How shall I describe Gaza to you? An open prison. The land of occupation. The land of the oppressed. Gaza is the home to the oppressed – the Arabs. What type of Arabs are those in Gaza? They are Muslims. Call them Arab Muslims, you are right. They are Arabs – Arab Christians.
Yes. Among the Arabs presently under siege in Gaza are Christians; Christians who are Arabs, not Muslims. Yes. Arab Christians – humans who have experienced Israeli occupation since 1948. Together with their Arab-Muslim compatriots, they have been inhabitants of the open prison. An open prison is a space of freedom where there is no freedom. An open prison is that place where you are free in the consciousness that a rope is tied around your neck; an open prison is where life is lived in the constant consciousness that it can end anytime!
But Gaza is nothing but a microcosm of the larger conflict and malaise that has afflicted the Arab-Muslim world since 1948. Gaza is only a part of the Arab world, not the whole. It is a space inhabited by Palestinians whose population – about two million and a half – forms a significant component of the oppressed whose land was taken away by the United Nations in 1948 and given to those who had no land.
But since 2005-2006 when the Hamas, the energetic and revolutionary arm of the Palestinian struggle for independence from the stranglehold of Israel won political leadership of the Gaza Strip, the city became the centrepiece of the Palestinian struggle. Gaza became the Madinah of the Palestinians; it became their Cairo; it became the rally-point for constructive engagement with the power of the occupier, the Israelis. There they live their daily lives under limited control of their fate and fortune.
Like the ram tied to a stake, they are free only to the extent to which Israel would grant and permit. Gaza remains what it is and what it has always been – a land of apartheid. It is a land separated from freedom by the Israelis’ guns, barbed wire, machine guns, bayonets and deep-seated animosity. Yet Gaza is one of the closest cities to Israel, at least from the Southern parts of the latter.
But what is Israel? It is the land of the favoured. The land of the privileged. Israel is the land created for those without land in 1948 by the powers-that-be: the United Nations. The place known today as the State of Israel originally belonged to the Arabs. The Israelis are descendants of the favoured by the Almighty who nonetheless rebelled against the injunctions and will of their Creator, the Almighty.
The state of Israel came into being at a time when the Arab-Muslim world had lost its energy and strength; it came into being at a time when the Arab-Muslim world was largely under the occupation of Western colonial powers. All attempts made by the former to regain its lost glory had, up till Saturday last week, proved abortive.
Until last Saturday, Israel had become the superpower created by the superpowers. Israel had created a myth of invincibility and impenetrability around itself. It had enjoyed the monopoly of violence, of brutality. It had sought out and exterminated its perceived enemies all around the Middle East.
Having the West, America and Europe firmly behind it, Israel is the untouchable of the modern world. To criticize it for its oppression of the Palestinians, for its desecration of al-Aqsa mosque, for its murder of innocent Palestinians who had no weapon but ordinary pebbles, for its constant destruction of Arab homes in Gaza and West Bank was to be accused of anti-Semitism.
Until last Saturday when the unthinkable happened: Until last Saturday when the Goliath fell. Until last Saturday when Palestinians from Gaza decided that to attain martyrdom by daring to take the battle to their oppressor was better for them.
Thus, the unthinkable happened. The Israeli fortress was breached. The unthinkable happened. Never in its recent history had Israel suffered the kind of losses it recorded within 24 hours last Saturday. How did Gaza achieve it? Where did they get their weapon? Who taught them the strategy that caught the most powerful nation in the Middle East pants down as the world witnessed that day?
Quran 2: 214 is instructive of the constant supplication of the oppressed to the Almighty – that His intervention and assistance had become urgent. The Quran is equally full of stories of the Jews, of their capabilities and endowments, of their desires, their fancies and foibles. As for the Palestinians, their only battle cry remains – “When shall the intercession of the Almighty come in our favour?”
Remember your brethren in your prayers today and always. They are your brothers and sisters who, as at today are living in an open hell on earth. In the latter, death is more certain than life!
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