Ramzy Baroud
Oddly, it was
Israeli historian Benny Morris who got it right, when he offered a candid
prediction of the future of his country and its war with the Palestinians.
“The
Palestinians look at everything from a broad, long-term perspective,” he said
in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2019. “They see that, at
the moment, there are five-six-seven million Jews here, surrounded by hundreds
of millions of Arabs. They have no reason to give in, because the Jewish state
can’t last. They are bound to win. In another 30 to 50 years they will overcome
us, come what may.”
Morris is right.
He is correct in the sense that Palestinians will not give up, that there can
never be a situation where societies indefinitely survive and thrive within a
permanent matrix of racial segregation, violence and exclusion – exclusion of
the other, the Palestinians and the isolation of the self.
The very history
of Palestine is a testament to such a truth. If the oppressed, the natives of
the land, are not fully vanquished or decimated, they are likely to rise, fight
and win back their freedom.
It must be
utterly frustrating for Israel that all the killings and destruction underway
in Gaza has not been enough to affect the overall outcomes of the war: the
‘total victory’ of which Netanyahu continues to speak.
Israel’s
frustration is understandable because, like all military occupiers of the past,
Tel Aviv continues to believe that the right quantity of violence should be
enough to subdue colonized nations.
But Palestinians
have a different intellectual trajectory that guides their collective behavior.
Of the many
classifications of history, modern French historians separate between ‘histoire
événementielle’ – evental history – and ‘longue durée’ – long history. In
short, the former believes that history is the result of the accumulation of
consequential events over the course of time, while the latter sees history on
a far more complex level.
Credible history
can only be seen in its totality, not merely the total events of history,
recent or old, but the sum of feelings, the culmination of ideas, the evolution
of collective consciousness, identities, relationships and the subtle changes
that occur to societies over the course of time.
Palestinians are
the perfect example of history being shaped by ideas, not guns; memories, not
politics; collective hope, not international relations. They will eventually
win their freedom, because they have invested in a long-term trajectory of
ideas, memories and communal aspirations, which often translate to spirituality
or, rather, a deep, immovable faith that grows stronger, even during times of
horrific wars.
In an interview
I conducted with former United Nations Special Rapporteur, Professor Richard
Falk in 2020, he summarized the struggle in Palestine as a war between those
with arms and and those with legitimacy. He said that in the context of
national liberation movements, there are two kinds of war: the actual war, as
in soldiers carrying guns, and the legitimacy war. The one who wins the latter
will ultimately prevail.
Palestinians do,
indeed, “look at everything from a broad, long-term perspective”. Agreeing with
Morris’ statement may seem odd for, after all, societies are often driven by
their own class struggles and socio-economic agendas instead of a unified and
cohesive long-term vision.
This is where
longue durée becomes most relevant in the Palestinian case. Even if
Palestinians have not made a common agreement to wait for the invaders to
leave, or for Palestine to, once again, become a place of social, racial and
religious co-existence, they are driven, even if subconsciously, by the same
energy that compelled their ancestors to push back against injustice in all its
forms.
While many
western politicians and academics are busy blaming Palestinains for their own
oppression, Palestinian society continues to evolve based on entirely
independent dynamics. For example, in Palestine, sumud, or resilience, is an
ingrained culture, hardly subject to outside stimuli, political or academic. It
is a culture that is as old as time. Innate. Intuitive. Generational.
This Palestinian
saga started long before the war, long before Israel, long before modern
colonialism. This truth demonstrates that history is not just moved by mere
events, but by countless other factors; that, while ‘evental history’ – the
political, military and economic aspects that contribute to the making of
history through short-term events – is important, long-term history offers a
more profound understanding of the past, and its consequences.
This discussion
should engage all of those who are concerned about the struggle in Palestine,
and are keen to present a version of the truth that is not driven by future
political interests, but a profound understanding of the past. Only then we can
begin to slowly liberate the Palestinian narrative from all the convenient
histories imposed on the Palestinian people.
This is not an
easy task, but an unavoidable one as it is critical to break away from the
confines of superimposed language, historical events, recurring dates,
dehumanizing statistics and outright deception.
Ultimately, it
should be clear to any astute reader of history that, while fighter jets and
bunker-buster bombs may impact short-term historical events, courage, faith,
and communal love determine long-term history. This is why Palestinians are
winning the legitimacy war, and this is why freedom for the Palestinian people
is only a matter of time.
The
German-flagged MV Kathrin cargo vessel carrying explosive material for Israel
was given permission to dock in Egypt's Port of Alexandria this week after
being rejected by several other nations.
According
to a filing in a German court of appeals, the vessel carried eight shipping
containers holding 150,000 kg of RDX explosives for Israeli Military
Industries, the munitions production arm of Elbit Systems.
The
Egyptian Marine Consultancy Office (EMCO) was responsible for allowing the ship
to dock and reportedly helped unload its cargo, according to information
available on the Alexandria Port website.
The
ship-tracking website Marine Traffic and the financial data firm LSEG Data
& Analytics show that the MV Kathrin docked in Egypt on Monday and is set
to depart on 5 November.
“The
docking of MV Kathrin at the port of Alexandria raises questions about why
Egypt allowed the ship, carrying cargo used in Israeli military manufacturing,
to enter its ports,” representatives from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
(BDS) NGO told Middle East Eye.
BDS
added that EMCO also rubber-stamped the departure of another ship headed for
the Israeli port of Ashdod.
On
Wednesday, human rights lawyers from the European Legal Support Center (ELSC)
filed a petition in a Berlin court seeking to block the shipment of explosives
on behalf of three Palestinians from Gaza.
“These
explosive materials are used by the Israeli occupation forces to kill civilians
in Gaza and, currently, in Lebanon for over a year,” the lawyers said in their
complaint.
“The
entry of these explosive shipments into Egypt poses not only a threat to
Egyptian and Arab national security but also portrays Egypt as a country
violating international resolutions and supporting the genocide against our
Palestinian brothers and aggression against our sisters in Lebanon,” they
added.
Lubeca
Marine, a Germany-based company that owns the MV Kathrin, claimed the vessel
“was never scheduled to make any port calls in Israel.”
Earlier
this month, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told parliament that Berlin would
“always” continue delivering arms to Israel for its war against Lebanon and the
genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
“There
are deliveries, and there will always be further deliveries. Israel can rely on
that … Israel can rely on our solidarity – now and in the future,” he stressed.
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