Gaza Palestine Quotes

Sometimes a homeland becomes a tale. We love the story because it is about our homeland and we love our homeland even more because of the story.

There's a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be rescued: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meaning of the word "occupation" is only restricted to what the dictionary says rather than those plenty of meanings and connotations of death, destruction, pain, suffering, deprivation, isolation and restrictions that Israel has injected the word with.

Goldstone has done terrible damage to the cause of truth and justice and the rule of law. He has poisoned Jewish-Palestinian relations, undermined the courageous work of Israeli dissenters and—most unforgivably—increased the risk of another merciless IDF assault.

There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they'll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they'd tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead. No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness? Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.

One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.

In Gaza, some of us cannot completely die. Every time a bomb falls, every time shrapnel hits our graves, every time the rubble piles up on our heads, we are awakened from our temporary death.

Let us change a letter from the word ‘EVIL’ Make it 'Ivil' as long as 'Israel' remains so… Let us protect the letter ‘P’ for Prayers.. for PALESTINE... for Peace..

أرضُ غزة يا ولدي وجهُنا ومن طينها ندهنُ الخدَّ كي يتورّدَ يا ولدي ونباهي القمر

Borders are those invented lines drawn with ash on maps and sewn into the ground by bullets.

It is human nature to seek revenge in the face of relentless suffering. You can’t expect an unhealthy person to think logically.

A thief never becomes an owner.

The Nakba took place where Israel is today, not in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Any conversation about reconciliation with both communities should take this fact as a starting point.

It is when darkness prevails that I sit by the window to look past all those electricity-free houses, smell the sweet scent of a calm Gazan night, feel the fresh air going straight to my heart, and think of you, of me, of Palestine, of the crack, of the blank wall, of you, of Mama, of you, of my history class, of you, of God, of Palestine—of our incomplete story.

If the Palestinian people really wish to decide that they will battle to the very end to prevent partition or annexation of even an inch of their ancestral soil, then I have to concede that that is their right. I even think that a sixty-year rather botched experiment in marginal quasi-statehood is something that the Jewish people could consider abandoning. It represents barely an instant in our drawn-out and arduous history, and it's already been agreed even by the heirs of Ze'ev Jabotinsky that the whole scheme is unrealizable in 'Judaea and Samaria,' let alone in Gaza or Sinai. But it's flat-out intolerable to be solicited to endorse a side-by-side Palestinian homeland and then to discover that there are sinuous two-faced apologists explaining away the suicide-murder of Jewish civilians in Tel Aviv, a city which would be part of a Jewish state or community under any conceivable 'solution.' There's that word again...

إذا كان لا بد أن أموت فلا بد أن تعيش أنت لتروي حكايتي لتبيع أشيائي وتشتري قطعة قماش وخيوطا (فلتكن بيضاء وبذيل طويل) كي يبصر طفل في مكان ما من غزة وهو يحدق في السماء منتظراً أباه الذي رحل فجأة دون أن يودع أحداً ولا حتى لحمه أو ذاته يبصر الطائرة الورقية طائرتي الورقية التي صنعتها أنت تحلق في الأعالي ويظن للحظة أن هناك ملاكاً يُعيد الحب إذا كان لا بد أن أموت فليأت موتي بالأمل فليصبح حكاية.

History will remember this war on Palestinian civilians and their displacement as the moment the world woke up to the Zionist plans of occupation and expansion.

They once said Palestine will be free tomorrow. When is tomorrow? What is freedom? How long does it last?

هل سيهجر النوم أعينهم وتؤنبهم ضمائرهم لأنهم لم يقتلوا كما عليهم أن يقتلوا؟

In the case of Israel-Palestine, a one-state solution will arise only on the U.S. model: with extermination or expulsion of the indigenous population.

a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist;

I summarize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as two peaceful peoples who form the majority, caught in the crossfire between extremists who are the minority—each dreaming of annihilating the other they call enemy and danger, and extending their control from the water to the water, fueled by hate, revenge and anger.

Gaza tells stories because Palestine is at a short story's span. Gaza narrates so that people might not forget. Gaza writes back because the power of imagination is a creative way to construct a new reality. Gaza writes back because writing is a nationalist obligation, a duty to humanity, and a moral responsibility

When next this [Gaza war] happens (and it will happen, again and again, because a people remain under occupation and because the relative compelling powers of both revenge and consequence warp beyond recognition once one has been made to bury their child), this same framing can always be used. The barbarians instigate and the civilized are forced to respond. The starting point of history can always be shifted, such that one side is always instigating, the other always justified in response.

I am a physician, and as a consequence I see things most clearly in medical terms. I am arguing that we need an immunization program, one that injects people with respect, dignity, and equality. One that inoculates them against hatred.

Of course the Republicans would be worse. What the mainstream Democrat seems incapable of accepting is that, for an even remotely functioning conscience, there exists a point beyond which relative harm can no longer offset absolute evil. For a lot of people, genocide is that point. Suddenly, an otherwise very persuasive argument takes on a different meaning: “Vote for the liberal though he harms you because the conservative will harm you more” starts to sound a lot like “Vote for the liberal though he harms you because the conservative might harm me, too.

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear BY MOSAB ABU TOHA For Alicia M. Quesnel, MD i When you open my ear, touch it gently. My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside. Her voice is the echo that helps recover my equilibrium when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness. You may encounter songs in Arabic, poems in English I recite to myself, or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard. When you stitch the cut, don’t forget to put all these back in my ear. Put them back in order as you would do with books on your shelf.

Al-Saifi believes that by destroying mosques, “the occupation was erasing the historical proof and evidence of our presence in Palestine.

Israel ends invasion, war ends - Palestine ends resistance, Palestine ends.

When I was asked to fill out a form for my U.S. J-1 visa application, my country, Palestine, was not on the list. But lucky for me, my gender was.

Don't ever be surprise to see a rose shoulder up among the ruins of the house. This is how we survived.

Why do we study history when clearly nobody ever learns from it?

Arafat had said that the womb of the Palestinian woman was a "biological weapon," which he could use to create Palestine state by crowding people into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

While Arab governments and Palestinian leaders were willing to participate in a new and more reasonable UN peace initiative in 1948, the Israelis assassinated the UN peace mediator, Count Bernadotte, and rejected the suggestion of the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), a UN body, to reopen negotiations. This intransigent view would continue; Avi Shlaim has shown in The Iron Wall that, contrary to the myth that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss peace, it was Israel that constantly rejected the peace offers that were on the table.

Anyone who knows the basics of what is happening in Gaza knows that the more people you kill, the more you play into Hamas's hands. They flourish on this shit, after each war, they get more money & more recruits

As I write this, a ceasefire has still not been called. I wonder what reality you now live in. From the point in time at which you read this, what do you say of the moment I am in? How large is the gulf between us?

The militarization of the police leads us to think about Israel and the militarization of the police there—if only the images of the police and not of the demonstrators had been shown, one might have assumed that Ferguson was Gaza. I think that it is important to recognize the extent to which, in the aftermath of the advent of the war on terror, police departments all over the US have been equipped with the means to allegedly “fight terror.

That's the thing about war: it's never enough to disable the buildings, to blow holes into their middles; instead, they're hit over and over again, as if to pound them to dust, to disintegrate them, to remove them from the earth, to deny that families ever lived in them. But people did live there. And they needed to return, even though there was nothing left to return to except forbidding piles of broken concrete and cable wires sticking out of the heaps like markers of malevolence.

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians. The same group also manages to maintain warm relations with, or at the very least to make cordial remarks about, both Hezbollah and al-Qaida. Meanwhile, a document that was once accurately described as a 'warrant for genocide' forms part of the declared political platform of the aforesaid group. There is something about this that fails to pass a smell test.

We started it. We started it with the occupation, and we are duty-bound to end it—a real and complete ending. We started the violence. There is no violence worse than the violence of the occupier, using force on an entire nation, so the question about who fired first is therefore an evasion meant to distort the picture.

With Hamas now in control of the Gaza Strip, Israel imposed a full-blown siege. Goods entering the strip were reduced to a bare minimum; regular exports were stopped completely; fuel supplies were cut; and leaving and entering Gaza were only rarely permitted. Gaza was in effect turned into an open-air prison, where by 2018 at least 53 percent of some two million Palestinians lived in a state of poverty,24 and unemployment stood at an astonishing 52 percent, with much higher rates for youth and women.25 What had begun with international refusal to recognize Hamas’s election victory had led to a disastrous Palestinian rupture and the blockade of Gaza. This sequence of events amounted to a new declaration of war on the Palestinians. It also provided indispensable international cover for the open warfare that was to come.

For Gazans, war is like the weather, we live through it continually. We have no say in it; it just comes and goes, from the day we’re born. Most Gazans have never left the Strip; they don’t know what life feels like where war is not the norm; they don’t know what freedom is either. They know they want it, but they’ve never really tasted it.

Recent years in the Gaza Strip have seen hundreds of Palestinians shot with both rubber-coated bullets (which can be lethal) and live ammunition, despite presenting no immediate threat to any Israeli soldier or civilian. Such actions have a long history and have been well documented by Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights groups.

The border between the State of Israel and the occupied Gaza Strip had always reminded him of the line between Tijuana and greater San Diego. There, too, ragged men the color of earth waited with the mystical patience of the very poor on the pleasure of crisply uniformed, well-nourished officials. Some months before, Lucas had come down for the dawn shape-up at the checkpoint, and he had not forgotten the drawn faces in the half-light, the terrible smiles of the weak, straining to make themselves agreeable to the strong.

Russia stops fighting, war ends - Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Israel ends invasion, war ends - Palestine ends resistance, Palestine ends.

The proportion is approximately the same among the 1.4 million registered refugees in the cramped territory of the Gaza Strip, which came under Egyptian control until 1967.

Gaza is not a place, Gaza is a wake up call.

You know what always inspires me? The spirit of Palestinians. How after every loss, you only find us stronger and trying even harder to live and love life.

O Jews!! When you were in exile When you could not bear any country in the world When you were wandering in the deserts We were still the rulers of Palestine. The coin was still ours.. .!!

PALESTINE A–Z A An apple that fell from the table on a dark evening when man-made lightning flashed through the kitchen, the streets, and the sky, rattling the cupboards and breaking the dishes. “Am” is the linking verb that follows “I” in the present tense when I am no longer present, when I’m shattered. B A book that doesn’t mention my language or my country, and has maps of every place except for my birthplace, as if I were an illegitimate child on Mother Earth. Borders are those invented lines drawn with ash on maps and sewn into the ground by bullets.

Hope is a seed we plant, the wings we grow. If we ever want to see olive trees return to Palestine- if we ever want to see our trees and our people return- we must plant this hope. Across Gaza, and across the world.

It’s a different type of pain, to see your homeland, once covered with olive and lemon trees, lush, fruitful pastures and the remnants of ancient, beautiful humanity, reduced to rubble, populated by camps and tents.

I averted my eyes, looked around, and stumbled through all the faces in the room till they finally rested on his. He was standing like a scared bird, waving one wing and using the other to hide his scar. Aya Rabah- Scars

I think of the hundreds upon hundreds of pictures and videos of the mutilated, the starved, the dismembered, and I am reminded that all of this is functionally invisible to so many in the part of the world where I now live. That if it were presented to them, some would undoubtedly respond the way Barbara Bush once did when asked about the Iraqi dead: “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?” But others, I think, would recoil in a different way. Stubborn as anything, I hang on to the hope that, presented with proof of injustice, the majority human reflex is to act against it.

