PEACE LINES MESSAGERIES DE LA PAIX www.peacelines.org peacelines@gmail.com

 

Newsletter n° 126

February 2024

 

« The land of prophets has become the arena of modern times, as if yesterday’s wars had not been enough to teach the ones and the others that there is no truth except in life, and nothing is sacred but the duty to live and let live. »                                        Yasmina Khadra

« We must not let despair infect us. »                                                     Nobel Roald Hoffmann

                                                                                                                       

Four months into this blood-curdling war that started on a bleak Saturday morning in early October 2023, when two thousand men and more broke through their neighbour’s border, rushed to plunder, burn, kidnap, rape, and slaughter. They came upon a music festival a few miles from the border. They massacred 360 of the revelers, raped some, kidnapped others. They set houses on fire, in hitherto peaceful, defenceless, mostly rural communities. In a number of cases, they set fire to shelters, with people inside.
One of them was Vivian Silver, burned alive in her Be’eri home on October 7. Vivian, born in 1949, was a devoted pacifist, one of the founders of Women Wage Peace, and as a dedicated member of The Road to Recovery, she would spend time driving sick Palestinians to Israeli hospitals.

Some 1,200 civilians were massacred that morning, in a few hours. The Israeli army was nowhere around, its commanders convinced that Hamas had eventually turned to coexistence.

Nir Oz was a kibbutz of some 400 people. A quarter of them were murdered or abducted. Among the 80 kidnapped, Shiri Bibas and her two infants, Kfir then aged 9 months, and Ariel, 4 years old, along with historian Alex Dancyg (born 1948) and journalist Oded Lifshitz (born 1940).

Among the missing, Noya Dan, 12, suffering from autism, and her grandmother Carmela, 80.  Noya was a fan of Harry Potter, and author JK Rowling pleaded for her release. On October 19, their bodies were discovered in Gaza by the Israeli army, near the border.

The Nir Oz survivors have nowhere to return to. What will the 1.7 million Gaza refugees return to, when they are allowed to do so ?

The pictures of manmade insanity and organized cruelty add up, and leave you crying in helpless, bitter loneliness.

« To deplore is not enough. To condemn has no more echo than a scream in apnoea. »

Yasmina Khadra, October 23, 2023. Algerian writer, translated into 48  languages.

You turn around, looking for « authorized » voices, of human beings who might have something else to say, in such times of impending disaster, that could make a difference. You fumble through the net, night and day (presently 3 a.m.), as the amplitude of the disaster permeates through sleep and dreams.

«…it’s a nightmare. A nightmare beyond comparison. No words to describe it. No words to contain it. » David Grossman, October 12, 2023. Israeli writer, translated into over 30 languages. Yet, Nobel friend Roald Hoffmann sent a message yesterday : « We must not let despair infect us ». And this is the lifeline, the bottom line, through these endless hours.

« A world at war leaves no one spared. » is another message received yesterday.

The illusion would be to be spared, to escape it all, and live a « normal » life, as if. Escapism : a deceptive trap, leaving one even more crazed, dazed and confused.

It is a fact : we are going through a deep sense of betrayal (in Grossman’s words as in Yonathan’s words – who lives down South-East, close to Jordan, far from Gaza). In my own mind as well.

Year after year I spent in Gaza, pushing for our Bilingual Experimental Programme, teaching non-violent resistance and constructive coexistence. « I believe that amid today’s rocket bursts and whining bullets, there is still a hope for a brighter tomorrow. »

These kids in Al Yarmouk school have been betrayed. They were betrayed ten years ago, when our programme, adopted and encouraged in writing by the Palestinian government in 2006 (then headed by Hamas PM Haniyeh), was officially discarded and boycotted. Al Yarmouk is close to the heart of Gaza City, famous for one of the oldest stadiums in Palestine. What’s left of the Yarmouk stadium now ? Who’s left intact among the seven kids who were holding these thoughts of Martin Luther King in their hands ?

The feeling is one of rage, outrage. So many meetings through the years, with just about anyone in Gaza in a position of authority and power. Ministers, leaders, Hamas cadres, from Zahar to Haniyeh to Sinwar. Not one of them said he was against it, face to face. It had been a governmental decision to implement it, after all. They just made sure to shelf it, and never let any school really apply it. They also did not agree to have the little bilingual book published in one of their printing houses. That much was clear.

