On the threshold of each new year, institutions and companies around the world have been making a habit of taking stock of the past year, in which they monitor the gains and losses, opportunities and risks, shortcomings and merits, achievements and failures, victories and setbacks, the goals achieved, and the programs and policies that faltered, requiring reviews to maximize gains and minimize risks.

With the rising of the sun today, the raging genocide in Gaza completes its 450th day, and each of these days is considered a thousand days for those who suffer its fire, hunger, thirst, cold, diseases, fear, and terror.

From the middle of the brazier, burning questions flare up, and we try to answer them calmly, away from the noise of slogans, the exchange of accusations, and the imposition of responsibilities.

Q: Did the creator of the flood expect the killing and destruction that befell Gaza?

A: Definitely not.

Q: If the days could go back and the decision-maker were destined to be resurrected again to see the horrors he saw, would he have made the same decision?

A: Also no.

Q: What was going through the mind of the person who made the decision to flood?

A: He was thinking of reproducing the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit in order to negotiate the release of prisoners, especially life sentence prisoners, as he was the most sensitive to their suffering and committed to his promise to them, so he wanted to initiate a limited operation to release them.

Q: What to do now, after all bets have fallen, expectations have been dashed, scenarios have been reversed, and Gaza has become a barren wasteland, where people are dying by the hundreds, morning and evening, from murder, hunger, and cold?

A: It is necessary to strengthen the wall of national unity, conduct reviews of the axes, stakes and policies, and carefully and realistically read the global, Arab and Islamic positions, in order to stop the further bloodshed.

Q: Is it wise to replicate the Gaza experience, with all its errors in calculations and bets, and provide the enemy with pretexts to repeat it in the West Bank?

A: Definitely not.

Q: But the enemy does not need excuses to repeat the massacre in the West Bank, as it did in Gaza?

A: Certainly, but there is a difference between him being given pretexts eager to obtain an international license to kill and annihilate, and not obtaining that license, by not being given the pretext.

Q: Do you mean that the people under occupation should stop resisting?

A: Certainly not. Resistance is a right guaranteed by international laws for peoples under occupation. It is a means, not an end. Peoples have the right to choose the means that are least costly to them and most costly to their enemy and occupier of their land, and not to play on their turf, but to bring them to theirs. We are victims, and we must avoid the tools that the occupation uses to lift the cover from us and eliminate our presence on our land. There are experiences of the peoples of the world, including our unique experience (the Intifada), which has become a global language, and which our people of all classes fought in 1987. It had a unified national leadership that chose its tools, activities, statements, and narratives that besieged the occupiers in their turf and tied their hands from using brutal force, as it has been doing for a year and two months in the Gaza Strip.

Q: What kind of weapon would you like the victim to use today?

A: The weapon of life, it is stronger than any weapon, in the face of an enemy that has reached the peak of madness in killing us, eliminating our existence on our land, destroying our capabilities, executing our children and women, and decimating our crops and offspring, without any deterrent to it, an enemy that is not governed by international laws, nor by morals or human laws, and unfortunately enjoys an international license, and the silence of Arab and Islamic countries to practice genocide.

Stop the genocide now...!