The rise and fall of the leader: Dead or Alive. Who cares?
In everyday life, where people claim democracy, a leader rises and falls with votes…elections. In dictatorships, autocracies, and Palestinian reality, the leader is declared by Israel in a parachute flight until a final fall crashes earth and people around him.
A famous Egyptian Play-the leader- played for more than a decade in the 90s by the renowned Adel Imam, pictures the death of a dictator and how his close staff brought in an imitated look-alike actor to replace him some time. Sarcastically, the dictator leader in the first scene of the Play condemns the agreement between Israel and Palestine that is called -prick and comfort- prick in Arabic, when written can be seen as Gaza- the letters g-z-a(h). and comfort in Arabic can be read with the same alphabetic as Jericho- Riha in Arabic. The letters r-i-h can stand for the root of comfort. It was hilarious- almost prophetic to think of how he was able to transform the words of the agreement on Gazan ad Jericho, just a year before Oslo, into what it means: prick and comfort. Well, it became more disastrous than a prick and a replacement… destruction of a whole nation. A dream is turning into a nightmare. A hope transforming into despair is what defines the consequence of that historical moment of hideous events. When we naively believed that those who carried the revolution were coming back with the eagerness, the dream of a homeland. They were back to fulfill their visions of becoming rich and dictators. They found a farm of feudality with people as they served to enslave peasants.
Another scene of a movie flashed into my head- the death of Stalin- that incredible scene when Stalin dies.
Rumors roll like a snowball for a week in Palestinian cities and among Palestinians everywhere: the president is dying.
A helicopter chops from Ramallah, and a helicopter lands in Ramallah. An Israeli hospital, a Jordanian hospital. Silence…
The president is in a coma. The president has surgery, a failure in an organ, organs. Dead, coma.
Ramallah. Amman.
Silence in the Muqataa.
Jokes all over the social media with anticipation of the big news. It felt like watching a football game or a talent waiting for the finalist to be announced. People were waiting for the information about the death.
Jokes all over with cynicism and satire. Some say that the dieticians will prosper in a month because the people will become obese from eating too many sweets after the “announcement.” Jokes about how the angel of death retreated and announced his death after falling to take Abu Mazen. Some tricks were about how all the doctor team was dead during his operation. The latest was Palestinians declared three days mourning on the news of the non-death of the president.
The president finally appears after a few days of a photoshopped appearance and recording during the week of rumors.
Even though the final appearance proves a living president, people still claim this is a photoshopped appearance with the American official from last year.
I don’t think the Americans will also be part of the cover-up of the president’s death. Right?
While discussing the topic in the last few days, I thought of how horrific it is to end human life with so much hatred and wait to see that end. We just witnessed the exact opposite of a human life ending with Shireen Abu Akleh, whose death was more of a resurrection of a higher level of existence. An existence that is beyond our reach, and yet, we all witnessed how goodness prevails, if not in life … in death.
In the death or undeath of Abu Mazen, we are witnessing how badness prevails itself, even in the end.
My mind has been roaming in surreal images of what might have been happening in the president’s deathbed-Muqataa in the last week—scenarios of sustaining the situation forever… for as much as possible to be maintained. I was thinking of what will happen to them. The chief of his office, the different autocrats, and the shoulders of the dictatorship have been helping the sustainability of the continuing destruction. His family… they must be collecting themselves for a flee. All those around him will need to escape. All the resources and investments have been poured into an ocean of wealth for these people in the last decades. Decades that produced Palestinian billionaires and poor Palestinian people.
Who is coming next? Whom are they conspiring to force into another attempt to sustain the situation?
The internal war on inheritance. The blood that will be spilled to take over more.
Israel is watching and intervening to the level that sustains what it wants: a dictator that follows its rule and forces obedience on people keeping Palestinian mess inside the Palestinian-ruled territory of a Fateh-ruled PA… for whatever time this may take place… until a solution is found for the eruptive volcano with minimal effects on Israel… let it burn as many Palestinians as possible.
This is what it means to live without elections. To rule with designed laws that one person can put and remove in a pen move.
This is what it means to live without the rule of law—the government for the militias.
It eventually takes you more profound into the hollowness of an inferno that nourishes itself with the guilt of more people—a burning hell with no sight to a purification level.
In an inferno, we finally see a dictator -still struggling, though- falling into its hungry flames.
I feel saddened that he is not dead yet. Not because I wish him that. But because of him living to see all this hatred and despise.
I thought Sharon’s end was one of God’s interventions in proving His Power over those who believed were the most powerful. But now I look into what is happening to Abu Mazen in his latest death experience and cannot but think of how miserable his end is continuing to be.
He was living to witness his end through the people’s eyes and hearts.
There is a verse in the Quran that I never understood this good… reflects perfectly this given moment of Abu Mazen’s end… that moment when life and death are an actual intervention of God.
“To whom will come a torment disgracing him and on whom will descend an enduring punishment.” ( a-Zumor 40)