Something else should have triggered my wariness. As early as 2008, 2009, I was curious to take pictures inside tunnels to Egypt. I asked everyone in charge for permission – obviously, you could never go anywhere important without clearance. It was not formally denied, but the green light never came. I did not suspect that they had that many tunnels, others than those leading to Egypt. Young Gilad Shalit was then detained in one of these underground « facilities », and they simply did not want anyone but their troops underground.

Everybody knew there was some kind of secret substructure in the Gaza Strip, but to what extent was a mystery. When the Israeli army finally entered Gaza with its tanks in late October 2023, they discovered hundreds of miles of fortified tunnels. Up to 500.

Underneath Gaza City, underneath Jabalya, underneath Al-Shati, underneath Beit Lahya, underneath Khan Yunis, you name any sector of the Strip, they found miles and miles of tunnels, hundreds of access hatches and stairs. Under ordinary buildings, under hospitals, under schools, under mosques, under ordinary homes.

Author Khadra said that « Israel’s reaction is beyond understanding ». Forget « Israel ». Forget any specific label for a nation. To ask a simple question : what can you do, as a force, when you find out about such an enormous underground network, conceived as a global fortress and arsenal, against your people ?

The extent of the Gaza military underground, to us all, remains what is beyond understanding. To us all, meaning to any rational, unbiased mind, simply trying to understand.

Somehow, the tunnel insanity could have been a natural response to the constant pounding of aerial attacks by F-15 bombers and Apache helicopters. Had it remained a defensive structure, for the people. But then, what of all the attempts at border-crossing into the enemy state ? What of the onslaught of October 7, the hundreds methodically massacred for hours, and the 250 hostages abducted that morning, their ages ranging from 9 months to 90 years old. Making it the worst pogrom in the history of the Jewish people, after the nazi period.

Unconcerned here with sides, and partisan postures, the prevailing feeling in the night, the endless night, is that we live on borrowed time, all of us, whether we are more conscious of it than before 2023 or not.

Back to Grossman’s statement about a deep sense of betrayal. Mentioning « 80 breaches into the most advanced border fence in the world ». Where were the protection forces, and the dozens of Apache helicopters to be found, until the afternoon of October 7 ?   Like some Janus curse from the ancient times. The dual face of betrayal. Janus, the god of beginnings and endings, of choices and gates, of duality.

One face turned to the past, the other turned to the future. Never before such a deep sense of duality and duplicity, betrayal ? I actually experienced one of parallel amplitude, involving the man who was the first Palestinian president, Yasir Arafat.

Take it back to January 1, 2002. For the sake of getting closer to the heart of the matter, into the ancient curse of deadly duality.

A series of meetings had been arranged by the late Gabi Baramki – who was then involved in Higher Education—with the Palestinian icon. I was in the company of Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire, from Belfast. I had our Experimental Programme in mind, which needed support at the highest level. I don’t know what Mairead had in mind, but we did go the whole round, from the Nativity Church in Bethlehem to the tightly controlled presidential Muqata in Ramallah, to the Knesset where the Speaker Naomi Chazan expected us, to a meeting in Tel Aviv.

Arafat, Abu Amar, as he was known to his followers, was his usual seducing self. Charming, hugging, and kissing. He offered Mairead a traditional shawl, and gave us a fastuous meal the next day, with « the best hummus in the land ». It was difficult not to like him, as a person. [He was a star and a hero in his own right, had escaped death so many times, from Jordan’s Black September, in 1970, when thousands of Palestinian fedayeen were killed by the king’s troops, to Lebanon and Tunisia, until his homecoming in Gaza in 1994 - but was it a real homecoming, since Mohammed Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Husseini was born in Cairo in 1929 ? During our last meeting in 2003, in presence of Gabi Baramki, so melancholy, as if each of us knew we would not meet again, he confessed to me he even held a military record from the Egyptian forces.  He truly was among the heroes of the past century, in the line of Castro, Mandela, add Gaddafi, whether you hate their guts or not…

After all, in May 1989, in Paris, with these two words, pronounced in French, « c’est caduc », he had declared their charter obsolete, recognizing the existence of Israel as a state ; but as early as December 1988, in Geneva, he had gone farther, to pledge : « Our Palestine National Council has (…) reaffirmed its rejection of terrorism in all its forms, including state terrorism.(…) The position is clear and free of all ambiguity. And yet, I, as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, hereby once more declare that I condemn terrorism in all its forms. » Clearly paving the way to the 1991 Madrid peace conference, and the long-expected Oslo Agreements, in September 1993, and clearly opposed to the rejectionist Hamas, founded in 1987.

