Watching the news might be a bit of frightening seeing the Israeli army losing its temper and patience aimlessly, fearfully attempting to find the abducted soldiers/youth settlers( Israel claims they are not soldiers). But I remind myself with the fact that it is another time we are face-to-face with the true face of occupation.
What I always tell myself is that I appreciate the checkpoint I have to pass each day to arrive to work, regardless to the detour and the reminder of oppression all the way, but I feel that I am still face to face with Israel on basis of its reality. Occupation.
I was hearing feedbacks from people in Hebron, and it was one moment of feeling pride from one side, and struggling to aim for a really true exit that could change the reality of this maze from the other side.
It worries me to see me, to see us, experiencing this sense of victory, while realizing it is not victory at all. But this is how our life has become; enjoying any opportunity that could make us feel that we scored. Even while deadly worried about the destiny of the population in Hebron as they are subrogated with the fierce attack with the Israeli forces, surrounded with the shameful feelings from being also surrounded by the Palestinian security subjects that are searching in the same fiercely way of the Israelis.
As we are injecting ourselves with a new hope in scoring, I don’t think we even think of victory, we are too far from even dreaming of such a day. We don’t even know how to define what victory is anymore. I cannot think of what kind of victory would I want over Israel. It has been decades that our senses of occupation have been injected in a frozen mode.
But in all this, there is more than a lesson to be learnt for both Palestinians and Israelis.
For Palestinians, both authority and people, yes, there are still people who are holding this cause on their shoulders and are willing to die for it. Someone told me today, if the abductors are former prisoners ( the leading clue israel claims to have got), “do you understand what would it feel when you see that your friends, brothers, relatives (former colleagues in prison) are dying, experiencing what they are experiencing in their hunger strike”? I was thinking of how numb we are, satisfying our frozen sensations in posting or sharing a word or a photo to support prisoners. How we failed to internalize the pain, the injustice, the real suffering of prisoners. IF the abductors are former prisoners, it is a lesson to Israel, to tell them yet another time, in prison people learn how to be unified, how to be strong, how to be strategic, how to plan, how to understand the enemy … how to be able to learn his rules and manoeuvre around his tactics and style. In prison, people also learn the meaning of loss. The meaning of unworthy lives you made our life add to become.
As much as I try not to oppose the PA in such a situation, but the fact that the PA is part of the search makes it another pain in the heart. It is another direct failure of the so-called security coordination. It is another blow back in our faces as a nation. The continued accusation is practically proved right now. That this coordination made the PA serve as a watchdog for Israeli security and well being … even against us.
The abduction of soldiers may remain the best tactic Palestinians can have in order to gain some rights, at least some rights to the prisoners.
As Israel celebrates its brutal expansion in our lands, it is another lesson for Israeli population, you want to live in a settlement, be ready to pay for the consequence. As long as there is a Palestinian who carries the cause in his heart … injustice will never be a substitute to a peaceful living.
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