Donald Trump has announced that he will save the “unlucky” Gazans from the pitiable destruction that has somehow always beset them by expelling them, taking ownership of the Gaza Strip, and beautifying it for “world people.” While this may be the most patently greedy and offensive plan for Palestinians yet, it is just the latest in the century old, official disparagement and abuse of Palestinians as unworthy people, as something less than human.
The iterations of this abuse are numerous. Here are some of the major ones:
- over 700,00 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in 1948 (over 200,00 to the Gaza Strip then governed by Egypt) and have not been allowed to return;
- over 400 Palestinian towns and villages were completely destroyed then by Jewish-cum-Israeli forces;
- forbidding their identity by rendering the 1967-conquered Palestinian population centers of the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip as Occupied Territories (and annexing parts of Jerusalem) to be governed by the Israeli military;
- the Oslo Accords, that contrary to honoring Palestinian aspirations, explicitly forbade them any sovereignty and would keep them permanently controlled by the Israeli military;
- the vastly and intentionally disproportionate and lethal force used against Palestinian resistance during the intifadas, the Great March of Return, and the Gaza wars (2008, 2012, 2014, 2022, 2023);
- the refusal to honor a fair election, but rather the imposition of a severe, and ongoing, blockade of goods and resources and heavy restrictions on ingress and egress from Gaza beginning in 2007;
- the sidelining of Palestinians in the Abraham Accords;
- the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip accompanied by vicious statements by Israeli government and military leaders about Gazans guilt and in-humanity.
- The ongoing ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
And yet, after 77 years of enduring the events specified above and more, the Palestinians are still there, still mostly alive, still resisting, still undaunted in their struggle for self-determination and dignity. How is this so?
In large part, it is because those government and military leaders who have and continue to kill, maim, humiliate, and threaten expulsion of Palestinians (from both Gaza and the West Bank), and those other governments who support them, are ignorant of a fundamental principle of human emotion and behavior: that, contrary to diminishing or destroying, such actions and attitudes actually inspire resistance and the demand to be viewed as human. In other words, one of the best ways to fuel a dauntless fight for identity, human rights, and dignity is to forbid them.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s career-long allegiance to force that causes the most pain as a main strategy to deal with Palestinians—and no less so Presidents Biden and Trump—is primitive. Not just in its brutality, but in its obliviousness to how such a stance inspires radicalism towards and scorn of Israel.
My opinions are informed by three decades of associating with, researching, and chronicling Palestinian families across the territories, and particularly in the Gaza Strip. It has been profound to witness a people’s unyielding grip on and love for the bit of territory they have been allowed to inhabit and, despite the mistreatment and slander, their unfailing allegiance to the struggle to live in dignity and to raise and educate their families.
As Mohammed, the 23-year-old son of Khalil, whose life story I have narrated, wrote on April 4, 2024 from the family tent in Al Mawasi in southern Gaza:
Resilience and determination to live with dignity burns within us. And with each passing day, hope is somehow maintained and the will to move forward grows despite all the hardships.
See www.bkbarber.com
(Banner image: Wafa)