The failure of the Oslo process throughout the nineties, and of the Camp David summit in July 2000, led to the second intifada, in October 2000, and the resumption of terror. Arafat’s position, from 2000-2001 till his death in November 2004 in France, was far from « clear and free of all ambiguity ».]

Water under the bridge ? We’re standing on the edge of the same abyss between the side of non-violence and the one of armed resistance. In Gaza, the party of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) toppled violently its P.L.O. opponents in June 2007, and the chasm between Ramallah and Gaza has remained gaping since. Check Battle of Gaza (2007). There have been no elections held by the Ramallah regime since 2006, for fear Hamas might win them.

Is the whole scheme of coexistence doomed ?

Yahya Mahamid, in February 2024, does not think so, and he has his points to make. The last words of this Newsletter will be his.

But let’s go back to the Muqata meeting with Arafat and Mairead Maguire. The atmosphere, despite the impending siege of the building by the army, was warm but tense. He did complain that his helicopter had been destroyed by the Israelis, and that there was no way he could leave the building. He looked haunted then.

Just in case one would forget for a moment what this is all about, let me recall how it started, in the morning of October 7, 2023 – and I shall repeat « started », as it was so quiet on that second Saturday of October, when hundreds of men in arms broke and rushed through the border, into Nir Oz, to kidnap Chaim Peri, Yoram, 80, Amiram (84), with others, and murdered so many who were so helpless, in their shelters, in their homes.

We did not know them before. We now know them, they stay with us. This is an old photo of Chaim, with a quote from Yitzhak Rabin, as he was a peace activist. One of those who would drive sick Palestinians from the Erez terminal to the best hospitals in Israel. 

The way Vivian Silver did, and Haim Katsman, from Holit. Both slaughtered on October 7.

From October 7, 2023, in Nir Oz, Be’eri, Holit, to January 1, 2002, in the Ramallah Muqata :

We were, Mairead and I, peace activists on our way, with a « mission » after all – fifteen months into the second intifada, growing losses both for Palestinian and Israeli civilians made it urgent to check upon the Palestinian president’s stand.

There had been some thirty car bombs and suicide bombings in 2001, most claimed by Hamas, some by the Islamic Jihad, from Netanya on January 1, 2001 – 60 injured, by Hamas, to Haifa on December 2, a suicide bomber sent by Hamas, killing 15, wounding 40, on a bus.

Among the most murderous attacks : Netanya again, on May 18, 2001, 5 killed, 100 wounded, by Hamas ; Tel Aviv, the Dolphinarium discotheque, on June 1, 21 killed, over 100 wounded, by Hamas ; Jerusalem, the Sbarro restaurant, on Yaffo street, 16 killed, 130 wounded, by Hamas & Islamic Jihad ; Jerusalem again, the Ben Yehuda market, 11 killed, 188 wounded, by Hamas.

We could see the Palestinian president ill at ease. Something was not clear, Arafat was on edge  – what could it be ?

The answer came three days later. When we heard that a freighter carrying 50 tons of weapons, the Karine A, had been intercepted in the Red Sea, on January 3, and taken to the harbour of Eilat, where its cargo was unloaded on the quay, for all to see.

Aboard, you had 122mm and 107mm katyusha rockets, two and a half tons of high explosives, crates of kalashnikov rifles, sniper rifles, ammo, and all sorts of deadly goodies.

The ship had been acquired at the end of August 2001 by the Palestinian Authority, from a Lebanese company, and its captain was a Palestinian colonel and Fatah activist. The crew admitted it was their third such trip, and added that there had been other such ships – the Calypso II…, the Santorini, from Tyr, Lebanon, which was seized on May 6, 2001, with 40 tons of weapons (107mm katyushas, 4 Strella missiles, 13,000 kalashnikov cartridges, and so on and so forth). Arafat’s spokesperson, whom we’d come across at the Muqata, had loudly protested, « for sure, we have nothing to do with the shipment ».

