By: Mohamad Masharqa, Progress Center for Policies
During one of my visits to my hometown in Dura, one of the largest cities in Hebron governorate, I asked my late uncle to accompany me on a tour to show me the sites of our land, farms, and homes that were occupied in 1948. We arrived at the entrance of a farm surrounded by walls and surveillance cameras. As we approached, a settler carrying an automatic rifle came out. It seemed that he recognized my uncle and angrily exclaimed in broken Arabic, “Why have you come, Abdul Karim? And who is with you?” I intervened and said, “I’m Mohamad, the son of Taha. I want nothing more than to see my land, which my father told me about and praised for its beauty and fertility. ” His eyes sparked, and he yelled, “Who are you? What brought you to my land? Your family belongs in Jordan. Go back where you came from and never repeat this again!” I tried to calm him down, saying, “I didn’t come to reclaim the land by force, and I’m unarmed. I just want to enter and have some water and coffee with you.” He continued to shout and raised the barrel of his gun towards me. “Go back where you came from. I built this ruin with my bare hands, and you no longer have any rights here.”
I share this true story to say that the Western Orientalist mindset does not want to understand the reality of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in its natural context. It turns its back on the fact that an entire people were uprooted from their land, paid a high human and psychological price, and had their natural development cut off, forcing them to live in refugee camps under constant humiliation, after once being dignified and honorable in their land and the land of their ancestors. The colonial mind does not want to acknowledge the root of the Palestinian tragedy and catastrophe, and it has been betting for seventy years that successive generations of Palestinians will forget the cause of their tragedy and displacement. But it is surprised every time to find that the Palestinians have not forgotten and have engaged in all forms of struggle to remind the world of their plight.
When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) emerged with its various factions to engage in armed struggle, after more than seventeen years of waiting for Arab rulers and international legitimacy to give them justice, the racist colonial mind reacted. It found no solution but to talk about a charitable humanitarian issue that requires a little sympathy, a bit of flour and oil, canned goods, and more tents. Thus, they established a specialized relief agency. The same propaganda machine and diplomacy that now accuses the resistance factions, particularly Hamas, of terrorism and disrupting the colonizer’s life and peace, targeted every faction of the PLO and disrupted the harmony and life of the colonizer.
The PLO, which signed the Oslo Accords and recognized Israel, is still listed on the American terrorist list, along with some Western countries. And when a new wave of struggle emerged, after weakening and humiliating what was called moderation and historical reconciliation, its symbol, Yasser Arafat, who signed the peace agreement with Rabin, was killed. The colonial blindness and feeling of absolute power continued to echo the same language of denial that refuses to confront reality. It still believes that the powerful Western war machine, in the hands of Israel, with its armada of warships and armies, will end the phenomenon of resistance, extinguish the Palestinian awareness, and make them accept humiliation, occupation, and silence their demands. The Western mind, burdened by the guilt and crimes of its dirty conscience and atrocities against the Jews, believes it can end the Hamas movement and, with it, the Palestinian cause through murder and forced displacement.
The enthusiasm today will not end even if you turn Gaza upside down and kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Hamas has become an embodiment of the will of an entire people demanding their rights and dignity derived from their existence on their original land. Therefore, the myth of ending Hamas and putting it in the same context as ISIS and Al-Qaeda is nothing but surrendering to the colonial racist mindset that refuses to correctly read the reality and tries to turn its back on the Palestinian tragedy.
The resilience of the Palestinians and their ongoing resistance against Israeli occupation to this day indicates that this issue is not just a humanitarian issue that can be resolved through relief and aid. It is a political issue that requires a political solution, which lies in achieving justice through the implementation of international legitimacy resolutions.
The international community must focus on finding a solution that ends the tragedy from its roots and supports the establishment of an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, within the framework of a union between two independent entities with their own identities and narratives. This solution must be based on justice, equality, and self-determination, and put an end to Israeli occupation once and for all. It is time to open a genuine path for peace, as anything else will give rise to a new generation of Hamas and others in different and more sophisticated forms, standing against the oppressive world.