I’ve always loved writing and journaling, but I like documenting happy moments. And yet here I am living through a Genocide. I feel I have to show the world the truth, but that’s difficult to do while I’m also trying to stay alive.

Thus, the circle is being closed, almost before our very eyes. When Israel took almost 80 percent of Palestine in 1948, it did so through settlement and the ethnic cleansing of the original Palestinian population. The country now has a consensual government that enjoys wide public support, and wants to determine by force the future of the remaining 20 percent. It has, as have all its predecessors, from Labor and Likud alike, resorted to settlement as the best means for doing this. This entails the destruction of an independent Palestinian infrastructure. These politicians sense-and they may not be wrong in this—that the public mood in Israel would allow them to go even further, should they wish to do so.

I don't stand with Hamas, I am Hamas, just like, I don't stand with Ukraine, I am Ukraine. Russia stops fighting, war ends - Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Israel ends invasion, war ends - Palestine ends resistance, Palestine ends.

Sources of economic growth are all completely destroyed – the airport (runways demolished, totally closed); the border for trade with Egypt (now with a sniper tower in the middle of the crossing); access to the ocean (completely cut off in the last two years ).

The West’s credibility as a reference for all things human rights related has waned and is now almost non-existent. The war on Gaza has cost them more than just weapons, it has set the West back hundreds of years and tarnished their image as the leaders of humanity.

And now I pass from my exile to their...homeland? My homeland? The West Bank and Gaza? The Occupied Territories? The Areas? Judea and Samaria? The Autonomous Government? Israel? Palestine? Is there any other country in the world that so perplexes you with its names?

The Israeli Army’s instinct seems to be to kill as many as they can. The death toll’s not important, what’s important is that Gaza dies. To them we are just numbers, and when you’re turned into numbers, it doesn’t matter if it’s ten or ten thousand. It’s just a number.

The Zionists indeed learnt well from the Nazis. So well that it seems that their morally repugnant treatment of the Palestinians, and their attempts to destroy Palestinian society within Israel and the occupied territories, reveals them as basically Nazis with beards and black hats.

Israel could fit inside New Jersey. The West Bank was smaller than Delaware. Four Gazas could be shoehorned inside London. One hundred Israels could be placed inside Argentina and you’d still have some room for the pampas. Israel and Palestine together were one-fifth the size of Illinois.

The wrecked town of Gaza lay silent and empty. It had once been among the finest cities of the Near East: a stopping point on the coastal road from Syria through Palestine to Egypt, made rich by a thriving market and renowned for its mosques, churches and massive airy houses built in marble.1 But in 1149 only its natural wells and reservoirs remained to indicate that this was once a place where people of many religions had thrived. War had swept through the elegant streets and emptied Gaza, seemingly for good. ‘It was now in ruins’, wrote William of Tyre, ‘and entirely uninhabited.

The words have forasken us but we continue to write because the brave souls of Gaza continue to bleed. It is as if we are part of an endless funeral procession. The grief comes in waves, it ebbs and flows but mostly it crashes onto our hearts with great force and leaves us breathless. Helpless.

Thanks to the media and the politicians—two of the worst agents for dumbing down and blinding Israeli society—we learned that the Arabs were born to kill, the whole world is against us, anti-Semitism determines how Israel is dealt with and there is no connection between our actions and the price we pay.

One of the things you have to do during times like these is listen to the news and follow every statement, every scrap of new information. But at the same time, it’s unbearable to listen. The way they talk about us, refer to us, speak for us, decide things for us, without ever asking any of us to speak, is disgusting.

Every day a person is born in Gaza into an open-air prison, in the West Bank without civil rights, in Israel with an inferior status by law, and in neighboring countries effectively condemned to lifelong refugee status, like their parents and grandparents before them, solely because they are Palestinian and not Jewish.

When the contradictions weigh on you, know that this has never been a war of rights and wrongs, of what is just and what is fair. Never has it been a war of political logic or historic sense. All it ever was and will ever be is a war of semantics that altered, redefined and constructed today’s reality and tomorrow’s path.

Looking back, though, I believe being bullied might have been the best thing that ever happened to me, because it played a huge role in shaping the person I am today; giving me the chance to spend more time alone and develop a better relationship with myself. I learned to accept the fact that not everyone in life will like you, and that’s okay.

I love the version of myself I am in Gaza, far more than the version of me that was in Cyprus. Back home, I feel like I have a purpose, a sense of community. Outside of Gaza, I feel like an average person living an unremarkable life. At home, I come alive. There was only one thing missing at this time: I hadn’t achieved my wish to show the world Gaza through my eyes.

I wish I had the capability to report on every single story, every single person I meet, but I don’t have the time or equipment, let alone the battery power or internet connection to upload everything. The reality is I have to choose which stories are worth reporting on, like some sort of sick judge of human suffering. Another layer of trauma for a journalist in Gaza.

Imposing the will of one side through the agencies of the UN could not have been a recipe for peace, but rather for war. The Palestinian side viewed the Zionist movement much as the Algerians did the French colonialists. Just as it was unthinkable for the Algerians to agree to share their land with the French settlers, it was unacceptable for the Palestinians to divide Palestine with the Zionist movement.

Language is never sufficient. There is not enough of it to make a true mirror of living. In this way, the soothing or afflictive effect of the stories we tell is not in whether we select the right words but in our proximity to what the right words might be. This is not some abstraction, but a very real expression of power–the privilege of describing a thing vaguely, incompletely, dishonestly, is inseparable from the privilege of looking away.

There used to be a middle class here – recently. We also get reports that in the past, Gazan flower shipments to Europe were delayed for two weeks at the Erez crossing for security inspections. You can imagine the value of two-week-old cut flowers in the European market, so that market dried up. And then the bulldozers come and take out people’s vegetable farms and gardens. What is left for people? Tell me if you can think of anything. I can’t.

The division of historic Mandatory Palestine as proposed, of 79 percent for the Jews and 21 percent for the Palestinian Arabs, cannot fail to leave the Arabs, all Arabs, with a deep sense of injustice, affront, and humiliation and a legitimate perception that a state consisting of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (and perhaps large parts of East Jerusalem)—altogether some two thousand square miles—is simply not viable, politically and economically.

That an Israeli soldier could bulldoze 189 olive trees on the Land he claims is part of the "God-given Land" is something I will never comprehend. Did he not consider the possibility that God might get angry? Did he not realize that it was a tree he was running over? If a Palestinian bulldozer were ever invented (Haha, I know!) and I were given the chance to be in an orchard, in Haifa for instance, I would never uproot a tree an Israeli planted. No Palestinian would. To Palestinians, the tree is sacred, and so is the Land bearing it. And as I talk about Gaza, I remember that Gaza is but a little part of Pales tine. I remember that Palestine is bigger than Gaza. Palestine is the West Bank; Palestine is Ramallah; Palestine is Nablus; Palestine is Jenin; Palestine is Tulkarm; Palestine is Bethlehem; Palestine, most importantly, is Yafa and Haifa and Akka and all those cities that Israel wants us to forget about.

There are moments chronicled in political history as pivotal in carving a new political path forward and this genocidal ‘defending of one’s state’ has become one of them. History will remember this war on Palestinian civilians and their displacement as the moment the world woke up to the Zionist plans of occupation and expansion. As a result, never again will the same rhetoric be sufficient in explaining the atrocities they are willing to perpetrate towards its attainment.

Although . . . polls have often concluded that most Palestinians, at least in the West Bank and Gaza, support a two-state settlement, they have also shown that there is almost complete unanimity among Palestinians in support of the “right of return,” the implementation of which would necessarily subvert any two-state settlement. And Palestinian Arabs are equally unanimous in denying the legitimacy of Zionism and Israel—which, again, would raise a vast question mark over the durability of any two-state arrangement.

Notwithstanding the Jerusalem Declaration, conflation of criticism of Israeli policy, or criticism of Zionism, with antisemitism remains the rule for Western governments, mainstream media and academic institutions. This has resulted in the democratic paradox that to criticize a government comprising far-right ministers, which promotes religious supremacism, fashions discriminatory legislation, rejects international law, and carries out massacres of civilian populations, is to expose oneself to the accusation of iniquity.

If you cared about the thousands of children suffering today in Gaza, as much you care about the birth of one middle eastern child two thousand years ago, perhaps then, you could've understood the true meaning of Christmas. As of now, Christmas is just a festival of hypocrisy - and that too, in the name of a man who gave his life to lift up the fallen. My question is, if you cannot be Christlike in your deeds, what's the point of all these festivities, which are supposed to be rooted in goodwill towards all, not mindless self-obsession!

Palestina ni nchi ya Waisraeli waliyopewa na Mungu wa Yakobo. Hata hivyo, hawakutimiza masharti. Mungu aliwaagiza kuua kila mtu katika nchi ya Kaanani na miji yake yote. Waisraeli, wakiongozwa na Yoshua, waliua watu wengi katika nchi ya Kaanani. Hawakuua kila mtu katika miji ya Ashdodi, Gathi na Ukanda wa Gaza kama walivyoagizwa. Mungu alimwambia Ibrahimu kuwa angempa yeye na uzao wake nchi ya Kaanani kuwa milki yao ya milele, na kuwa Yeye ndiye angekuwa Mungu wao daima. Vita ya Israeli na Palestina itamalizwa na Mungu. Itamalizwa na hekima.

By Friday June 9, the fifth day of the war, Israeli forces had decisively defeated the Egyptian and Jordanian armies and occupied the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and Arab East Jerusalem. Early that morning Israel had begun storming the Golan Heights, routing the Syrian army, and was advancing rapidly along the main road toward Damascus. The council had ordered comprehensive cease-fires on June 6 and 7, but Israeli forces entering Syria ignored these resolutions, even as their government loudly proclaimed its adherence to them.

Without a doubt, what will haunt memories the longest, including perhaps in Israel itself, is how the inequality between lives has been paraded on the stage of Gaza, ignored by some and legitimized by others. That this supreme injustice - one life being worth less than another - is widespread in our world is a reality evident in peacetime and wartime alike. But there is hardly any previous instance in which the governments of Western countries so ostentatiously avert their eyes from it, to the extent of justifying it and silencing the voices that criticize it.

In light of the currently minimal protest at top diplomatic and multilateral levels, Israel, together with the United States, will continue to define its military practices as the new normal in asymmetric warfare. Israeli and U.S. military operations, legal jurisprudence, and scholarly interventions will add to the state practice and opinio juris constitutive of customary law. This means that as customary law on irregular combat continues to crystallize, Gaza's besieged population, and Palestinians generally will continue to bear the devastating consequences of its experimentation.