So much for credibility and trust.

The Karine A, for me, was the end of the line. How do you deal with betrayal ?

Things happen for a reason. Lies and deception. It’s always the same, is it not.

Kids or adults, likewise, the ones who lie, in the very act, do not perceive themselves as liars. More like interpreters, directors, facing the stage, their audience at a given time. I maintained the connection with Abu Amar though. All through 2002 and 2003, until the end.

By the end of January 2002, on the 27th, hundreds of women were gathered around Arafat in Ramallah, for a special meeting, in which he claimed that women and men were equal, and that they were his « army of roses which would crush the Israeli tanks ». His leit-motiv was« Shahida, shahida… all the way to Jerusalem ! ». He made his point clearly, « You are the ones who will release your husbands, your fathers and your sons, from oppression. You will sacrifice yourselves, the way women have always sacrificed themselves for their family. »

That very afternoon, January 27, 2002, Wafa Idriss blew herself up in a Jerusalem mall, killing one and wounding dozens, becoming the first Fatah female kamikaze. The armed wing of Fatah, Arafat’s party, Al Aqsa Brigade of Martyrs, claimed responsibility for the act.

 In the same period, 2000-2001, Barbara Victor, an investigative journalist with over twenty years of experience in the Middle East, was writing her memoir, Army of Roses : Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers.

Came February 2002, and the tensions were riding high and higher in Ramallah. People in charge, or who thought they were in charge, were getting ready for war. In gradually empty ministries, and everywhere I went, all I heard was the rising speech of war. Educated men, men with responsibilities, they were all inebriated with it. I could see the wild burning light in their eyes, it was beyond rhyme and reason.

In vain I pleaded with them – not for the sake of morality, or good vs evil, God forbid, but for the sake of rationality, of a sane, lucid anticipation about the balance of power. What the chances of success were, if any, to put it simply. They were all intoxicated to deafness.

This was only five months after September 11, 2001, mind you.

Remember the mass murder-suicide of Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978. 918 men, women, and children, dead in a matter of moments, all members of the Peoples Temple, followers of their leader Jim Jones. Call it the Jonestown syndrome – Ramallah, January 2002 / Gaza, October 2024. Jones was no ignorant guru, he had read his Stalin, Lenin, and Mao Ze Dong, praised them as his heroes. Nor did he actually force his followers to drink the poison. They had been trained towards what the leader termed « revolutionary suicide ». There had been votes, and previous tests.

« Everyone, including the children, was told to line up. As we passed through the line, we were given a small glass of red liquid to drink. We were told that the liquid contained poison and that we would die within 45 minutes. We all did as we were told. » testified one of the survivors, speaking of preparatory meetings, meant as « loyalty tests ».

I stayed in the West Bank and Jerusalem until early March 2002.

After January 27, 2002, Arafat’s Fatah also claimed responsibility in Tayibe for a bombing, and on March 2, in Jerusalem, for a massacre in a yeshiva, killing 11, wounding over 50. It became a conjunction of terror, from Fatah, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas again, with the Café Moment in Jerusalem, killing 11, wounding over 54, on March 9, and the Passover massacre in Netanya, on March 27 : 29 killed, 140 wounded, by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

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Wake-up on a Sunday morning, with the pain and pressure (more bad news in view ? no echo from Masoud’s family in South Gaza, no echo from Yonathan in the Negev) – the accumulated pain, and the pressure of impending gloom over one million refugees to be displaced again around Rafah : where to ?

Searching for clues and issues, throughout the long, dark, damp tunnels we have been forced into.

 Unmündigkeit. Couldn’t that be the word, the key.

From Immanuel Kant, 1784. Pointing to immaturity, the status of minority, as devoid of full legal responsibility. What we could call the Jonestown syndrome. Or the various discourses of voluntary servitude (La Boétie, 1550), the pervading politics of obedience.

Looking back into the matrix of the ongoing chaos and devastation (« It’s a destruction of hugemost biblical proportions » in Avi Issacharoff’s words, on February 9, when he was allowed into Gaza), you find there was a time, the lost decade, from 1988 to the late nineties and 2001, when the Palestinian authority, with Yasir Arafat at its head, was willing to try the way of non-violence.

