What's next?

Baha Rahal

The harsh reality experienced by the Palestinian citizen has exceeded the limits of what is possible and reasonable. Life has become strangely unbearable, and time is eating away at everything possible. The space for relief is shrinking in the face of the darkness of restrictions, gates, checkpoints, and winding, dirt and rocky roads. While the war of extermination continues in Gaza, the persecution of people in the West Bank continues, and the process of annexation and gnawing for the sake of building settlements continues. The acts of oppression and humiliation continue at the military checkpoints spread between each city and the next, and the iron gates that cut off road connections as a form of collective punishment, terrorizing people's lives with continuous daily raids, ceaseless arrests, and tightening the economic and social stranglehold in ways that Satan is unable to devise.

Looking at the reality in the cities, villages, and camps of the West Bank, the picture is the same from north to south. People's voices are filled with complaints about the reality that is spiraling downward, and the absence of hope in most dialogues and meetings. They know that their patience has failed them, and that, in light of this reality, they have no solutions that will lead to better times. The war in Gaza continues, and so do numerous forms of aggression in the West Bank. No one in this world is imposing a halt to the genocide or halting the arrogance of the extremist occupation government. There is no glimmer of hope for a political horizon in the near future. This is what drives people to a state of misery, given what they hear, see, and experience. The complaints of politicians, media figures, journalists, and intellectuals have become a constant feature of every day, prompting the average citizen to sense the coming dangers, amid the lack of a clear picture and the gloom of the future.

The war of extermination in Gaza has destroyed everything, and the Strip has become a wasteland, its inhabitants living in shabby tents and uninhabitable shelters, amidst a complete lack of all the necessities of life. As in the West Bank, the situation is no better. Rather, with each passing day, life becomes more difficult, and the scope of attacks, land confiscation, and terrorizing of people's lives expands. This is what Netanyahu and his government wanted. This is a policy declared with utmost racism and extremism in confronting the world, its laws, charters, laws, and institutions. The occupation continues its war and attacks, as it continues its extremist policies seeking ethnic cleansing and the expulsion and displacement of the indigenous people of the land by various means and methods.

The internal Palestinian reality, which suffers from fragmentation, division, and the disputes that surface, are the main reason for weakening positions and visions and overcoming the faltering present. Moreover, the hateful division obstructs any possibility of rising from this depths. Between the fragmentation of positions, the wasting of time, and the absence of democracy and elections, the compass of the people, who witness everything that has happened and is happening, is lost, and the national project is lost in the labyrinths of internal fighting. The more the threat of occupation and liquidation projects intensifies, the more the rift increases and the disputes deepen, as if the division is our inevitable fate, unavoidable in light of the narrow partisanship and factionalism that has extended all these years, bringing us losses and more weakness and confusion. In light of this division, the voice of impotence and weakness is the only voice, the voice of disappointments is louder, the level of action is diminished, and the citizen remains hostage to a wretched reality, with its difficult political and economic circumstances.

What next? The question of people exhausted by chapters of war, genocide, and suffering, with no answer in light of this reality engulfed by death, displacement, ethnic cleansing, and occupation policies, amid international silence, global neutrality, and a hateful Palestinian division.