People here talked about the pre-1967 borders. To tell you the truth this is astonishing. Whatever happened to the (Palestinian) cause we had before 1967? Were we lying to ourselves or to the world? Thousands of martyrs fell before 1967. What for? How can you say that Palestine was occupied only in 1967, and that (Israel) must return to the pre-1967 borders? Does Palestine consist of only the West Bank and the Gaza Strip? If so, it means that the Israelis did not occupy it in 1948. They left it to you for twenty years, so why didn't you establish a Palestinian state? Wasn't the Gaza strip part of Egypt, and the West Bank part of Jordan? The Jews left them to you for twenty years - from 1948 to 1967. If that is Palestine, why didn't you establish a state there? What is the justification for all the wars, the sacrifices, and the economic embargo on Israel before 1967? The Israelis can sue the Arabs now, and demand billions or even trillions in compensation for the damage caused them in 1948-1967. You Arabs admitted that the (Palestinian) cause began after 1967. So the Israelis can ask: "Why did you fight us before that?" They will demand Arab compensation for the so-called embargo on Israel, and for the economic damage caused to the Israelis. If the Israelis sue you, they will win. They will say: We suffered an injustice. We are like an innocent lamb surrounded by wolves. We've been saying this since 1948. Now the Arabs themselves have admitted that Palestine was occupied in 1967. Now they demand that Israel return to the pre-1967 borders, saying this will resolve the problem, and they will recognise Israel. Why didn't you recognise Israel before 1967? There is no God but Allah. By Allah, this is unacceptable. It doesn't make sense. You say that you will recognise Israel within the pre-1967 borders?! Maybe Israel will occupy more Arab land in, say, 2008, and a few years later, you will demand that it return to the pre-2008 borders, in exchange for recognizing Israel. This is exactly what's going on now. We gave negotiations a serious try. The Jews used to say: "Meet with us only once for direct negotiations, and we will resolve this issue." This is what they used to say in the 1950s and 1960s. They used to say: "Please, Arabs, sit down with us just one time, and our problem will be over." But you saw what happened. We met with them a thousand times - from the stables of (camp) David to Annapolis. We've been through all these negotiations - the stables of (camp) David, the Oslo negotiations of our brother Abu Mazen... He was, of course, the hero of Oslo - just like Sadat was the hero of the stables of (camp) David. When Algeria was fighting, donations and volunteers were coming in broad daylight - from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf. From here, from Syria, Dr. IIbrahim Makhous came with a group of volunteers, and fought alongside the Algerian Liberation Front. They were not considered terrorists, and no measures were taken against Syria.

The silence itself becomes an empty canvas, onto which any fantasy can be painted. When every last Palestinian journalist has been killed, maybe there will never have been any Palestinian journalists at all. Maybe they will have all been terrorists or supporters of terrorists or whatever adjacency to terror is sufficient to scare off those who, in possession of something approximating a soul, might otherwise look upon such obvious assassination and say: This is wrong. Absent an act to describe and the language to describe it, we are capable of believing nothing, or multiple contradictory things, or anything at all.

In the wake of the defeat of the Arab armies, and after further massacres of civilians, an even larger number of Palestinians, another 400,000, were expelled and fled from their homes, escaping to neighboring Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the West Bank and Gaza (the latter two constituted the remaining 22 percent of Palestine that was not conquered by Israel). None were allowed to return, and most of their homes and villages were destroyed to prevent them from doing so.38 Still more were expelled from the new state of Israel even after the armistice agreements of 1949 were signed, while further numbers have been forced out since then. In this sense the Nakba can be understood as an ongoing process.

American progressives cannot wave a magic wand and solve the Israel-Palestine conflict, but we can certainly take action. We can push Israel to allow the people of Gaza the freedom to rebuild their economy. We can put real pressure on Israel to stop expanding its settlements, and to allow Palestinian towns to grow, as well as allow the free movement of Palestinians in the West Bank. We can make it clear that our democratic values demand that we support Palestinians having the same right to a national existence as Israelis do, and the same right to live in peace and security. We can press Israel to stop blocking the rights that Palestinians are just as entitled to as anyone else. In short, we can act on our principles, which maintain that oppressive conditions diminish life for all but the very few who profit from them.

The area occupied by the Christians in Syria and Palestine, called Outremer because of its location beyond the Mediterranean Sea, was a thin coastal strip extending from Armenia in the north to the borders of the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt in the south. By 1109, the Christian territory was divided into four large states: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, extending from Gaza to Beirut; the County of Tripoli, from Beirut to Margat; the Principality of Antioch, from Margat to Alexandria; and the County of Edessa, which stretched northeast all the way to present-day Urfa. These Latin states were governed by noble courts in much the same way as their counterparts in Europe. They were often rocked by dynastic disputes, which, together with the scarcity of available troops and the latent threat of Muslim attack, put the security of the Christian population in a constant state of uncertainty.

By the end of the year 2000, Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza numbered 225,000. The best offer to the Palestinians—by Clinton, not Barak—had been to withdraw 20 percent of the settlers, leaving more than 180,000 in 209 settlements, covering about 10 percent of the occupied land, including land to be “leased” and portions of the Jordan River valley and East Jerusalem. The percentage figure is misleading, since it usually includes only the actual footprints of the settlements. There is a zone with a radius of about four hundred meters around each settlement within which Palestinians cannot enter. In addition, there are other large areas that would have been taken or earmarked to be used exclusively by Israel, roadways that connect the settlements to one another and to Jerusalem, and “life arteries” that provide the settlers with water, sewage, electricity, and communications. These range in width from five hundred to four thousand meters, and Palestinians cannot use or cross many of these connecting links. This honeycomb of settlements and their interconnecting conduits effectively divide the West Bank into at least two noncontiguous areas and multiple fragments, often uninhabitable or even unreachable, and control of the Jordan River valley denies Palestinians any direct access eastward into Jordan. About one hundred military checkpoints completely surround Palestine and block routes going into or between Palestinian communities, combined with an uncountable number of other roads that are permanently closed with large concrete cubes or mounds of earth and rocks. There was no possibility that any Palestinian leader could accept such terms and survive, but official statements from Washington and Jerusalem were successful in placing the entire onus for the failure on Yasir Arafat. Violence in the Holy Land continued.

Looking at a situation like the Israel-Palestine conflict, Americans are likely to react with puzzlement when they see ever more violent and provocative acts that target innocent civilians. We are tempted to ask: do the terrorists not realize that they will enrage the Israelis, and drive them to new acts of repression? The answer of course is that they know this very well, and this is exactly what they want. From our normal point of view, this seems incomprehensible. If we are doing something wrong, we do not want to invite the police to come in and try and stop us, especially if repression will result in the deaths or imprisonment of many of our followers. In a terrorist war, however, repression is often valuable because it escalates the growing war, and forces people to choose between the government and the terrorists. The terror/repression cycle makes it virtually impossible for anyone to remain a moderate. By increasing polarization within a society, terrorism makes the continuation of the existing order impossible. Once again, let us take the suicide bombing example. After each new incident, Israeli authorities tightened restrictions on Palestinian communities, arrested new suspects, and undertook retaliatory strikes. As the crisis escalated, they occupied or reoccupied Palestinian cities, destroying Palestinian infrastructure. The result, naturally, was massive Palestinian hostility and anger, which made further attacks more likely in the future. The violence made it more difficult for moderate leaders on both sides to negotiate. In the long term, the continuing confrontation makes it more likely that ever more extreme leaders will be chosen on each side, pledged not to negotiate with the enemy. The process of polarization is all the more probably when terrorists deliberately choose targets that they know will cause outrage and revulsion, such as attacks on cherished national symbols, on civilians, and even children. We can also think of this in individual terms. Imagine an ordinary Palestinian Arab who has little interest in politics and who disapproves of terrorist violence. However, after a suicide bombing, he finds that he is subject to all kinds of official repression, as the police and army hold him for long periods at security checkpoints, search his home for weapons, and perhaps arrest or interrogate him as a possible suspect. That process has the effect of making him see himself in more nationalistic (or Islamic) terms, stirs his hostility to the Israeli regime, and gives him a new sympathy for the militant or terrorist cause. The Israeli response to terrorism is also valuable for the terrorists in global publicity terms, since the international media attack Israel for its repression of civilians. Hamas military commander Salah Sh’hadeh, quoted earlier, was killed in an Israeli raid on Gaza in 2002, an act which by any normal standards of warfare would represent a major Israeli victory. In this case though, the killing provoked ferocious criticism of Israel by the U.S. and western Europe, and made Israel’s diplomatic situation much more difficult. In short, a terrorist attack itself may or may not attract widespread publicity, but the official response to it very likely will. In saying this, I am not suggesting that governments should not respond to terrorism, or that retaliation is in any sense morally comparable to the original attacks. Many historical examples show that terrorism can be uprooted and defeated, and military action is often an essential part of the official response. But terrorism operates on a logic quite different from that of most conventional politics and law enforcement, and concepts like defeat and victory must be understood quite differently from in a regular war.

When Ghada, the beautiful 78 year old Palestinian woman, offered me the bread she had just conjured up on the makeshift and primitive cast iron lid balanced upon a rocky fire outside of her sparse UNRWA tent in 2015 it was precisely then that I decided that my life had to change. No longer could I justify vulgar material possessions and unnecessary finances. I returned home, sold my house,moved into a modest but adequate abode and gave a lot of time and funds to helping those with nothing. Some of us aren't destined to feel rapturous love...find deep faith...have a sense of belonging in this world but thanks to Ghada and the many like her, both young and old,that I encountered in Gaza and the West Bank I finally realized and truly understood what it meant to be a human being and what the real purpose of this life is....to help,to give,to speak out,to speak up,to right the many wrongs...to do all of those things without ever once expecting a single thing in return. After all, it is neither heroic or special to do what is just.

Israel’s constant drone surveillance over Gaza also impressed President Vladimir Putin. Moscow needed reliable surveillance drones after it lost many planes during its war in 2008 against Georgia in South Ossetia. Tbilisi had used Israeli drones, and years later Moscow decided to follow suit. Having seen Israeli operations over Gaza, Russia licensed the Israeli Aerospace Industries Searcher II, renamed “Forpost” by its new owners, and it became a key asset in Russian support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.33 Israel trained Russian pilots to operate the drones. Russia and Israel maintained a close relationship during the Syrian civil war despite the former supporting Assad and the latter worrying about the growing presence of Russian allies Iran and Hizbollah in the country. This led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (and Naftali Bennett) to routinely attack Iranian and Syrian military positions in Syria to stop the transfer of weapons to Hizbollah. However, Moscow usually turned a blind eye to these attacks, assisted by a de-escalation hotline between the two governments.

The reactions of some on the left to the October 7, 2023, attack revealed with disturbing clarity the extent to which antisemitic thinking had found a home in my own political camp, even among erstwhile allies. Cheers for Hamas gunmen, glee at the killing of Israeli civilians, grotesque conspiracies of Jewish global control—all have appeared at pro-Palestine demonstrations. And to ignore this reality, as some prefer, is to do a disservice to the movement that is rightfully outraged over Israel’s brutal war in Gaza. Acknowledging the reality of antisemitism on the left is, in fact, wholly compatible with opposing Israeli war crimes. Antisemitism on the left takes a different form than on the right, but it is no less real. Right-wing antisemitism imagines Jews as a threat to the authentic members of the organic nation; it figures Jews as a foreign, malign influence, usurping and corrupting the Volk. Contemporary left-wing antisemitism, by contrast, envisions Jews as the quintessential oppressors— the puppet masters and chief beneficiaries of capitalism, imperialism, and even white supremacy.