It shifted by mid-2001, and the end of 2001, with the choice of cargoes of weapons from Iran, leading us to the Karine A (+ Santorini) fiasco, and the gradual rapprochement between the rejectionists, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the Oslo actors of the P.L.O.

The result was Operation Defensive Shield, launched on March 29, 2002, two days after the Netanya Passover massacre. The largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 war. Then Arafat was placed under siege in his Muqata compound, until his death.

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I see myself in Ramallah again, in February and March 2002, objecting and arguing. All for the sake of common sense, and predictable prospects. In Ramallah still, from 2002 till the last meeting with Arafat, by the end of September 2003. He was sick then, not quite the man he’d been known to be. I gave him our little red book, The Spirit of Luther King, and it made him happy. He liked the cover. « Charrming ! », he exclaimed.

2004 was a year I skipped. My sabbatical year somehow. 927 people were killed that year, including five foreign nationals. They had started murdering « collaborators » too. 2003, two of them were dragged through the streets of Ramallah, and hung by the feet from a metal structure of pylons that was in the center of Manara Square, between the stone lions. That was the way some of them dealt with betrayal.

In Tel Aviv, on January 2004, a hundred thousand people had gathered to protest PM Sharon’s plan to disengage from Gaza and parts of the West Bank. As Peace Lines, we had campaigned for this withdrawal, as early as 2001, with our Peace through Justice Call, supported by 18 Nobel laureates (3 Peace laureates only : Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire & Betty Williams) and 7 Members of the European Parliament.

« After decades of ongoing feuds and wars, the 2000-2001 bridging proposals can bring solutions to the painful matters of territories and refugees. In the spirit of U.N. resolutions 242 and 194. The colonies recognized as a source of inequity and hatred have to be peacefully evacuated. The majority of settlements will be attached to Israel, exchanged for equivalent surfaces. Why delay any more the birth of a free Palestinian State ?

Both Palestinians and Israelis share the same tiny piece of land. Both breathe the same air, drink from the same sources... address each other with the same peace salute : Shalom, Salam... »

Kennedyesque in style, it acted as a beacon for leaders of good will, at all levels. Arafat passed away in France, on November 11, 2004 – some say poisoned by someone close to him. He had been powerless for a couple of years, in his besieged compound. A helpless prisoner in his ruined palace.

On January 9, 2005, presidential elections were held for the first time since their historical predecessor in 1996. Mahmoud Abbas was declared winner, for a four-year term, with 67% of the votes, before Mustafa Barghouti (21%). Hamas and the Islamic Jihad boycotted the process. There have been no elections since.

 In February 2005, the Knesset approved of the disengagement plan (59 pro, 40 con, 5 abst.) ; 500 Palestinian prisoners were released, as a goodwill gesture to the new president, and 400 more in June. Jericho and Tulkarm were handed over to the Palestinian Authority, in the same spirit. Despite continuous bombings by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, in August 2005 the disengagement plan was completed in Gaza. In September, the last troops were pulled out, and four settlements in the West Bank had also been evacuated – speaking of « the colonies recognized as a source of inequity and hatred », but who’s to say where on earth the alleged source lies ?

The architect of the Gaza & Ganim disengagement, PM Sharon, had created a new Party, Kadima, breaking away from his original Likud, to act more freely. Three months after the last soldiers left Gaza, on December 18, 2005 he suffered a first stroke, did not heed the doctors’ orders for bed rest, and was hit by a second stroke on January 4, 2006.

He fell into a coma that was to last eight years, until his death on January 11, 2014. Ten years after his arch-enemy Yasir Arafat had left the stage, to slip into oblivion. Many are the observers of the endless drama who feel that both entities have been rudderless since 2004 and 2006. Without anyone of real daring insight at the helm. Explosive-laden ships without tillermen aboard.

Hence the two-sided catastrophe of October 7, 2023.

Let’s admit there is something like the heart of the matter. And something did go dead wrong with this heart of ours on October 7, 2023.

But what was it we wanted, to start with, in this Newsletter ?

To get Shiri Bibas and her infants, from Nir Oz, out of Gaza, with the historian Alex Dancyg, born in 1948, and Oded Lifshitz, born in 1940. To get Haim Peri and Yoram Metzger (both 1944), along with Amiram Cooper (1940) out of Gaza, and back into their lives.

