Facing the horror of Gaza, one year later
There are no words to express it, only astonishment and questions: how have we all arrived, each one on his own path of misdirection, at this madness that plunges two brotherly peoples into this escalation of hatred and revenge, of despair and death? How have Israel and Palestine become a tragic parable of the misfortune that tears apart the whole of humanity? I will continue to ask, in case the questions open horizons.
Do you not realise, Israel and Palestine, that instead of being two brotherly peoples, you are the same people, in the same land that has always been occupied, in the same exile that has always been inflicted and suffered for centuries and millennia? Were you the Hebrews before the Philistines or the Palestinians before the Jews? Were either of you the first inhabitants of that land which belongs to both of you, too? Is there a single state today that was the first inhabitant of the land it inhabits? And who can distinguish either of you from the ancient Canaanites, and from the Assyrians and Babylonians, Persians (Iranians), Greeks and Romans who have passed through your common land? Does not the same mixed and common blood run through the veins of both of you, the same life born in the same land without walls or borders? Do not the lips of both of you greet each other every day with the same, most noble and beautiful words of your sister tongues: “Salam aleikum” in Arabic, “Shalom alejem” in Hebrew (“Peace be with you”)?
And you, blind powers of Israel and Palestine, Netanyahu and Hamas in that order, stubborn fundamentalists of Israel first and Palestine second, how do you, Israel, continue to claim all the land “from Dan to Beersheba”, and you, Palestine, claim all the land “from the river to the sea”, each claiming in different words the same territory and denying it to the other? How do you continue to believe that a fickle supreme divinity granted each of you exclusively the same land which belongs to both of you? How do you not understand that, beyond myths and supposed divine promises, there will be no way out if both of you do not share your common land together or separately? How have you both become so foolish as to not recognize that the destiny of one people is at stake in the destiny of the other, so blind as to not see that there will be no hope and respite for one of you without hope and respite for the other?
These questions take me to another one: how did we get here? I do not forget history and its cruelties. History marked by borders, borders –all of them- imposed by violence and blood. I do not forget 1948, when the United Nations, just after World War II, to ease the bad conscience of the West for not having prevented the Shoah, the nazi extermination of six million Jews, established the State of Israel between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, after which the first Arab-Israeli war took place. It was your Nakba, Palestine brothers and sisters, your “catastrophe” or “disaster”, your collective exile. A terrible injustice, all the more cruel because the United Nations recognized, in 1949, a new map of Israel including your territories conquered in that war. And the exile of hundreds of thousands of your brothers and sisters. I do not forget the merciless occupation of new lands by the weapons of Israel in the war of 1967, an occupation which continues today against all human rights and that caused and continues to cause the unbearable fragmentation of the little land that you had because of countless Israeli walled settlements. Nothing of what happened since then can be explained without all that.
Yet, as terrible as it may be, much of that history is now irreparable. Having to admit it is just as terrible. I want to think that, after knowing all that, today the United Nations would not have created the State of Israel in those conditions. However, I also believe, that today, 77 years afterwards, it is impossible to go back to 1947-48. I understand the hatred and desire of revenge of Hamas, much more so than Netanyahu and his government’s obstinacy and destructive rage. But hatred and revenge have brought you to today’s Nakbah, to this new extermination of your people, and it will not be hatred and revenge that will save you, make no mistake. The massacre of October 7, 2023 did not save you but sunk you even deeper. It is hard for me to say it, but I think that Hamas is Netanyahu’s best ally in the road to the final disaster of your respective peoples.
Should, then, things and the borders remain as they are? Absolutely not. There will be no solution as long as hope is not restored to Palestine, the hope stolen by the humiliating, oppressive and exterminating arrogance of Israel’s rulers, with the consent of a large part of its people and the silence, the inaction or direct or indirect collaboration of the United States and the so-called West. Listen and open your eyes, Benjamin Netanyahu and all those that support his project of devastation and conquest. You are the ones mainly responsible for all this because you are more powerful, except perhaps for the destructive power of desperation. You will have no land, no security, no peace if you do not respect the dignity, justice and peace of Palestine, today and in the future. Do not doubt it. So, choose your way. This tragic history is in your hands, more so than in the hands of any other actor, including Hamas and all its allies. Every person you kill, every missile you launch, every bomb you explode, every house, hospital or school you destroy, will turn against you; for every Hamas militant or battalion you kill, sooner rather than later, there will be more militants and groups willing to die killing.
Is there any way out? Yes, but it will be painful for both sides, yet a lot less painful than the actual pain and what both of you will have to endure, if things go on in the present way. It is a difficult way out, and the only one, and it involves all of us without exception. There will be no solution for either side if the Israeli government, supported by the majority of its population, does not dismantle all settlements and walls in the West Bank, if Israel does not withdraw to the borders of 1966 (more or less), if it does not agree on a formula to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians, if it does not guarantee a politically and economically viable Palestinian State, with resources, relations and conditions of equality with Israel.
There will be no way out either if a wide majority of Palestinians do not accept relations of mutual recognition and collaboration with Israel, if Hamas does not withdraw from its program its aspiration to eliminate the State of Israel, if it does not agree to a dignified and feasible, just and peaceful agreement between two independent or perhaps –Inshallah! I wish!- of two confederate states. Indeed, I dream of a great Confederation of brotherly and sisterly countries in the Near and Middle East, in a planetary confederation of countries of brotherly peoples presided over by a democratic authority.
If we are not able to do it, we will continue towards the great planetary extinction of Homo sapiens from war to war, revenge to revenge, extermination to extermination, power to power and reason to reason, from impotency to impotency, from madness to madness. It will be for the good of the larger community of the living, and for our own good because living like that is not worth it, nor we deserve to live.
But even if we all return to dust, the Spirit of Life will cry out from the heart of the particles and the galaxies and the very black holes in their mysterious silence: “The blood of your brother cries out to me from the earth” (Gn 4,10). And perhaps some ears will open, will hear the voice and will rise from the land of oblivion, the dawn will break again, and the rainbow of a new covenant of life will appear in the clouds. Oh, yes, come!
Aizarna, October 9, 2024.
Translated by Mertxe de Renobales Scheifler