Statement on Hamas (October 10th, 2023) When Israel strikes, it's "national security" - when Palestine strikes back, it's "terrorism". Just like over two hundred years ago when native americans resisted their homeland being stolen, it was called "Indian Attack". Or like over a hundred years ago when Indian soldiers in the British Army revolted against the empire, in defense of their homeland, it was called "Sepoy Mutiny". The narrative never changes - when the colonizer terrorizes the world, it's given glorious sounding names like "exploration" and "conquest", but if the oppressed so much as utters a word in resistance, it is branded as attack, mutiny and terrorism - so that, the real terrorists can keep on colonizing as the self-appointed ruler of land, life and morality, without ever being held accountable for violating the rights of what they deem second rate lifeforms, such as the arabs, indians, latinos and so on. After all this, some apes will still only be interested in one stupid question. Do I support Hamas? To which I say this. Until you've spent a lifetime under an oppressive regime, you are not qualified to ask that question. An ape can ask anything its puny brain fancies, but it's up to the human to decide whether the ape is worthy of a response. What do you think, by the way - colonizers can just keep coming as they please, to wipe their filthy feet on us like doormat, and we should do nothing - just stay quiet! For creatures who call themselves civilized, you guys have a weird sense of morality. Yet all these might not get through your thick binary skull, so let me put it to you bluntly. I don't stand with Hamas, I am Hamas, just like, I don't stand with Ukraine, I am Ukraine. Russia stops fighting, war ends - Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Israel ends invasion, war ends - Palestine ends resistance, Palestine ends. However, I do have one problem here. Why do civilians have to die, if that is indeed the case - which I have no way of confirming, because news reports are not like reputed scientific data, that a scientist can naively trust. During humankind's gravest conflicts news outlets have always peddled a narrative benefiting the occupier and demonizing the resistance, either consciously or subconsciously. So never go by news reports, particularly on exception circumstances like this. No matter the cause, no civilian must die, that is my one unimpeachable law. But the hard and horrific fact of the matter is, only the occupier can put an end to the death and destruction peacefully - the resistance does not have that luxury.

When Israel strikes, it's "national security" - when Palestine strikes back, it's "terrorism". Just like over two hundred years ago when native americans resisted their homeland being stolen, it was called "Indian Attack". Or like over a hundred years ago when Indian soldiers in the British Army revolted against the empire, in defense of their homeland, it was called "Sepoy Mutiny". The narrative never changes - when the colonizer terrorizes the world, it's given glorious sounding names like "exploration" and "conquest", but if the oppressed so much as utters a word in resistance, it is branded as attack, mutiny and terrorism - so that, the real terrorists can keep on colonizing as the self-appointed ruler of land, life and morality, without ever being held accountable for violating the rights of what they deem second rate lifeforms, such as the arabs, indians, latinos and so on. After all this, some apes will still only be interested in one stupid question. Do I support Hamas? To which I say this. Until you've spent a lifetime under an oppressive regime, you are not qualified to ask that question. An ape can ask anything its puny brain fancies, but it's up to the human to decide whether the ape is worthy of a response. What do you think, by the way - colonizers can just keep coming as they please, to wipe their filthy feet on us like doormat, and we should do nothing - just stay quiet! For creatures who call themselves civilized, you guys have a weird sense of morality. Yet all these might not get through your thick binary skull, so let me put it to you bluntly. I don't stand with Hamas, I am Hamas, just like, I don't stand with Ukraine, I am Ukraine. Russia stops fighting, war ends - Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Israel ends invasion, war ends - Palestine ends resistance, Palestine ends.

Then there were those who were thrilling to Senator Sanders, who believed that Bernie would be the one to give them free college, to solve climate change, and even to bring peace to the Middle East, though that was not an issue most people associated with him. On a trip to Michigan, I met with a group of young Muslims, most of them college students, for whom this was the first election in which they planned to participate. I was excited that they had come to hear more about HRC's campaign. One young woman, speaking for her peers, said she really wanted to be excited about the first woman president, but she had to support Bernie because she believed he would be more effective at finally brokering a peace treaty in the Middle East. Everyone around her nodded. I asked the group why they doubted Hillary Clinton's ability to do the same. "Well, she has done nothing to help the Palestinians." Taking a deep breath, I asked them if they knew that she was the first U.S. official to ever call the territories "Palestine" in the nineties, that she advocated for Palestinian sovereignty back when no other official would. They did not. I then asked them if they were aware that she brought together the last round of direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians? That she personally negotiated a cease-fire to stop the latest war in Gaza when she was secretary of state? They shook their heads. Had they known that she announced $600 million in assistance to the Palestinian Authority and $300 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza in her first year at State? They began to steal glances at one another. Did they know that she pushed Israel to invest in the West Bank and announced an education program to make college more affordable for Palestinian students? More head shaking. They simply had no idea. "So," I continued, "respectfully, what is it about Senator Sander's twenty-seven-year record in Congress that suggests to you that the Middle East is a priority for him?" The young woman's response encapsulated some what we were up against. "I don't know," she replied. "I just feel it.

Arafat himself sometimes spoke even more candidly. On January 30, 1996, he said in a closed meeting to forty Arab diplomats in Stockholm’s Grand Hotel, “We intend to destroy Israel and to establish a pure Palestinian state…. We will make the life of the Jews miserable and take everything from them…. I don’t need any Jews.”12 In a radio address on the Voice of Palestine on November 11, 1995, he said, “The struggle will continue until all of Palestine is liberated.” Lest anyone had doubts that by “all of Palestine” he meant not only Judea and Samaria and Gaza but all of Israel, he had proclaimed two months earlier, on September 7, 1995, “O Gaza, your sons are returning. O Lod, O Haifa, O Jerusalem, you are returning, you are returning,” in Arabic to a Palestinian audience. True to his deceptive character, he was careful not to mention places like Haifa and Lod, which were well within pre-1967 Israel and ostensibly not in the PLO’s plan for a state, when he spoke before Western audiences. On September 13, 1993, the day he signed the Oslo Accords, Arafat used more oblique language in explaining to a Palestinian audience that the agreement was nothing more than the PLO’s “Phased Plan.” This plan, calling for the destruction of Israel in stages, had been adopted by the PLO in 1964 and was well familiar to Palestinians. The unchanging and thinly disguised PLO strategy of destroying Israel in stages completely contradicted Oslo’s ostensible message of peace and reconciliation. So did the post-Oslo flood of official Palestinian exhortations dehumanizing Jews as pigs and teaching schoolchildren to glorify Palestinian suicide bombers. As usual, little of this entered the international discourse or caused governments to rethink the much-vaunted Oslo Accords. There was supposedly a honeymoon between the PLO and Israel under Prime Minister Rabin; Arafat and Rabin were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 “for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East.” It was inconceivable that the prizewinning Arafat could be swindling the entire world. Of course, anybody with a sober view of the facts could see that this was precisely what was happening. But what Yoni had written years earlier about some in Israel was now true of many in the international community: “They want to believe, so they believe. They want not to see, so they distort.”13

felt dizzied by a sudden sweeping understanding of our collective grief—kids ripped from their homes in Palestine, kids shot in the streets of Gaza and Houston and Rio, the greed, the oil, and guns—it was the same struggle everywhere.

The Gaza Sonnet, 1264 (All Free or None Free) Al-Shams to Alpha Centauri, All occupied lands will be free. Till there is smile on every face, All happiness is blasphemy. Happiness is not an imperial merch, Freedom is no colonizer's heirloom. Joy is no bigot's ancestral bequest, Earth is not a zionist hand-me-down. Divide and rule is the law of animals, Unite and integrate is law of humanity. One human life is worth more, than all the gas reserves underneath. Gaza is not a place, Gaza is a wake up call, to the peace-crying humanity. Awake, Arise, O Citizens of Earth - Till all of us are free, none of us are free!

The United States and Israel soon began planning a military coup to overthrow the unacceptable elected government, a familiar procedure. When Hamas preempted the coup in 2007, the siege of Gaza became far more severe, along with regular Israeli military attacks.

She once said, "When I grow up and become a mother, I want my kids to live in a reality where the word rocket is just another name for a space shuttle.

Some see the attacks on 7 October as a grave mistake that only led to further devastating punishment. This is a linear perspective, however, when you consider that first Palestine had little real choice but desperate retaliation after many decades of theft, humiliating cruelty and subjugation. Secondly, that the abhorrent response by Israel was really quite predictable to every Palestinian and even anticipated, and lastly the recognition that there has never in history been any meaningful revolution or striving toward independence without tremendous sacrifice and turmoil.

At the end of the day, nothing Palestinians or those who support Palestine do will please Israel or the Zionist lobby. And Israeli aggression will continue unabated. BDS. Armed Struggle. Peace talks. Protests. Tweets. Social media. Poetry. All are terror in Israel’s books.

Israel remains the biggest recipient of US aid, although the Jewish state is now less reliant on that aid than it once was. While this is true financially, it’s protected diplomatically by the US from a tsunami of global condemnation after decades of occupation and frequent wars on Gaza. US backing remains vital to Israel’s relative strength. Nonetheless, in 1981 US aid was equivalent to roughly 10 percent of Israel’s economy, but by 2020, at close to US$4 billion annually, it was down to around 1 percent.2 For this reason, Israel cares far less about even the mildest American pressure to curtail illegal Jewish colonies in the West Bank, attacks on Gaza, or house demolitions in East Jerusalem.

US companies were directly profiting from Israel’s attack on Gaza and dead Palestinian civilians. US taxpayers were the purchaser of these munitions, which were then exported to the Jewish state.28

Battle-tested over Gaza” was a badge of honor. Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau purchased Elbit-made Hermes 900 drones worth US$28 million in late 2020. This drone was first tested during the 2014 Gaza war. Canada claimed that the drones would be used for surveillance purposes in the Arctic “to detect oil spills, survey ice and marine habitats.” The equipment would help “to keep our waters clean and safe.” The deployment of the Hermes was for civilian purposes, but a leading Israeli arms manufacturer benefitted from the deal.30

The Israeli social media strategy aimed to involve both domestic and global supporters of its military missions. By doing so, and asking backers to post their own supporting tweets, Face-book posts, or Instagram images, the IDF created a collective mission that other nations could easily mimic by stirring up nationalist fervor online. During Operation Pillar of Defense, the IDF encouraged supporters of Israel to both proudly share when “terrorists” were killed while at the same time reminding a global audience that the Jewish state was a victim. It was a form of mass conscription to the cause through the weaponization of social media.12 This was war as spectacle, and the IDF was spending big to make it happen. The IDF media budget allowed at least 70 officers and 2,000 soldiers to design, process, and disseminate official Israeli propaganda, and almost every social media platform was flooded with IDF content. Today, the IDF Instagram page regularly features pro-gay and pro-feminist messaging alongside its hard-line militaristic iconography.13 On October 1, 2021, the IDF posted across its social media platforms a photo of its headquarters swathed in pink light with this message: “For those who are fighting, for those who have passed, and for those who have survived, the IDF HQ is lit up pink this #BreastCancerAwarenessMonth.” Palestinian American activist Yousef Munayyer responded on Twitter: “An untold number of women in Gaza suffer from breast cancer and are routinely denied adequate treatment and timely lifesaving care because this military operates a brutal siege against over 2 million souls.” On Instagram, however, most of the comments below the post praised the IDF.

Without doubt, the Israeli settlements in the West Bank have increased Palestinian militancy and motivation to fight Zionism and add a further layer of obstruction to any possibility of partitioning the land into two viable states—though the example and precedent of Israel’s uprooting of all its settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005 indicates that the majority of West Bank settlements, too, could be removed should the Israeli government and public come to believe that such a course would assure Israel peace and future prosperity. But given Palestinian behavior and discourse—and this must include the observation that the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip did nothing to moderate Palestinian behavior and attitudes toward Israel; rather the opposite—there is little chance that Israelis will come to feel and believe this in the foreseeable future.