To get our friend Masoud’s extended family of ten out of the refugees’ tents in Rafah, let them come back to their homes in Gaza City, if the buildings are still standing.

My deep feeling of rage, outrage, at betrayal is relentless, rising by the days.

How could anyone give orders to kidnap them all, from babies less than a year old, to men and women in their eighties ? They now say that the head of the Gaza military quintette did not foresee all the consequences of their decision, that the attack did not go as planned, and the main decision-makers did not expect it to go as far as it did.

Still, the military leaders had given their orders in the night, and licence to kill, kidnap, and all. When it was all perfectly quiet on the Southern front, they opened the lid of this nightmarish hell. And, by some wicked twist of fate, the military leaders on the other side had not foreseen that such an attack could happen, that it could go as far as it did. They had given orders to leave the whole Gaza Envelope and its residents totally unprotected. Worse, it took them astounding hours to react, and counter-attack.

On one side you had a billion-dollar network of massive invasion tunnels. On the other side, you had another billion-dollar network of underground and overground state-of-the-art fences and devices. « Sometimes it’s better not to say anything at all » ?

They say the army found footage of Shiri Bibas and her infants in Khan Yunis on cctv. She’s being pushed and shoved by half a dozen young men, from one cell to another. They cover her from head to toe with some sort of blanket.

What a shame. What a shame on the human species. What a shame on us all, wherever we live, for letting this happen. Don’t ask why it happened, just realize « Muslims » did this. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Muslim Brotherhood. Allahu Akbar ?

 

I see myself again in Gaza, from Jabaliya to Gaza City to Khan Yunis, from 2008 to 2013, pleading  relentlessly for our bilingual programme centered on peaceful means, constructive coexistence. Remember Gabi Baramki, a chemist, President of Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, from 1974 to 1993, and then in charge of Higher Education. Remember Rami Hamdallah, an English teacher, President of An Najah University in Nablus, from 1998 to 2013 – when he was appointed Prime Minister, for six years.

Call it another window of opportunities, with such basically good men, academics, principled individuals.

The welcome window was shut by the Gaza leaders though, secretly busy all the time digging their subterranean fortress. 2014 was the birth of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria, which came to control most of the Syrian territory and of Northern Iraq in 2015, with outposts South of Damascus as close to the Sea of Galilee as less than 40 km. Daesh, the Islamic State, viewed itself as a worldwide caliphate, with extensions as far as Bengal, Caucasus, Yemen, Somalia, Central Africa, Sahara, Libya, Algeria, Sinai.

The Jihad fever spread all over, East to West, from its epicenters, vowing to conquer all.

2015 was the black year for France, when Al Qaeda partisans massacred the Charlie team of cartoonists in Paris (Cabu, Wolinski, Honoré…), then Jewish customers at a kosher store, and later in the year Daesh partisans slaughtered revelers by the dozens at the BaTaClan theatre, and ordinary people enjoying an evening at cafés and restaurants.

2014 and 2015 were also black years in Egypt, due to the Sinai Insurgency, from a dozen jihadi groups who indiscriminately killed soldiers, policemen, civilians, judges, and downed a Russian passenger plane, with 224 on board. 2016, 2017 weren’t much better, with the Palm Sunday church bombings, killing over 363, wounding uncounted scores.

Such was the context, from 2014 onward. When the Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah went to Gaza, for another attempt at reconciliation between the sides of the Palestinian divide, on March 13, 2018 « they » tried to kill him, whoever they were.

On March 30, 2018, the Gaza leaders started organizing border protests under the banner of The Great March of Return – the aim of which was meant to be the return of all Palestinian refugees since 1948 and their descendants to present-day Israel. These gatherings, Trojan horses, never were peaceful the way they were supposed to be initially. As soon as April 2018, a parallel campaign of incendiary balloons and kites was started, with a devastating impact on crops and woods, including a huge fire in the Be’eri Forest. Whereas the border riots stopped by the end of 2019, these arson attacks continued until 2021.

 

Such is the timeline, and the context, from 1987 (the foundation of Hamas) and 1988 (Arafat’s coming out in favour of non-violence, reneged in 2002) till the present day.

