By Jafar M Ramini
One of the most arduous tasks on earth now is being a Palestinian. No matter what direction we might look there is either a siege, a wall, an occupation, subjugation, deprivation and/or demonization.
This hapless and hopeless position is born of many factors. The first is that the cause of the Palestinians was taken out of their hands from the moment that Zionist intentions in Palestine were made clear.
We were a peaceful, thriving community with hopes and aspirations until the Zionists started coveting our land. We were unprepared and ill equipped for armed conflict and we naively thought that as part of the greater Arab nation we would be protected. We found many, uninvited champions pretending to carry the flag of Palestine when in fact they were conspiring, covertly and clandestinely, to do the opposite.
Paranoid? Perhaps, but let’s examine the facts.
First, the Zionists denied our very existence. The world stood there and did nothing.
Then they proclaimed they had made the desert bloom, even though the Negev desert was the only part of Palestine they didn’t want back then. Nevertheless, the world took it on board unquestioningly.
The Zionists conspired with our so-called Arab brethren and the western powers to steal our land and wipe us off the face of the earth. The world applauded their tenacity and their inventiveness. Any time we raised our heads to protest at this injustice and this inhumanity we were met by brute force. It began with the British, then the Zionists, then and our Arab brethren. And now by America.
Where on earth would you find a brutal occupying force that is called ‘the most moral army in the world’ suppressing and ethnically cleansing the indigenous population but in Palestine?
Where on earth would you find Jewish only roads and Jewish only buses and Jewish only settlements on stolen land but in Palestine? Yet the world proclaims Israel to be the only democracy in the Middle East.
Where on earth do you have people languishing in sub-human conditions in refugee camps for 65 years with no human rights or prospects but in Palestine and around the so-called Arab world?
I am of an age to remember when Palestinians in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon were not allowed to earn their daily bread. I saw with my very own eyes their travel documents where it said, ‘NOT ALLOWED TO TAKE UP EMPLOYMENT, PAID OR UNPAID’. How are we to survive? On handouts of course. Yet these regimes were supposed to be our champions.
I lived and worked in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia where your sponsor is the master of your destiny. He could exploit your hard work and sweat for meager returns and you could be thrown in jail, stripped of all your belongings and deported for something as simple as him losing his temper. Which happened often.
I saw Jordanian passports that were offered to the Palestinians in the fifties and then withdrawn or ‘made temporary’ for no reason other than a fit of pique by a member of the security service or the passport department. How does a citizen of any country in the world become temporary? It can only happen to a Palestinian living in an Arab country. It is like being a little bit pregnant. But there it is.
It happens and it continues to happen.
Every time there is upheaval in any Arab country where Palestinians reside, not by choice but because of enforced exile, they are the first to be punished and demonized. Not because they did something wrong but because they are easy prey. They are Palestinians, homeless and helpless. It happened in Jordan, it happened in Kuwait, it happened in Libya, it happened in Iraq, it happened in Lebanon, it happened in Syria and now, unbelievably, it is happening in Egypt. And to me this is a fatal blow.
Most of us Palestinians have always regarded Egypt as the saviour of Palestine, if not the Arab World. Successive regimes made the right noises in that direction, but did nothing tangible to come to our aid. The last huge loss to us Palestinians was the Egyptian coup d’etat last week. Not because of the loss of President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. They were very actively involved in suppressing us and denying us our rights. What irks me and makes me sick to my stomach is what transpired both before and after.
It has been widely reported that General Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi, the head of the Egyptian Armed Forces and the man who instigated the coup d’etat, informed ISRAEL of his intentions three whole days before the coup took place.
Please read this:
click here
General Al-Sisi and his co-conspirators did not waste any time carrying out Israel’s wishes. They destroyed the tunnels, the only lifeline for the inhabitants of Gaza and they closed the Rafah Crossing, which is the only gateway in and out of Gaza. They are physically curtailing Palestinians living or traveling through Egypt and they are bad-mouthing us and blaming us as the cause of Egypt’s woes without so much as a shred of evidence.
For the first time in my life I see the Egyptian media, as it is today, attacking us openly and calling us a ‘threat to the security and stability of Egypt’.
Furthermore, it has also been reported that the Nobel Prize Laureate, aspiring politician, Muhammad Al-Baradei employed the services of Patton Boggs, the biggest and most influential lobbyist group in Washington to advance his cause with The White House as the next president of Egypt. He left no stone unturned. Mr. Al-Baradei also reportedly made contact with major American Jewish organisations and made it clear that if elected he would observe all the elements of the Camp David Agreement. In addition Egypt, under Mr. Al-Baradei would take a much tougher stance on Iran. In the past, any aspiring Arab politician would have raised the Palestinian flag to achieve prominence. Now it seems the new game is to raise the Israeli flag.
Revolution? What revolution? The coup happened and guess who are paying the heaviest price? The Palestinians of course.
Why on earth do they call us their Arab brothers when the most pain we experience is at their sullied hands? I would understand it and maybe come to terms with it if I could discern what I, or many millions of Palestinians like me, have done to deserve this treatment. Could it be that because out of necessity and an acute sense of survival we refused to lie down and die and became instead the most educated and the most resourceful Arabs on this planet? Are they jealous of us? Are they in awe of us? Is brute force the only reaction they can muster against us because we have no country to call our own and no army to come to our defence?
The enemy is not us, the Palestinians. If they had a grain of integrity and intelligence and even a smidgeon of patriotism they would know that. The enemy is Zionism and the enemy is western homogeny. The enemy is ignorance and tribalism.
But they are cowards. All of them. Instead of pointing their guns at the real enemy they point them at each other and mostly on us, the Palestinians.
They sold Jerusalem, God, the Prophet and the Book in the name of selfish, narrow, tribal interests. I disown them all. I hope I live long enough to see the end of all their phony regimes and imaginary borders.
Finally, our current crop of leaders in Ramallah and Gaza are not much better. They are indulging in a suicidal game of divisions, squabbles and vying for positions of power while, we the Palestinian people, will pay the ultimate price.
Mr. Abbas in Ramallah and Mr. Haniyeh in Gaza, and whomever you carry along with you in your respective cliques of opportunists, I am ashamed of you. Haven’t we lost enough? Haven’t we suffered enough? Is there no end to your delusions?
I hope that you will come to your senses and realize what a disastrous path you are embarked upon before all of Palestine is lost.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask for what you can do for your country.” John F. Kennedy.
comment replay 