This post-Oslo confinement was most constricting in the Gaza Strip. In the decades following 1993, the strip was cut off from the rest of the world in stages, encircled by troops on land and the Israeli navy by sea.3 Entering and leaving required rarely issued permits and became possible only through massive fortified checkpoints resembling human cattle pens, while arbitrary Israeli closures frequently interrupted the shipment of goods in and out of the strip. The economic results of what was in effect a siege of the Gaza Strip were particularly damaging. Most Gazans depended on work in Israel or on exporting goods. With stringent restrictions on doing both, economic life underwent a slow strangulation.

Of course, it’s very ironic that we in Gaza and Palestine read and appreciate and value American literature, and English literature, we study it, we just love it. And we try to imitate it, just as we imitate Arabic literature. But then all of a sudden, a rocket, or a heavy bomb that was paid for and manufactured in America, is killing, not only me, but the books that we read and studied in classes. That was very ironic to me. I

The growth of Israeli influence in Europe presents a curious historical milestone and an unresolved contradiction. After the annihilation of Jews in the Holocaust, Germany has become the most consistently pro-Israel nation on the continent and is Israel’s biggest trading partner in Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Israel in October 2021 on one of her final overseas visits before leaving office; it was her eighth trip during her sixteen years in power. She did not travel to the West Bank or Gaza. She praised the Jewish state, despite acknowledging that Israel did not embrace her favored two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, but this did not matter because “the topic of Israel’s security will always be of central importance and a central topic of every German government.

I lived in London for ten years and every time you saw a cop in the street you got scared. They are technically “civil servants,” but they do not fulfill this function. You talked about the US, the police being militarized—during the demonstrations for Gaza in France in Paris, it wasn’t civil servants in the streets, it was riot police. Robocop-looking kind of people. This by itself creates and implies violence. Precisely. That was the whole point. And also it might be important to point out that the Israeli police have been involved in the training of US police. So there is this connection between the US military and the Israeli military. And therefore it means that when we try to organize campaigns in solidarity with Palestine, when we try to challenge the Israeli state, it’s not simply about focusing our struggles elsewhere, in another place. It also has to do with what happens in US communities.

Israel imposed a full-blown siege. Goods entering the strip were reduced to a bare minimum; regular exports were stopped completely; fuel supplies were cut; and leaving and entering Gaza were only rarely permitted. Gaza was in effect turned into an open-air prison, where by 2018 at least 53 percent of some two million Palestinians lived in a state of poverty,24 and unemployment stood at an astonishing 52 percent, with much higher rates for youth and women.

For the umpteenth time today, my mind flashes to Palestine, to all the children, the elders, the ones brimming adulthood, perished and parentless. For the umpteenth time today, I feel salt at the back of my throat.

The dominant conceptualization of Islamic social activism in Palestine as a channel for political violence and Islamic terrorism is highly oversimplified, stereotypical, and at odds with the actual facts on the ground.

in the 2014 assault, over 16,000 buildings were rendered uninhabitable, including entire neighborhoods. A total of 277 UN and government schools, seventeen hospitals and clinics, and all six of Gaza’s universities were damaged, as were over 40,000 other buildings. Perhaps 450,000 Gazans, about a quarter of the population, were forced to leave their homes, and many of them no longer had homes to go back to afterward.

If you cared about the thousands of children suffering today in Gaza, as much you care about the birth of one middle eastern child two thousand years ago, perhaps then, you could've understood the true meaning of Christmas.

The proposed deal involved paying sixty thousand Palestinians in Gaza, around 10 percent of its entire population, to move to Paraguay with citizenship assured within five years.

Hamas was an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded in Egypt in 1928 with reformist aims, but which turned to violence in the 1940s and 1950s, only to reconcile with the Egyptian regime under Sadat in the 1970s. Hamas was begun in Gaza by militants who felt that the Brotherhood had been too accommodating toward the Israeli occupier in return for lenient treatment. Indeed, in the first two decades of the occupation, when the military authorities severely repressed all other Palestinian political, social, cultural, professional, and academic groups, they had allowed the Brotherhood to operate freely. Because of its utility to the occupation in splitting the Palestinian national movement, Israeli indulgence of the Brotherhood was extended to Hamas, notwithstanding its uncompromising and anti-Semitic program and commitment to violence.8

He told me about attending the Paris Air Show in 2009, the world’s largest aerospace industry and air show exhibition. In a pop-up luxury hotel, he saw Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest defense company, advertising its equipment to an elite audience of global buyers. Elbit was showing a promotional video about killer drones, which have been used in Israel’s wars against Gaza and over the West Bank.

Here and now, it is my war, our war, the war of us all, for which we all bear responsibility, of which we are all guilty. And therefore it is incumbent on us to make our voice heard, a different voice, a ‘hallucinatory’ voice to the ears of the desensitized, a voice that is ‘traitorous,’ ‘base,’ ‘Jew-hating,’ ‘contemptible’—and different. This is not only our right, it is our supreme duty toward the state to which we are so bound, we patriotic scoundrels.

Israel’s constant drone surveillance over Gaza also impressed President Vladimir Putin. Moscow needed reliable surveillance drones after it lost many planes during its war in 2008 against Georgia in South Ossetia. Tbilisi had used Israeli drones, and years later Moscow decided to follow suit. Having seen Israeli operations over Gaza, Russia licensed the Israeli Aerospace Industries Searcher

The growth of Israeli influence in Europe presents a curious historical milestone and an unresolved contradiction. After the annihilation of Jews in the Holocaust, Germany has become the most consistently pro-Israel nation on the continent and is Israel’s biggest trading partner in Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Israel in October 2021 on one of her final overseas visits before leaving office; it was her eighth trip during her sixteen years in power. She did not travel to the West Bank or Gaza. She praised the Jewish state, despite acknowledging that Israel did not embrace her favored two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, but this did not matter because “the topic of Israel’s security will always be of central importance and a central topic of every German government.” It was an emotional connection, Merkel stressed, and one rooted in historical reconciliation and forgiveness. “The fact that Jewish life has found a home again in Germany after the crimes of humanity of the Shoah is an immeasurable sign of trust, for which we are grateful,” she wrote in the guest book at Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial

Today, the IDF Instagram page regularly features pro-gay and pro-feminist messaging alongside its hard-line militaristic iconography.13 On October 1, 2021, the IDF posted across its social media platforms a photo of its headquarters swathed in pink light with this message: “For those who are fighting, for those who have passed, and for those who have survived, the IDF HQ is lit up pink this #BreastCancerAwarenessMonth.” Palestinian American activist Yousef Munayyer responded on Twitter: “An untold number of women in Gaza suffer from breast cancer and are routinely denied adequate treatment and timely lifesaving care because this military operates a brutal siege against over 2 million souls.” On Instagram, however, most of the comments below the post praised the IDF.

The next Israeli experiment was tested in real time during the Great March of Return, when Gazans protested alongside the fence with Israel. Starting in March 2018, it gained massive global attention as Palestinians peacefully demanded an end to the siege on Gaza and the right to return to lands stolen by Israel. Between March 2018 and December 2019, 223 Palestinians were killed, most of whom were civilians, and eight thousand were shot by snipers, some left with life-changing injuries. The IDF tweeted (but then deleted) on March 31: “Yesterday we saw 30,000 people; we arrived prepared and with precise reinforcements. Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed.

The Great March of Return was both a lab and showroom. The most sophisticated new weapon used against the Palestinian protesters was the “Sea of Tears,” a drone that dropped tear gas canisters on a desired area. Despite Israeli claims of accuracy, a tent full of Palestinian women and children had tear gas dropped onto them, as did groups of reporters. Israeli police started using drones that dropped tear gas grenades on protestors in the West Bank in April 2021. One month later, Israel announced that a fleet of drones would be used to track riots and protests as well as areas damaged by rockets fired from Gaza. Israel announced in 2022 that it approved the use of armed drones for “targeted killings” in the West Bank. Reportedly tested over Gaza before the major protests began in 2018, a Chinese-made drone by Da Jiang Innovations was reconfigured by Israel’s Border Force, which was working with Israeli company Aeronautics to adapt the drone to on-the-ground service requirements. “Beyond the fact that it neutralizes all danger to our forces, it allows us to reach places that we had yet to reach,” Border Police Commander Kobi Shabtai told Israel’s Channel 2 news. The immediate effectiveness of the Sea of Tears led Maf’at, the Israeli Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure, to purchase hundreds of the drones after the first night of demonstrations in Gaza. Another innovation was the “skunk water” drone, a form of liquid emitted from a water cannon that left a foul smell on clothes and body for a long time. Israeli firm Aeronautics was behind this innovation, a technique that had been already used in the West Bank and Jerusalem to deter protestors. Reports appeared in early 2020 by anti-occupation activists in the West Bank that Israeli-controlled talking drones were flying overhead and sending out a “Go Home” message to Palestinian protestors. Israeli activists were told in Hebrew not to “stand with the enemy.

The driving force behind many of Israel’s most celebrated defense products is Unit 8200. The intelligence unit of the IDF, it is the equivalent of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US and is staffed by elite young recruits with an appetite for spying, computer hacking, and surveillance. Its primary goal is mass monitoring of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, detailing all their personal and political information, and listening to communications from allies and foes across the world. This is achieved principally through a base in the Negev desert where lines of satellite dishes suck up domestic and international calls and a range of other communications. The Urim base feeds information to Unit 8200 and Israel collates details from both the base and covert listening posts in its embassies around the globe. Urim is one of the world’s biggest signals intelligence stations.

Public opinion across Europe is steadily turning against Israel and the 2021 Israel and Gaza war only accelerated this trend. According to polling by YouGov Eurotrack in June 2021, Israel’s favorability dived in Britain, France, and Denmark. In contrast, polling conducted by the EU Neighbours South project in 2020 found a majority of Israelis believed that they shared values with the EU and should cooperate.

Why is it when I dream of Palestine, that I see it in black and white?

When I was asked to fill out a form for my U.S. J-1 visa application, my country, Palestine, was not on the list. But lucky for me, my gender was. (Page 11).

They once said Palestine will be free tomorrow. When is tomorrow? What is freedom? How long does it last? (Page 15).

The most effective example of separatism is the encirclement of Gaza, trapping more than 2 million Palestinians behind high fences, under constant drone surveillance, infrequent missile attack, and largely closed borders enforced by Israel and Egypt. When Israel completed the sixty-five-kilometer high-tech barrier along the entire border with Gaza in late 2021, at a cost of US$1.11 billion, a ceremony in southern Israel took place to mark the occasion. Haaretz described the wall as “a complex engineering and technological system: the only one of its kind in the world” that required construction assistance from Europe.

Back in 2002, three years before Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdraw nine thousand Jewish settlers from Gaza, Israeli historian Van Creveld predicted the vision: “[The only solution is] building a wall between us and the other side, so tall that even the birds cannot fly over it … so as to avoid any kind of friction for a long, long time in the future … We could formally finish the problem, at least in Gaza, in forty-eight hours, by getting out and building a proper wall. And then of course, if anybody tries to climb over the wall, we kill him.

