Israel’s genocidal violence has formally killed almost 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the previous yr. Estimates put the precise demise toll at greater than 180,000. On the similar time, the Israeli occupying forces carried out a number of bloody assaults on the West Financial institution and massacred greater than 740 Palestinians. Final month, the colonial regime expanded its violence into Lebanon, the place greater than 500 individuals had been killed on September 23. In two weeks, Israel killed greater than 2,000 Lebanese.
Israeli forces have leveled complete neighborhoods in Gaza, utilizing bulldozers to dig out roads, bombing infrastructure and utilities, and destroying residential buildings. Well being and training amenities had been destroyed – water stations, energy crops and photo voltaic panels had been destroyed. In brief, Israel seeks to remove every thing that sustains life in Gaza.
Palestinians have been ordered to “evacuate” a lot of the strip and are being squeezed into 16 p.c of the world. The identical land-clearing technique has been utilized to some areas of the West Financial institution and now to Lebanon.
Folks had been advised they may return as soon as Israel’s “army operations” had been over. However everyone knows that the killings had been to clear land for colonization. This has occurred earlier than – in the course of the Nakba of 1948 – and regardless of UN resolutions requiring Palestinians to return, they had been by no means allowed to return. That is why the Palestinians will not depart.
To some outsiders, the Palestinians’ enduring attachment to their land could seem incomprehensible. That is particularly obscure for the Zionists, who expelled so many people within the hope that we’d transfer to different components of the Arab world and assimilate. However for greater than seventy years, the Palestinian individuals haven’t given up their official declare to their land.
Why Palestinians refuse to go away their houses and ancestral lands even within the face of relentless bombings, assaults, settler encroachment and financial deprivation is a query that’s deeply private and central to Palestinian identification. This isn’t only a matter of geography or property possession, however a deep connection to the land that’s woven into the material of Palestinian historical past, tradition and collective reminiscence. Sure, there was a stubbornness to the choice, however there was additionally a deep understanding that leaving would imply severing ties that had been there for generations.
As an agricultural society, Palestinian land holds a particular place of their tradition and collective consciousness. The olive tree is its excellent image. The olive bushes are historic, powerful and deep-rooted – similar to the Palestinian individuals. Households deal with these bushes like their very own heritage. The act of harvesting olives, urgent them into oil, and sharing the oil with family members is an act of cultural preservation.
For this reason Israeli troops and settlers like to raid Palestinian olive groves. The destruction of olive bushes isn’t just an assault on the Palestinian life challenge. That is an assault on Palestinian identification. Israel’s makes an attempt to exterminate it are mirrored in its ruthless warfare on Palestinian olive bushes. From 1967 to 2013, roughly 800,000 individuals had been uprooted.
Even amongst these of us within the Palestinian diaspora, there may be an attachment to the homeland. I personally was born in Nablus within the occupied West Financial institution however grew up exterior Palestine. Even from afar, I by no means stopped feeling related to the land of Palestine.
My household was pressured to flee in the course of the second intifada. My father witnessed the Israeli military steal his father’s land and switch it right into a army checkpoint, whereas my mom was shot by settlers on her approach to work. Their determination was to not to migrate voluntarily; This can be a survival conduct.
Over the previous twenty years, I’ve returned to Palestine repeatedly and watched as settlers continued to encroach on Palestinian land in an try to drive extra Palestinians from their houses. As a baby, I keep in mind the clusters of illegally constructed homes that grew into complete cities—besieging Palestinian cities and villages from all sides.
However as I watched Palestinian olive bushes burned, Palestinian water sources diverted and stolen, and Palestinian houses demolished, I additionally witnessed resistance and defiance. Palestinians are constructing water tanks to tide over the interval when Israelis are with out water. They rebuild demolished homes at evening and rush to assist communities like Huwara when settler assaults happen.
Over the previous yr, Israeli violence has spiraled into genocide, however Palestinian “sumud” — steadfastness — has not diminished. From Jenin to Gaza, below relentless Israeli assaults and bombings, Palestinians haven’t stopped resisting the assaults of colonialism by way of easy acts of life and survival.
The extra the occupiers attempt to make life unimaginable for Palestinians, the extra Palestinians give you makeshift units to make it occur — whether or not it is bicycle-powered washing machines, ovens fabricated from mud and straw for baking bread. Clay Oven or Generator assembled from random machine components. These are simply among the acts of perseverance, sumud, crystallization.
In the meantime, overseas, our hearts and minds by no means depart Palestine. We’ve got watched genocide unfold in ache and horror whereas the leaders of the nations the place we search refuge flip a blind eye. Many Westerners don’t consider Palestinian lives have worth. They do not see us as human beings.
This callous dehumanization of Palestinians spreads despair and hopelessness in our communities. However we now have no proper to surrender whereas the individuals of Gaza proceed to endure the horrors of genocide. We should awaken the Palestinian Sumud inside us and mobilize to inform different societies that we’re right here, we exist, and we are going to persist in a world bent on annihilating us.
The metaphor “we’re the land” isn’t just poetic. That is the fact for the Palestinian individuals. When Palestinians are requested “Why do not you allow?” their reply is “Why are we doing this?” That is Palestinian land, cultivated with blood and tears by generations of Palestinians. Leaving it means shedding every thing. It means permitting our historical past, our tradition, our collective soul to be erased. One yr after the genocide, Palestinians stay as a result of they have to stay.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror the editorial place of Al Jazeera.
