The bloodiest end of the year

At midnight tonight, the world bids farewell to the year 2023 and welcomes the new year 2024, hoping that it will bring with it good events and memories after unprecedented suffering in a difficult year that can be said to be one of the bloodiest and most tragic years in the world.

The world bid farewell to the year 2022, leaving behind the tragedies and pain of the Corona pandemic, which has killed millions with its deaths, vaccines, and health crises that have harmed the world and its economy. 

As is the custom of humans in every new year, they lay out a pile of wishes that may bring goodness and happiness, but the year 2023 insisted on a sad appearance full of tragic events, starting with an earthquake. Turkey and Syria in February, where they caused the death of about 50,000 people and injured 24,000 others, through the violent clashes between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, which left more than 12,000 dead in April, and the earthquake in the Al Haouz province in Morocco during the month of September, leaving behind more than three thousand dead and thousands more. 

The displaced people and the world did not catch its breath until Storm Daniel struck Libya, destroying the city of Derna and drowning it, causing the death of hundreds and the loss of thousands. The year concluded with the most difficult incidents and tragedies affecting the Palestinian people through Israeli aggression and a war of genocide that continues until this moment, claiming the lives of about 22 thousand citizens of the Gaza Strip and wounding about 56. One thousand and seven thousand missing, still under the rubble, in conjunction with a systematic aggression against the West Bank, its cities, camps, and Jerusalem, which has claimed more than four hundred martyrs, thousands of wounded, and nearly five thousand detainees since the seventh of October.

In light of the toll of the war on the Palestinian people, which destroyed their homes, lives, and assets in the Gaza Strip, other events dwarf other events, and the war on Gaza takes the lead in the scene of the year 2023, from door to door, and with it, it can be said that the year that is gathering its papers in preparation for farewell tonight has par excellence won the title of the (bloodiest) year. .

We hope that the new year will come bringing with it happy news. We call on all the inhabitants of the world to celebrate tonight by bidding farewell to a past year and welcoming a new year under the slogan of calling for peace, security, reassurance and freedom for our people, who remain the only people in the world who have not achieved their freedom and whose joy remains limited because the people of Palestine is an icon of patience and challenge. 

There is no home or family without a martyr who rose to sacrifice for his homeland, so that our people throughout the ages may learn to love the homeland and defend it through families that instilled in their children belonging to Palestinian customs and traditions, respecting them, and readiness to sacrifice what is dear and valuable at any time.

A people who enjoy peace of conscience and are armed with pride, despite the harsh years and the bitterness of the past, deserve a state in which they can build their dreams and aspirations, like all the peoples of the world, an independent state, with Jerusalem as its capital, Zahrat al-Mada’in, and to get rid of the yoke of the most dangerous and longest occupation in the world.

Tomorrow comes the year 2024, and all Palestinian issues are hot, inflamed, and flammable, from prisoners to settlements to attacks on Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque, incursions and assassinations in the West Bank, and the aggression against the Gaza Strip. Therefore, the fate of the new year will not differ from last year and all previous years in which a usurping occupation crouched a defenseless people prevented from achieving their wishes.

The years in the history of Palestine remain rolling numbers and change, but the constant element remains our national cause, which cannot change and is considered the essence and core of the conflict in our contemporary history.