Gaza is now the perfect laboratory for Israeli ingenuity in domination. It is the ultimate ethno nationalist dream, keeping Palestinians indefinitely imprisoned. The barrier around the territory was first built in 1994 and has undergone a range of upgrades since (though it was destroyed by Palestinians in 2001). Today its population has been placed in a forced experiment of control where the latest technology and techniques are tested. However, what is happening in Gaza is increasingly occurring globally. The Palestinian architect Yara Sharif said that “the Palestinianization of cities is happening worldwide. It’s happening by destruction and erasure, but also with dramatic climate change.

As I write this, I hear about an airstrike on Karmel Tower. The building takes its name from the famous high school, opposite it, which in turn is named after the great Carmel Mountain that stands above Haifa. The impressive tower was hit from more than one side. Many media centres and offices are located in the tower. The Israeli’s always go for these kind of buildings: new, impressive, exciting hubs of development and investment. I remember the destruction of Basha Tower, al-Shorouk Tower, and of course the Italian complex in 2014. The aim is always to send us back in time, to make the city look poor and ugly again.

A few years ago, someone daubed on the wall of the UNRWA school east of the camp a strange slogan: ‘We progress backwards.’ It had a ring to it. Every new war drags us back to basics, back to the beginning. It destroys our houses, our institutions, our mosques and churches. It razes our gardens and parks to the ground. It leaves us nothing for the future. Every war takes us years to recover from, and before we have recovered from it, a new war arrives. It doesn’t trigger warning sirens or send messages to your phone. It just arrives. We find ourselves suddenly in the middle of it.

On the first day of the war, a friend of mine texted me: ‘What is happening in Gaza?’ I replied: ‘The proper question is not what is happening, but what has been happening, all this time—for more than 75 years.’ We live in a war film, and the director, who is also the producer and the star, does not want it to end. The Hollywood studio behind the film keeps feeding the script with new scenes, keeps adding millions of dollars to the budget. Early screen tests have proven it’s going to be a blockbuster, but only if they keep filming. And never stop.

Some kids have invented a new, clever way of making sure their story is told, or at least recorded, even after they’ve been torn to pieces by an Israeli missile. To make sure their bodies are recognised they have taken to writing their names, with markers, on their hands and legs. They are sharing this practice on social media. Some are even writing their family’s mobile numbers so they can be called and informed of their death. It is almost impossible to think about the world carrying on after we die, but these kids are doing it: putting their loved ones first, hoping to lessen their suffering by saving them from the purgatory of not knowing. They do it also, I think, for themselves: the idea of dying and not being mourned by anyone is unbearable.

For Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel controls the population registry, leaving them at the mercy of Israeli occupation whims. Israel has controlled this registry since 1967 with absolute power over granting Palestinian passports and ID cards and impacting whether they’re allowed to enter or exit the territory.32 Because Israel no longer processes Palestinian family reunification requests, thousands of Palestinians live as noncitizens and can’t access jobs, healthcare, proper education, or the legal system. Indian officials fear a Palestinian-style insurgency against its rule in Kashmir, or at least claim that they do to justify harsh countermeasures. During the conflict between Israel and Hamas in May 2021, a mural in Srinagar with the words “We are Palestine” appeared and the local graffiti artist Mudasir Gul was forced to deface his own work before being arrested. Twenty Kashmiris were arrested for demonstrating in support of Palestine.

The people were wrapped in rags given to them by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA. Rags originally "donated by the American people." The girls walked around wearing baseball hats. Out of the sacks our UNRWA flour rations came in mothers cut underpants for their sons. I often walked around with my behind covered with a handshake and the proclamation that the contents were a "gift from the American people.

No matter the cause, no civilian must die, that is my one unimpeachable law. But the hard and horrific fact of the matter is, only the occupier can put an end to the death and destruction peacefully - the resistance does not have that luxury.

What we saw in the police reaction to the resistance that spontaneously erupted in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown was an armed response that revealed the extent to which local police departments have been equipped with military arms, military technology, military training. The militarization of the police leads us to think about Israel and the militarization of the police there—if only the images of the police and not of the demonstrators had been shown, one might have assumed that Ferguson was Gaza.

Shireen Baraka Barghouti lives in a cauldron of hate that often boils over. She’s never been outside the Gaza Strip even though it’s only twenty-five miles long and three miles wide at the narrowest borders, seven miles at the widest. Qasem Soleimani, until his death in 2020, was the major general over Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who invested monstrous sums of Iranian money in the youth of Gaza. In fact, Hamas simply could not exist without the Iranian money he supplied. And to make sure he covered all the bases, Soleimani also funded the rival Islamic Jihad. Shireen doesn’t hold back when speaking about the climate of death and destruction that has helped create. “In Gaza, terrorism is our number-one export,” she said. “How sad that whenever the Gaza Strip is mentioned, people automatically think of radical Islamic terrorists. But how could they not? Our Gaza government is run by them. Iran gives Hamas thirty million dollars a month. “At different times we’ve had al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in charge, to name just a few. New groups form every year, and our young Gaza boys see these ‘freedom fighters’ as heroes to emulate. “In Europe, people idolize soccer players. But not in Gaza. Here, men dressed in green uniforms, toting AK-47s, and shouting ‘death to Israel’ are featured on billboards. “The explosions are enough to cause you a nervous breakdown. A few years ago Hamas fired over ten thousand rockets into Israel in one extended attack over several months. We knew it was just a matter of time before the Israelis responded, and once we heard the drones humming over Gaza, we took cover. “Hamas has done nothing for the people of Gaza. While they line their pockets with millions of dollars, the people go without eating. They are cruel and intentionally keep us in this senseless war with Israel. “You might think because I live in Gaza and grew up Muslim that I hate Israel. But I don’t. I do detest Hamas, however—and all the other terrorist groups that make life unbearable in the Strip.

The Egyptian Expeditionary Force had initially protected the Suez Canal from the Turks. Its first assault on Gaza in March 1917 marked the start of an Allied invasion of enemy territory. In April the entire civilian populations of Jaffa and Tel Aviv were ordered to leave ‘for their own safety’. Beersheba and then Gaza were captured after heavy fighting in late October and early November. Jaffa fell on 16 November. Australian troops who entered Tel Aviv shouted ‘Europe, Europe’. Those victories paved the way for the advance on Jerusalem.

By Friday June 9, the fifth day of the war, Israeli forces had decisively defeated the Egyptian and Jordanian armies and occupied the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and Arab East Jerusalem. Early that morning Israel had begun storming the Golan Heights, routing the Syrian army, and was advancing rapidly along the main road toward Damascus. The council had ordered comprehensive cease-fires on June 6 and 7, but Israeli forces entering Syria ignored these resolutions, even as their government loudly proclaimed its adherence to them. By that night in the Middle East (still afternoon in New York) Israel’s forces were approaching the key provincial capital of Quneitra, beyond which stood only the flat Hauran plain between their armored columns and the Syrian capital, just forty miles away.

Vote wisely, not blindly, to change the world into prosperity, harmony, justice, equality, and peace and empower humanity, not the political beasts and their evil interests to raise and encourage wars and kill innocent people.” "Overcome your covetous ambitions to have peace of mind and satisfaction; do not let your covetous ambitions overcome you; otherwise, they will bury you in grievous consequences.” Israel shamelessly rejected the order by the judges of the International Court of Justice that Israel must halt its attack on the southern Gaza city of Rafah; thus, the ICJ order and the United Nations resolutions did not impact Israel’s genocide. I know how the ICJ, the United Nations, and the world will react to such bare violations, breaching and even disregarding international law by the Israeli bloody beast of this century., encouraged and motivated by the USA and European Union, avoiding and ignoring their laws that only apply to weak and needy countries. It is not only a significant insult to the ICJ verdict, which has been declined and trashed as well. Israeli attacks show and prove that they neither respect nor value the international law and communities of civilised democracies. The question is not this, but how the ICJ and the United Nations will take the next steps to stop the inhuman behaviour and genocide in Palestine by Israel since October 2023, and how and why the United States, the West, and the world have remained silent and are deliberately closing their eyes on Israeli inhumanity and genocide. Where is humanity, where is international law, where is transparent justice, fairness, equality, and the worth of human lives for small and large states and communities regardless of any distinctions, according to the charter of the United Nations? — Who will decide: genocide or the last resort of Israel dropping atom bombs on Palestine? It usually seems that the ICJ has become like the third-world courts, run by the political or armed forces mafia; their verdicts never prevail. Where are the experts and scholars of international law? What damn they think about the behaviour and declination of the ICJ verdict by Israel? It will be too late. There will be nothing and no one superpower. The world is heading towards the doom of the devil. Awaken, open your eyes, and stop it before we can say sorry.

The current war on Gaza has since silenced almost 35,000 voices, shut 35,000 eyes and maimed thousands more, many of whom no longer possess the ability for expression. Yet art has a way of transcending, even flourishing, through pain; one even dares to say that pain is its greatest muse, and in Palestine pain has become part of everyday life.

Israel’s well documented systematic targeting of truth seekers is a grave crime against humanity. It is an inexcusable eradication of a people’s interaction with the hideousness of their reality.

Maya Angelou spoke of why the caged bird sings and of the courage it takes for literature to crush racism and face trauma. Angelou said the caged bird sings when his wing is bruised and he beats his bars to be free, here’s hoping that every cage be broken through and every bruised wing be healed by the joy of freedom so that it could soar. There are no gardens in prison for the poet to see yet his words make the cage bloom.

for Falasteen the boy i adored at sixteen gifted me his keffiyeh feeling guilty for living when others were killed simply for existing i haven’t seen him in sixteen years but think of him often these days his grandmother’s purse still carrying keys to their home believing they’d return in weeks can it even be called a key if what it unlocked is no longer there? we’d sneak onto mall rooftops & pretend shooting only happened with stars! 'we have a duty of memory,' he said, 'so they’ll kill us all until only the soil is witness' how could i reply? i sat in my liquid silence today there are nurseries of martyrs they bomb babies for they fear enemies hiding between pacifiers & tiny wrists bomb hospitals because enemies hide in ICU bedpans bomb schools because enemies hide in children’s bags bomb the oldest mosques & churches because enemies hide in rosary beads & votive candles they bomb journalists because enemies are hiding under their PRESS vests & helmets bomb poets because enemies hide in pages of peace poems the elderly are bombed because enemies hide under their canes the disabled are bombed because they harbour enemies in their artificial limbs they raze & burn all the ancient trees because enemies make bombs from olives they bomb water treatment plants because enemies are now water & so it goes: justification provided exoneration granted business as usual & the boy I adored has green-grey eyes the colour of fig leaves we don’t speak but i wish to tell him 'i’m sorry the world is a blade i’m sorry home is blood & bones i’m sorry music is sirens & wails i’m sorry night is infinite' but the boy I adored has grey-green eyes the colour of forgotten ash

The bloody takeover of Gaza by Hamas happened only two short years after Israel withdrew… What israel go in exchange for unilateral disengagement was not a thriving Palestine in the making but an Islamist, radical, oppressive, and violent regime that promptly started launching rockets and mortar shells into towns and villages in the south of the country… The Gaza disengagement and the takeover by Hamas serves as the greatest deterrence of the Israeli public against any future land concessions.

