When the declaration of the Palestinian independence was announced on 15 November 1988 in Algeria, the dream of liberation became a step closer. We were in the middle of the first Intifada, and the stories of-of our heroic resilience were impressive even to us. We believed that it was time for liberation. After living a whole life, (I was fifteen back then) under occupation, only commemorating one misery after another, it was the time that we have a real Palestinian day.
With its good and worse, this day became a symbol.
However, independence was never never realized , despite the declaration of a State in a similar symbolic empty setting, in the UN some years later.
As I am looking at myself, three times older than that day when the independence was first declared, I bow down my head with disappointment that continued to impose itself on the Palestinian living hood since Oslo.
Sometimes I try to justify what took place, which resulted in Oslo, at times I think it is ok that we, the people who never left this country, neither voluntarily or by force, were always privileged in the sense that we never tasted the bitter feeling of the diaspora. But apparently, the diaspora we imagined was not the diaspora that the people in what became the Palestinian Authority lived in. It is not the poor people of the refugee camps, whose lives only became more and more miserable and intolerable with time.
It sounds like gangsters in the disguise of a national movement hijacked us, as a nation. No matter how I try to make, things look healthy, adjustable to our lives. No matter how I try to make this process of the so-called Oslo anything that can give a Palestinian statehood. Anything that can make us a nation … a country that was lost since Oslo.
Before the “Independence,” our life had a shape of a life of people who struggled for liberation, but we were one nation, one people. Even the relationship with the Israelis was better. Our worst nightmares were flying checkpoints who became permanent. And we were so spoilt we were throwing stones and burning wheels and going in demonstrations, and the Israelis only hit us and smashed urn legs and occasionally killed some.
Our life was a life of people who sincerely strived from existence. A life of individuals whose cause is the cause that is so just it split the world and no power was able to diminish it or its people …
All these years later
We are still under occupation
Killing became a way of living
Children are sentenced to jail
If lucky, not to be killed
Oppression continues…
the colonial settlement is inside our neighborhoods.
Our leadership struggles to keep its existence. All about individual people.
The homeland became each one’s house and family.
Religion, political affiliation became the cause …
On this day, we are celebrating the defeat of our cause ….deliberately …………
Also, at this moment in life…. We are all partners in this crime. Because there are no more secrets hidden, and there is no more unknown to be discovered…. Just our continuous defeat
With its good and worse, this day became a symbol.
However, independence was never never realized , despite the declaration of a State in a similar symbolic empty setting, in the UN some years later.
As I am looking at myself, three times older than that day when the independence was first declared, I bow down my head with disappointment that continued to impose itself on the Palestinian living hood since Oslo.
Sometimes I try to justify what took place, which resulted in Oslo, at times I think it is ok that we, the people who never left this country, neither voluntarily or by force, were always privileged in the sense that we never tasted the bitter feeling of the diaspora. But apparently, the diaspora we imagined was not the diaspora that the people in what became the Palestinian Authority lived in. It is not the poor people of the refugee camps, whose lives only became more and more miserable and intolerable with time.
It sounds like gangsters in the disguise of a national movement hijacked us, as a nation. No matter how I try to make, things look healthy, adjustable to our lives. No matter how I try to make this process of the so-called Oslo anything that can give a Palestinian statehood. Anything that can make us a nation … a country that was lost since Oslo.
Before the “Independence,” our life had a shape of a life of people who struggled for liberation, but we were one nation, one people. Even the relationship with the Israelis was better. Our worst nightmares were flying checkpoints who became permanent. And we were so spoilt we were throwing stones and burning wheels and going in demonstrations, and the Israelis only hit us and smashed urn legs and occasionally killed some.
Our life was a life of people who sincerely strived from existence. A life of individuals whose cause is the cause that is so just it split the world and no power was able to diminish it or its people …
All these years later
We are still under occupation
Killing became a way of living
Children are sentenced to jail
If lucky, not to be killed
Oppression continues…
the colonial settlement is inside our neighborhoods.
Our leadership struggles to keep its existence. All about individual people.
The homeland became each one’s house and family.
Religion, political affiliation became the cause …
On this day, we are celebrating the defeat of our cause ….deliberately …………
Also, at this moment in life…. We are all partners in this crime. Because there are no more secrets hidden, and there is no more unknown to be discovered…. Just our continuous defeat
Excellent article ma’am, thank you for your insight into this very sad reality. I seek peace and kindness and absolutely no violence world wide, I know that this will never happen because there is so much hate in society. There are groups that will never tolerate peace and as you know very well, one of those hate groups is Hamas and another is Hezbollah. There are hate groups within Israel also just as there are here in the U.S. but until there is no violence at all coming from the P.O. and the other Islamic hate groups toward the people of Israel there will never ever be peace and prosperity for the Palestinian people nor will there be a Palestinian State that can live and operate freely in a peaceful society. I pray for and I wish the whole region to have a total peace but it is going to take a lot of willpower from all of the people who live there within all borders to seek peace above all things or there will never be peace there for anyone.
Reblogged this on O LADO ESCURO DA LUA.
Reblogged this on Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News and commented:
Continuous defeat, is a very real sense… but you are still standing, you are still Palestinian. The thousands of Israeli’s working everyday to imprison you are themselves imprisoned in that task rather than building a peace for the seventh daughters and sons and their seventh daughters and sons of Palestinian and Israeli peoples.
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