The Long Shadow of the Setback

The setback in the life of a Palestinian is a permanent act, and their inevitable destiny filled with suffering in a world of occupation, conspiracy, and abandonment. It is an accumulation of oppression and diaspora over the extended years since June 1967 until today. The setback is also an extension of the greater Nakba of 1948, and one of the distortions of the mandate and the products of colonialism that created a turbulent reality in an era of geographical and demographic division, and the deliberate fragmentation of the one nation by planting an entity that fosters tribal loyalties, spreads the poisons of division, and pushes for the division of the divided and the fragmentation of the fragmented through permanent plans and policies, the goal of which is to control and extend influence over natural resources and human minds, and over humans as the basis of civilizational revival and accumulated action inherited generation after generation. The defeat at the time of the setback with its suspicious results then, and the dimensions it imposed on the land and on the people who fell under the military rule of the victorious occupation army over the Arab armies whose banners were defeated and who left the country and its people to face a merciless enemy, did not carry momentary dimensions, but rather cumulative ones that extended to our time in a racist policy that expands and spreads in all directions, and whose ambitions and desires are not limited. For there is no settlement established except that it is an extension of the setback, and no military checkpoint or control over the land except as a result of that defeat that haunts us to this day. The signs of the setback are clear and obvious, for there is no storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Ibrahimi Mosque except as an extension of the setback, and no siege that tightens and another that suffocates except that it is due to the June setback that created a different reality, restricted and besieged by all the tools of siege and artificial borders and geography with blue, green, and yellow lines, and these colors are nothing but an expression of the state of weakness and dispersion of the nation whose hopes were scattered in five days. In five days or less, the strangers triumphed and tightened their control over what remained of the country, and their occupation extended beyond Palestine with its mandatory map, and they gnawed away parts of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, and the June setback had a profound effect on shaping the new human who does not accept defeat and thinks of ways to victory and reclaiming rights from the depths of loss. The June setback at the time was the great shock after the Nakba of 1948, which burdened the Arab shoulder with defeat and left its impact that would extend all this time of years and decades that have passed on generations in the diaspora and the camp, and none of this would have happened if a pivotal moment in that battle had occurred, and the roles had changed from defeat to victory. Despite the deep effects of the setback on consciousness, sentiment, and geography, the will of the Palestinian people remained resistant to breaking, drawing its strength from the justice of the cause and the right of humans to their land and homeland. Between the Nakba and the setback and the harsh stations that followed and are still happening, the hope for freedom, return, and independence remains present as a historical promise that does not lapse with time and is not canceled by the fleeting balances of power in bygone eras.