Another former staffer told me under the condition of anonymity that it was a “constant discussion,” and that the company was under pressure from the Israeli government. As Maria tried to point out to her superiors, Zionism is an ideology or a political doctrine, akin to “communism” or “liberalism”—not an immutable characteristic. Treating it as such is not merely a mockery of actual characteristics that make a person or group vulnerable, but elevating it—and not Palestinians—to such a level also fails to take into account the power imbalance that exists between occupied and occupier. But, Maria told me, “Palestine and Israel has always been the toughest topic at Facebook. In the beginning, it was a bit discreet,” with the Arabic-language team mainly in charge of tough calls, but after the 2014 conflict between Israel and Gaza, the company moved closer to the Israeli government. Somewhat notably, one of the first twenty members of Facebook’s new External Oversight Board is Emi Palmor, under whose direction the Israeli Ministry of Justice petitioned Facebook to censor legitimate speech of human rights defenders, according to 7amleh.

Feeling the claustrophobia I look up at the sky, then remember what’s up there.

In 2020 the EU announced partnerships worth US$91 million with Airbus, Israel Aerospace Industries, and Elbit to use their services to maintain an ongoing drone presence over the Mediterranean. Elbit’s Hermes drone and IAI’s Heron drone were used during Israel’s wars against Gaza since 2008.5 There’s growing competition in drone sales—Turkey’s TB2 can carry laser-guided bombs, be placed in a flatbed truck, and costs far less than Israeli or American drones, but Israeli models remain hugely popular.6 In 2017, Israeli drone manufacturers accounted for 60 percent of the global drone market in the previous three decades.

According to the United Nations, there are 593 checkpoints and roadblocks across the West Bank impeding Palestinian movement. Of the more than 30 checkpoints that connect Israel with the West Bank and Gaza, more than half have been fully or partially privatized since the end of the Second Intifada in 2005. Some of the Israeli security corporations involved in privatized security work are usually staffed with veterans of the Israeli military. They also operate in West Bank settlements. Private companies include G1 Secure Solutions, Malam Team, Modi’in Ezrachi, and T&M Israel, which are hired by settler organizations.33 It is an effective model that benefits a range of Israeli players and erases any distinction between Israel proper and the occupied territories.

Another Unit 8200 whistle-blower said that every phone conversation in the West Bank and Gaza could be listened to by Israeli surveillance. He told Middle East Eye in 2021 that nothing was off limits; Israeli soldiers invaded the public and private lives of Palestinians and laughed when they heard people talking about sex. “It might be finding gays who can be pressured to report on their relatives, or finding some man who is cheating on his wife,” he said. “Finding someone who owes money to someone, let’s say, means that he can be contacted and offered money to pay his debt in exchange for his collaboration

The close relationship between Arizona and Israel long proceeded Donald Trump’s presidency. One journalist called the area the “Palestine-Mexico border” due to both nations sharing the same surveillance companies and co-operation.64 Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, who left office in 2019 after spending years welcoming Israel’s high-tech companies to build a home in Arizona, once said, “If you go to Israel and you come to Southern Arizona and close your eyes and spin yourself a few times you might not be able to tell the difference.”65 The reasons behind the collaboration are tied to two geographic spaces defined by some as vast and unoccupied and therefore deserving of colonization and control. It’s the settler-colonial mentality. Israel is helped by the fact that it’s a bipartisan American political belief that backing the Jewish state is akin to necessary religious doctrine. Arizona, like Palestine, is thus a testing ground. “Arizona is meant to be a showcase for technology before it expands across the country,” Tucson-based journalist and author Todd Miller told me. “Before 9/11, there was Border Patrol presence on Native American territory, but now it’s hugely expanded with surveillance technology. Native Americans are being racially profiled at border patrol checkpoints.” For the border profiteers, Palestinians and Native Americans are both equally deserving of monitoring. It was therefore not surprising that autonomous surveillance robots started appearing on both the Israel/Gaza border and US–Mexico border in 2021 and 2022.

The challenges facing Palestinians are harder than anything we could have imagined; the moment the challenge isn’t just ‘how to survive today’, a whole world of future suffering will open up to us. I remembered my early thought, when I was in the north, that the real war starts when the military operations end. It’s true, both politically and at the level of human drama. When the guns are shut down, the pain and despair of ordinary people will come to the surface. It will be that moment of realisation: both of the loss they’ve suffered and the new conditions they have to live with. In this sense, thinking of tomorrow is more difficult than thinking of today.

Equating a pro-Palestinian stance to an anti-Semitic one is rendering the cause undignified by smearing it with an unjustifiable hatred for another. It is a cowardly way out of a real debate and a productive dialogue.

One must hesitate when calling these protests pro-Palestinian because in that labelling, we lose their truth. They are protests against senseless killings, they are a rejection of regimes that support occupation and a cry for an end to war as a pathway to peace. These protests are pro-humanity in its true sense of the word, an all-encompassing humanity that is not cherry-picked by the powers that be. They are protests against hypocrisy and for a right to life.

As for the myth of the extended hand of peace, the documents show clearly an intransigent Israeli leadership that refused to open up negotiations over the future of post-Mandatory Palestine or consider the return of the people who had been expelled or fled. While Arab governments and Palestinian leaders were willing to participate in a new and more reasonable UN peace initiative in 1948, the Israelis assassinated the UN peace mediator, Count Bernadotte, and rejected the suggestion of the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), a UN body, to reopen negotiations. This intransigent view would continue; Avi Shlaim has shown in The Iron Wall that, contrary to the myth that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss peace, it was Israel that constantly rejected the peace offers that were on the table.

The King (A Sonnet) Today I salute you, For today you are king, Ruler of the entire earth, One without a living being. My congratulations, your majesty, On your glorious accomplishment! Fate worse than a defeated king is a king without subjects. I got buried in the wreck, So did my friends and family. But still I salute you my king, On your unparalleled victory. I salute you from my grave, For today you are king, Ruler of a million lands, Yet still, ruler of nothing!

I salute you from my grave, For today you are king, Ruler of a million lands, Yet still, ruler of nothing!

We are hidden here far above the sea, but the angels move the wind across the world, they rescue those who call to Allah on their desert journeys when they are about to be overcome by a murderous sword. These are stories that we tell to remind you. You have inherited much, not just the stories of your past. There is a future with you. Do not lose hope, Children of Palestine. We are not alone, Children of Palestine. We are soldiers of this land and this is where we belong.

building bombed, beams through flesh buried under rubble suffocated to death but only beheading is barberic to the West #Gaza

Al-Shams to Alpha Centauri, All occupied lands will be free. Till there is smile on every face, All happiness is blasphemy.

A country that exists only in my mind. Its flag has no room to fly freely, but there is space on the coffins of my countrymen.

The militarization of the police leads us to think about Israel and the militarization of the police there—if only the images of the police and not of the demonstrators had been shown, one might have assumed that Ferguson was Gaza.

the people of Lebanon’ were offering a ‘model’ and a ‘strong proof that it is not only Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem which Arab armies and peoples are capable of liberating, but - with one small decision and a bit of determination - [the whole of] Palestine too, from the river to the sea’.4

One of the biggest obstacles on the path of peace, or even peaceful coexistence, between Israelis and Palestinians was placed by the international community and media when it redefined Hamas as an "organization." One result is that outsiders try to reach a solution based on the assumption that Hamas has structure and leaders. It does not. It has no "political wing" or "militant wing." Hamas is a loosely-knit band of terrorists. Its leaders are whoever has weapons, plans, and influence. Hamas is thuggish and cowardly. Those who fly the green flag are not military combatants. Nor do they represent, or care a whit, for the Palestinian people, as evidenced by their strategy of hiding in and fighting from schools, clinics, hospitals, and people's homes. After what passed for an election some Hamas terrorists were further redefined as politicians and diplomats, though they were neither politic nor diplomatic, evidenced by the fact that many "govern" from Israeli prisons. Prior to the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, Hamas had been emasculated and nearly eradicated by Yassir Arafat, who rounded up, disarmed, and imprisoned the terrorist "leaders," leaving its remaining members to return to their homes. Arafat ensured that members of Hamas had no place to hide among the Palestinian people. And that is the only way the terrorist cancer in Gaza will be excised today. In the absence of Arafat, the task falls by default to Israel, which would do better to enable the citizens of Gaza to purge themselves of Hamas and reward them for doing so than try to get rid of the bad apples by blowing up the barrel, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor.

May 14, 1948. Within a day of proclaiming its statehood, Israel was invaded by neighboring Arab states with the help of Arab Palestinians who were already fighting Jewish Palestinians.243 This began the First Arab-Israeli War.244 By 1949, Israel had defeated the Arab coalition, and the resulting armistices gave Israel control over most of the land of the Mandate.245 Only the Gaza Strip and so-called West Bank remained in Arab hands. The West Bank was occupied by Jordanian military forces, and the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egyptian forces until the Six-Day War in 1967, when those territories also came under Israeli control.246 Jordan continued to formally claim control over the West Bank until 1988, when King Hussein granted the request of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to renounce any Jordanian claims to the West Bank, after which the PLO became the sole Arab claimant of that territory.247 It is important to note that from 1967 until today, neither the PLO, the current Palestinian Authority (PA), nor any other Arab Palestinian political entity has exercised sovereign control over the West Bank. Further, prior to Israel’s acquisition of the territory in 1967, dating back to the rule of the Ottoman Turks, there had never been a lawfully recognized Arab Palestinian sovereign over the territory in the former Mandate for Palestine.248 Today, one can hardly talk about the Middle East without bringing up war, terror, and unrest. The region has become synonymous with geopolitical instability and territorial conflicts, specifically with regard to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian issue. Despite the fact that Arab Palestinians have no greater historical claim to the territories for which they are fighting than do Jewish inhabitants of the land of Palestine, the majority of the international community continues to demand that Israel relinquish control of these territories to allow the establishment of an independent Arab state ruled by a political entity whose ultimate goal is the utter destruction of Israel.249

Carlo Ginzburg proposed the notion that shame for one’s country, not love of it, may be the true mark of belonging to it.154 A supreme example of such shame occurred back in 2014 when hundreds of Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors bought an ad in the New York Times condemning what they referred to as “the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine.”155 The statement read: “We are alarmed by the extreme, racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever-pitch.” Hopefully today, more Israelis will gather the courage to feel shame apropos the politics enacted by leaders such as Netanyahu and Trump on their behalf—not, of course, shame for being Jewish but, on the contrary, shame for what Israel’s policies in the West Bank are doing to the most precious legacy of Judaism itself.

the very same day that the American embassy in Jerusalem officially opened), some sixty Palestinians were killed trying to approach the fence. It was a grim day for Israelis, who were saddened by the loss of life. Nonetheless, even among Israel’s left, there were no mass demonstrations, no widespread calls for investigations of the army’s policy or its execution, and no calls for a change in government as a result of what had happened. Israel’s left understood what was at stake. When Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had said in March, a few months prior, that the protests along the Gaza border were the beginning of the Palestinian return to “all of Palestine,” Israeli leftists believed him. They similarly understood that if Haniyeh was cynically going to send dozens of young Palestinians to trample a border that Israel has always defended with lethal force (while he sat comfortably many kilometers away), he was knowingly sending his own citizens directly into harm’s way. The Israeli left remained saddened and frustrated but, for the most part, quiet.

