a wake up call. That life under discrimination and apartheid cannot be a life.

Back then; the concept of occupation was more visible. It was “they” and “we”. The people and the occupation.

Today, as  discrimination is the outline that characterises the scene again. The confrontation is different. Israel war against the Palestinians is made much easier with the creation of the PA that was crowned as a result of the first intifada.

What the world witnessed when Palestinian children were holding the stones in front of a bulldozer back then, no longer catches the sympathy of the world as a new generation of Palestinians are still carrying the same stone in one hand, and a knife in the other.

As we were holding stones three decades ago, the dreams of liberation were still the aspiration. We still believed that justice should prevail. We still carried idealistic images of a leadership that was in exile fighting for our freedom.

Today, this new generation with two occupied hands knows that the stone will not bring back the land, and the expectations are no longer hidden behind any horizon of hope. Hope that diminished the moment the Palestinian youth decided to hold the knife in the other hand.

In the past we thought that there were drawn lines to provocations, to reactions, to the amount of killing that can alert the world’s attention. Today … as if violence and blood are the tracking movers of the scene. Each day a Palestinian is shot dead at least, on a suspicion of a knife hidden in a pocket or carried in the hand. And neither us nor them nor the world blinks an eye.

With a world that is too occupied with terror within its own soil. With excessive use of weapon and violence. Everyone is becoming part of the mass mess. The world is losing its own empathy towards humanity. The only human life that matters is that which belongs to us. Anything else is just a number that probably deserves to that death.

As if the universe needs to reduce it’s numbers of this exploding increase of population. So the more deaths, the better balance becomes.

Yet we hold the concept of Intifada within us with a certain romanticization, quite not idealization of that period. A period when the Palestinian identity raised to its own self, regardless to the losses that were paid.

Last year, with the wave of stabbing and the intifada sensation that hooked inside the same emotional aura of the intifada. That sense of identity that is back to conceptualize out of the bubble that the PA has trapped the people in. the youth throw a stone in the eye of occupation proving once again that inequity, oppression, and discrimination cannot stay forever … and a knife that stabs desperation and loss of hope. A revolution a Palestinian cannot make against a PA while occupation is overlooking the horizon of any possible life. But yet … in a silent revolt that in two hands aim at the occupation. The Palestinians are saying out their words.

This year, we are closer to an intifada that should be definitely directed to the PA ,and to all what resembles the palestinian leadership that is mudded in corruption and personal interests . the resistance to occupation still continues in many forms, but despair seems to win over all.

The killing continues… , a young man was killed today in one of the checkpoints, prisoners are still struggling for their freedoms , a new settlements law has been passed , and the people are confused between the bulldozers of the israeli armies and the policing of the palestinian forces.

A nation that resists occupation from one side … and submit to desperation from the other side.