The constant repetition of the threat of displacement and its expected psychological repercussions!

The use of the broken record and the threat of displacement is not new, but rather has its roots in the old-new apartheid ideology, which is shared by many colonial powers, regardless of their geographical locations, political systems, and governments elected by their peoples, as history has attested to since ancient times.

In the past, the displacement of peoples was done for purely economic motives, as happened in the displacement of millions of crushed Africans to America. And now this motive is back again after Trump announced his intention to displace the people of Gaza and deal with it as a real estate deal for him, in addition to laying his hands on Greenland and annexing Canada. Then the colonial military motive appeared, as former US President Johnson did in one of the islands of Mauritius, and today it came in the form of ethnic cleansing (genocide).

Many terms have been used to describe this situation: reallocation/repositioning, displacement, transfer, dispossessing, and today we are facing a new form of genocide.

Several methods have been and are still being used to test the people's feelings regarding the idea of displacement.

1- In the past, violence was practiced and massacres were committed, as happened in Tantura, Deir Yassin, Kafr Qasim, Iqrit, Bir’am, and other massacres, some of which the perpetrators admitted to, while there are massacres that the same perpetrator still deliberately ignores.

2- Resorting to methods of tightening the noose on citizens in order to limit their freedom of movement, such as imposing military orders or the tendency to place barriers, earthen curtains and iron gates. The objectives behind this method have changed, as at first it was to establish a fait accompli that says "we are here" and to send a message to the residents that there is someone controlling them, then another objective was added, which is tightening the noose so that the citizen feels disgusted and begins to think about searching for alternatives that enable him to overcome the problems and obstacles of these fixed barriers (the detestable Qalandia barrier, for example) and their impact on his fixed daily life. Sometimes, what is known as the flying, non-fixed barriers is resorted to, one of the most prominent objectives of which is to humiliate and annoy the citizen.

3- In addition, these checkpoints are used to serve political visions that aim to consolidate the annexation of certain geographical areas (Qalandiya and Hizma checkpoints to separate the West Bank areas from the city of Jerusalem, and the Container and Za’tara checkpoints to separate the north of the West Bank from the south).

There is no doubt that there is a significant increase in the number of military checkpoints set up by the occupation, not only with the aim of tightening the noose and confiscating freedom of movement and travel, but also in order to humiliate the Palestinian citizen and push him to think about emigrating.

There is no doubt that the discussion on the subject of these barriers is long in terms of the goal, importance, and mechanisms for activating them, so I will leave this matter to the specialists to address it in a comprehensive and detailed manner.

No matter how different and varied the names are, they all leave permanent psychological fingerprints and effects with different levels of influence. Perhaps what the Palestinian people have been exposed to since the 1948 Nakba, which led to the existence of a new psychological term known as Intergenerational Traumatic Effects, was followed by what resulted from another Nakba in 1967 and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees outside their homes, followed by massacres and continuous incursions into the occupied territories with the aim of displacement and in the best of cases, dissolving the Palestinian national identity through attempts to create dependency and normalization (see the author's book "The Role of Palestinian Workers in the Israeli Economy - Reserve Army in Israel", published by the Palestinian Office for Press and Information, Jerusalem, 1981) and the book "The Siege - Israeli Violations Against the Palestinian Cultural Movement in the Occupied Territories in 1967", published by the Palestinian Writers Union, Jerusalem, 1987.

Unfortunately, the calls for displacement have achieved some of their goals, as they have become the talk of the majority of Palestinians, to the point that some representatives of Palestinian factions have held protests in public squares. Once you start thinking about it, the farce has found a way into the souls and minds of some, instead of mobilizing the masses and formulating plans to confront and act to prevent it from happening.

Under such conditions, psychological symptoms of various names and forms began to crystallize. We should mention that the first scientific psychological study on this matter was conducted by Finnish researcher Raya Panumiki for the Arab Studies Association in 1983. The researcher addressed, in the field, the psychological effects on Palestinian children with the assistance of educator Therese Sabella.