A United Nations report estimated that Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020 and that 95 percent of the water there was already unfit for human consumption. Although these predictions have come to pass, two million Gazans continue to live under these conditions.

the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) issued a grim report on the conditions in Gaza. UNCTAD determined that the Israeli-Egyptian blockade, which had lasted for eight years at the time, and the three major military operations Gaza had endured, had “shattered [Gaza’s] ability to export and produce for the domestic market, ravaged its already debilitated infrastructure, left no time for reconstruction and economic recovery, and accelerated the de-development of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The report detailed the devastation of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and the collapse of its economic sector, as revealed by the ballooning of its unemployment rate, to 44 percent in 2014, and the shrinking of its per capita GDP, by 30 percent since 1994. “Food insecurity affects 72 per cent of households, and the number of Palestinian refugees solely reliant on food distribution from United Nations agencies had increased from 72,000 in 2000 to 868,000 by May 2015.” Ninety-five percent of the water in the coastal aquifers on which Gaza relied was not drinkable.106

In Gaza, around one-third of the land housed some six thousand Jewish settlers, several military bases, and a network of roads designed so that settlers avoided contact with the Palestinian residents. The remaining two-thirds of the territory, cut into cantons, was left to 1.1 million Palestinians, which translated to a population density of about 128 Israelis per square mile, compared with 11,702 Palestinians per square mile. The double standard, overcrowding for Palestinians, economic disparity, and resulting resentment and anger were entirely foreseeable.

It is undeniable that the United States has a grave responsibility to all of Israel and Palestine, and nowhere does this come into sharper relief than in Gaza. U.S. policy, including unconditional financial and diplomatic support for Israel, and American indifference have contributed greatly to the existing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. This involvement has also increased the looming possibility of this crisis devolving into a catastrophic blight, as the United Nations predicted. As we—the people of the United States—do nothing, nearly two million innocent people suffer some of the worst living conditions in the world.

Instead of trying to find a way to spare the people of Gaza, we have used them in our efforts to oust Hamas. By scape-goating Hamas, who is certainly more than worthy of intense criticism, we ignore the long history of U.S. involvement in the region by both Democratic and Republican administrations. In so doing, we lose our sense of collective responsibility for the current crisis.

a protest in Gaza on March 30, 2018, the beginnings of what was called the “Great March of Return,” where Israel shot 773 people, leading to 17 fatalities.6 He wanted to know why Democrats in Congress like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and former U.S. diplomats such as Samantha Power and Madeleine Albright, were silent about Israel’s overwhelming and unwarranted use of firepower in the incident. He added, “Where are the righteously angry op-eds from Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, or Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, or David Aaronovitch of the Times of London, demanding concrete action against the human rights abusers of the IDF?

Their heart bleeds for Syrians, Libyans, Afghans, Iraqis, Rwandans, Kosovars … but not for Palestinians,”5 Hasan was reacting to Israel’s action at a protest in Gaza on March 30, 2018, the beginnings of what was called the “Great March of Return,” where Israel shot 773 people, leading to 17 fatalities.

Sharon’s push to Judaize the Negev, as well as the Galilee, developed against the backdrop of the government’s decision to withdraw Jewish settlers from Gaza. After ending Jewish settlement there, Israel began to treat Gaza effectively as a territorial jurisdiction whose population it could consider as outside the demographic calculus of Jews and Palestinians who live in Israel and in the vast majority of the OPT—the West Bank including East Jerusalem—that Israel intends to retain. Israeli officials at the time acknowledged the demographic objectives behind the move. Amid the push to withdraw settlers from Gaza, Sharon said in an August 2005 address to Israelis, “Gaza cannot be held onto forever. Over one million Palestinians live there and they double their numbers with every generation.” Peres said the same month, “We are disengaging from Gaza because of demography.

Gaza may force us to glimpse into the heart of darkness, but it equally reveals the heart of humanity that never gives up. Gaza is not a footnote, it is the later than life shadow of the colonizer's fear: captivating, awesome, mythical, mesmerizing, extraordinary, impressive, monumental, unreal, burdensome, miraculous, and most of all, durable. Gaza is our obligation.

If one views the problem as a dispute between Israel and only the Arabs living in and around Israel, one may incorrectly conclude that the stateless Palestinians just wish Israel harm because they are being oppressed. These Arabs will be viewed as victims of the military stronger Israelis. But if one uses a wider scope, the global context of the conflict become crystal clear. The overwhelming majority of Arabs, Sunni and Shi’a alike, in twenty-one separate Arab states and in the West Bank and Gaza, together with Muslims in Iran and beyond, wish to eliminate Israel – albeit some in an extended time frame. Through this lens, the tiny Jewish state, which must fend off political, military and economic onslaught, is fairly views as the aggrieved party.

Pieces of Palestine Cry, Then Eat What do you want for breakfast? Asks a co-worker Egg & cheese And hash browns I reply to myself, but I don’t tell her. How can I when I feel like crying, though I am hungry? How can I eat good food, and feel full, after watching a child cry in Palestine As he picks up his toys from the rubble. Oh, the guilt is bearable, but it should be unbearable, because I am still able to say, I want ketchup with my hash browns. Yet, I want to comfort this child. This poor child is crying. I wish I could stay hungry, as what they are doing in Palestine makes me want to cry as I eat, and pray as I cry…

Writing in 1982, the French Jewish historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet, whose parents were murdered during the war, had already seen what was only now becoming obvious to me (and still remains concealed from many): that for successive Israeli governments, ‘it is not a question and it never seriously has been a question of letting Israel and Palestine coexist. Instead, these governments have posed an alternative: Israel or Palestine.

Dove andarono i palestinesi espulsi? Israele riuscì a mandare i palestinesi dell'Est verso la Cisgiordania occupata e la Transgiordania. Quelli del Nord furono respinti in Siria e Libano. Ma a sud l'Egitto rifiutò di aprire i suoi confini ai palestinesi. Verso la fine della guerra, Israele "risolse" questo problema creando quella che oggi conosciamo fin troppo dolorosamente come la Striscia di Gaza. Era un piccolo rettangolo ritagliato nella Palestina storica (il 2 per cento del paese). Fu istituita per accogliere le centinaia di migliaia di palestinesi espulsi da Israele delle zone centrali e meridionali della Palestina. Allora era il campo profughi più grande del mondo. Lo è ancora oggi.

For all Palestinians, no matter their different circumstances, the Nakba formed an enduring touchstone of identity, one that has lasted through several generations. It marked an abrupt collective disruption, a trauma that every Palestinian shares in one way or another, personally or through their parents or grandparents. At the same time as the Nakba provided a new focus for their collective identity, it broke up families and communities, dividing and dispersing Palestinians among multiple countries and distinct sovereignties. Even those still inside Palestine, whether refugees or not, were subject to three different political regimes: Israel, Egypt (for those in the Gaza Strip), and Jordan (for those on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem). This condition of dispersal, shitat in Arabic, has afflicted the Palestinian people ever since. My own family is typical in that I have cousins in Palestine and in a half dozen Arab countries, and almost as many in Europe and the United States. Each of these separate Palestinian collectives faced a range of restrictions on movement, held a variety of identity documents or none at all, and were obliged to operate under different conditions, laws, and languages.

A poem is not just words placed on a line. It's a cloth. Mahmoud Darwish wanted to build his home, his exile, from all the words in the world. I weave my poems with my veins. I want to build a poem like a solid home, but hopefully not with my bones.

Israel is estimated to have dropped over 83,000 tons of explosives—more than all the bombs dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London during World War II combined—on Gaza between October 7, 2023, and September 22, 2024.

By the time Israel achieves its decimation of Gaza, it will have signed its own death sentence. Its facade of civility, its supposed vaunted respect for the rule of law and democracy, its mythical story of the courageous Israeli military and miraculous birth of the Jewish nation—which it successfully sold to its Western audiences—will lie in heaps of ash.

Sovereignty with no reciprocal recognition of a Jewish state. Statehood without negotiations. An independent Palestine in a continued state of war with Israel. Israel gave up land without peace in South Lebanon in 2000 and, in return, received war—the Lebanon war of 2006—and 50,000 Hezbollah missiles now targeted on the Israeli homeland. In 2005, Israel gave up land without peace in Gaza, and again was rewarded with war—and constant rocket attack from an openly genocidal Palestinian mini-state. Israel is prepared

Part of this myth related to assertions about the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)—assertions promoted by liberal Zionists in both the US and Israel and shared with the rest of the political forces in Israel. The allegation is that the PLO—inside and outside of Palestine—was conducting a war of terror for the sake of terror. Unfortunately, this demonization is still very prevalent in the West and has been accentuated after 2001 by the attempt to equate Islam, terrorism, and Palestine.

Unlike [Jimmy] Carter’s ancestors in Georgia, Jews are as indigenous to Israel as Mayans to Mexico or Italians to Italy. Palestine was not conquered by some foreign nation. Rather, a minority of its people grew to become its majority.

The Palestinian spokesman and literary critic Edward Said laid it out in his work The Question of Palestine. He spills much ink insisting that Zionist leaders were racists, but supplies little evidence to back it up.

No two conflicts are identical. But Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine are about as close of two control groups as one will ever find. Both conflicts started in the 1920s. Both are nationalist struggles over the same territory, with sectarian divisions that go back centuries. Both involve groups deemed terrorist organizations by much of the world. Both involve allies on one side that are said to have a “special relationship” with Washington. But plainly, some relationships are more special than others. Britain was never asked to suffer a single act of violence, while Israel was pressured to continue making concessions, even as its citizens were being murdered in the hundreds.

You worship an ancient palestinian child as your savior, yet turn your backs on the living children of Gaza!

Là et en Cisjordanie. Nous avons aussi visité les camps de réfugiés palestiniens mis en place dès 1948 par l'agence des Nations unies, l'UNRWA, où plus de trois millions de Palestiniens chassés de leurs terres par Israël attendent un retour de plus en plus problématique. Quant à Gaza, c'est une prison à ciel ouvert pour un million et demi de Palestiniens. Une prison où ils s'organisent pour survivre. Plus encore que les destructions matérielles comme celle de l'hôpital du Croissant rouge par « Plomb durci », c'est le comportement des Gazaouis, leur patriotisme, leur amour de la mer et des plages, leur constante préoccupation du bien-être de leurs enfants, innombrables et rieurs, qui hantent notre mémoire. Nous avons été impressionnés par leur ingénieuse manière de faire face à toutes les pénuries qui leur sont imposées. Nous les avons vu confectionner des briques faute de ciment pour reconstruire les milliers de maisons détruites par les chars. On nous a confirmé qu'il y avait eu mille quatre cents morts – femmes, enfants, vieillards inclus dans le camp palestinien – au cours de cette opération « Plomb durci » menée par l'armée israélienne, contre seulement cinquante blessés côté israélien.

Hunter Biden likely wants to get involved with this to go see if he can shake down the gentlemen’s club. He keeps hearing about a place called “Gaza Strip,” thinking the patrons ought to have a lot of cash on them. With a strong speech written by his staff, Joe Biden did rebuff the left of his party who want to back Palestine. They must have promised him ice cream afterward.

(On Gaza) "They are being strangled since the Israeli withdrawal, surrounded by a separation barrier that is penetrated only by Israeli-controlled checkpoints, with just single opening for personnel only into Egypt-Sinai as their access to the outside world. There have been no moves by Israel to permit transportation by air or by sea. Fishermen are not permitted to leave the harbor. Workers are prevented from going to outside jobs. The import or export of food and other goods is severely restricted and often cut off completely, and the police, teachers, nurses, and social workers are deprived of salaries. Per capita income has decreased 40% during the last three years, and the poverty rate has reached 70%. The UN special repertoire on the right of food has stated that the acute malnutrition in Gaza is already on the same scale as that seen in the poorer countries of the southern Sahara, with more than half of Palestinians eating only one meal a day.