Some people do evoke the need to contextualize the onslaught of October 7, 2023. Right they are, it is always misleading to take events or statements out of context. You wish they would do a thorough job of it though, and not stop on the conventional surface of political software from the past century – caducous as they are.

Do we need reasons to reject discourses of war, and demand a durable cessation of hostilities in February 2024, with its conditions of possibility ?

As a human being, and coordinator of a humanitarian organization which has been involved in war zones for thirty-two years, all I can say is that I reject, contest, abhor war, and its countless alibis.

Warfare kills people, in numbers, but it also kills, and poisons, maims their spirit.

Long after actual war stops, post-trauma stress burdens the soul and mind, triggers violent nightmares, wrecks nights and dawns.

War thrusts you into abyssal grief and mourning. War steals the joy from your eyes.

War robs you of your freedom first, with a view to rob you of your life, or limbs, integrity.

To start with, through mobilization orders, warfare convokes you, abducts you, wherever you are, under the threat of calling you a deserter, and sending you to jail.
The double catch of warfare : either you submit, don the uniform, seize the gun, and do as you’re told, and you’re in, or you recoil, but they go for you, get you, and drag you into a cell, you’re in as well.

What warfare brings you first and foremost is personal submission and blind conformity – the fastest way to alienation.

The tools and ways of war are all miserable and mind-twisting. There is no beauty in war, whatsoever. It only teaches to lie and deceive, through propaganda and binary speeches.

Warfare diminishes a human being’s capacity for understanding, in depth. It always comes crawling on you through a heavy fog, the famed « fog of war », in which you cannot discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal.

The first victim of war, with truth, is trust. You can no longer trust anything stated by the warwaging authorities. In war, regardless of international conventions, all means are acceptable, as long as they hurt and defeat the « enemy ».

In war, human beings accept to dehumanize others and be dehumanized, to be transformed into something else than the striving individual they were to begin with. Something like some metal insect, equipped with fangs and pincers, venom vesicles, something unlike anything they might have been in the first stages of their life.

Warfare devours your time, cannibalizes your life. Warfare is the worst thief that sneaks through your fences and self-defence devices.

Regardless of whether it is a « just war » or not, the end result is the same. Any war catapults you into inhumane tension, devastation, and angst. There are no joyous warriors. Only demented automata, whose only motto is to kill or get killed.

Call warfare the most perverted language that has ever been invented to communicate between people(s). For war is language, and little else. Language for the cripples, the legless, and the lame. War makes you a gimp, whether you think you’re educated or not – as it cripples your mind, and then proceeds to cripple your body parts.

And if you think that warfare can make you a hero through crafty tactics and strategy (like, you could say that the use of paragliders and explosive drones to disable surveillance cameras was brilliant, on October 7), I will object that this is the most twisted, short-sighted vision of all.

The first feelings may be of exultant victory – over the overwhelmed enemy, surprised in his sleep – but the immediate end result is the foulest perception of broken bodies, the most aborted perception of a relation to Others.

All you find after a « successful » operation is ruins, charred remains of what once stood, and the stench of rotting and brutal death.

I abhor war as part of the human experience.

 

I would curse war and warriors, if I did not believe in the priority of lighting candles.

 

And yet, I will stand by Yahya Mahamid, Arab-Israeli speaker, and torch-carrier, born in 2003, who says that « education is the road to peace «  and that « coexistence is not just an idea; rather it is a vital necessity ».

Making his point that there have been no Arabs’ riots in Israel to support the assailants of October 7, he stresses the fact that « the Arab community reacted with remarkable restraint and maturity ».

« Evidence of our commitment and belief in a common future where coexistence and mutual respect are above all. »

 

In this ageless duo of ends and means, the end can never justify the means, since the means do determine the very nature of the ends they engender.

 

If life has any sense, it is to strive for the simple, amazing grace of ordinary / extraordinary gestures and moves – be it on ice skates, on a bike, in the flux of a river, at a keyboard, with a violin, a harp, a flute, a brush, pencils, a camera, a hammer, a chisel,  and the whole unrestrained  power of your brain and heart.

 

Let us see all the hostages released !

Let everybody go home, where there still is a home. And where there is none leflet us rebuild, in peace.

Not one more rocket, not one more shell or missile !

Let us have a demilitarized State, from Jenin to Rafah !

Let us teach the codes of non-violence in the schools !