In the last two weeks, the mental health team at the Center for Educational Studies and Applications (CARE) took a random sample from different geographical areas (occupied Jerusalem, Ramallah, Jericho and northern Hebron), of males and females with different age and educational levels and political views, totaling approximately 900 people. After conducting individual interviews with members of this sample, the team recorded the following observations: - The majority of those we spoke with see the threat of displacement as a mere scarecrow and a desperate attempt to cover up the operations and massacres that took place, which can be described as genocide at best. Therefore, these nonsense and attempts come as a new distraction to distract the people and their institutions from taking actions that would ward off the psychological repercussions of the genocide attempts that are still continuing throughout the northern and southern governorates of the homeland, targeting all categories and sectors of the Palestinian people. It is no coincidence that the focus is on refugee camps as an attempt to obliterate one of the main features of the Palestinian cause, in addition to slowing down the reconstruction operations in order to formulate a complete plan to make it subordinate to the vision of Trump and his allies in the region, so that he becomes the final authority in every small and large matter, and thus the whips of economic dependence become dominant in the region as a whole, as is the case with some existing mini-states.

- What made matters worse for such people is the scarcity of material and moral support, first from the well-off in our society and second from the Arab peoples. This desired support, unfortunately, did not go beyond chants, slogans and statements that are of no avail. What exacerbated such feelings is the continuation of the state of division and narrow factional work.

- One of the goals of the heresies and the threat of expulsion is to spread a feeling of weakness and despair among the citizens, and unfortunately the attempts to involve some members of the fifth column from our own people, whether Arab or Palestinian, intentionally or unintentionally, attempts to make doubt and suspicion penetrate the souls of the people on the path of resignation and surrender. Through the answers and reactions of the majority of the individuals in this sample, we found sufficient awareness of the impossibility of implementing what the advocates of expulsion aspire to, from the experiences and attempts of expulsion that followed the 1948 catastrophe and the lessons learned from it, as a result of the miserable reality they lived and continue to live, and perhaps the clinging of the people of Qalqilya Governorate is an example of this, as they categorically refused, after the June defeat and what followed, to leave their homes and lands, taking lessons from what happened in 1948, not to mention the reality of the situation that says "We have no other place to go and we have no choice but to continue to cling to our land and remain steadfast on it."

Despair has not been able to penetrate the souls of citizens due to their constant adherence to religious belief and the words of the Holy Prophet, “Do not despair” and “Do not despair of the mercy of God.”

- We found among a group of this random sample a state of staggering and suspicion, with a feeling of loss of hope and loss of a safe place, insomnia and anxiety to the point of hallucination, after they witnessed the great destruction that befell their property and the large numbers of dead, wounded and missing.

To get out and to mitigate the expected psychological repercussions later (the growth of feelings of introversion and loneliness, the expansion of the circle of social disintegration, and thus the increase in the possibility of feeling frustrated and lack of motivation to take initiative and persevere with a decrease in productivity and self-reliance, and a clear and tangible observation represented in the decline in academic achievement among the student group, and the continued dominance of feelings of sadness and absent-mindedness, due to the fear of the following "displacement", all of this will contribute to increasing the chances of domestic and local violence, which undermines the chances of civil peace).

• Therefore, we are in dire need of developing preventive measures and the necessity of intensifying the culture of mental health and conducting more training, especially in marginalized areas, and the concerted efforts of everyone: specialized governmental and civil institutions, professionals in the field and everyone who has a direct or indirect relationship, in order to reduce the expected negative psychological effects such as those we mentioned above, for example, but not limited to.

• The media (in all its forms and types) has an active role in this field, whether in choosing the terms used or presenting the programmes. It would be preferable to focus on the positive aspect in form and content and to avoid as much as possible the constant use of images and programmes with a potential negative connotation and impact.

• The necessity of rallying around the Palestine Liberation Organization and joining all national and Islamic forces in one trench, on the path of unified collective action and eliminating the narrow factional action that has brought us to the miserable state we are in today, which has made the wicked in our land become lions.