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How difficult is Gaza. How cruel are the scenes coming from it. Deadly, provocative images. Daggers that attack the eye and the soul. All expressions of anger, all cries, are wasted.
How difficult is Gaza. Fields that are designated for massacre. The corpses of its days are mixed with the dead bodies of its children. The world is watching with binoculars. Negotiations are arduous, as they say, and between one scenario and another, homes and families disappear.
How difficult is Gaza. Its loaf is baked in blood. Its days are burned with fire. Neither the roof protects nor the wall deters. The house is a passing station waiting for its ruins. Families are likely to be dispersed and continue to emigrate with their remaining children.
Death does not tire. It strikes in the north and in the south, without forgetting the center. The sky that gave birth to stars and clouds changed its habits. It only sends drones. These are birds of scientific and technological progress. They monitor and strike. They eat children’s meat with a fork and knife and the achievements of artificial intelligence.
How difficult is Gaza. Every inch is a graveyard project.
In recent decades, the Middle East has not been a land of peace. Wars have raged throughout it. We have seen bodies piling up at the borders and at other times in the capitals. But we have never witnessed such an intensity of killing. Such ingenuity in hunting down civilians and in pushing large crowds into successive murderous migrations on a stage soaked in blood. An Israeli laboratory has released the killing virus on the residents of Gaza and it is an intentional epidemic that is more dangerous than COVID-19.
Israel’s aggression is not something new. But this atrocity is setting records. We were under the illusion that the world would not allow a killing spree that would last for months. A world that is angry because of a Russian oppositionist. Or a Ukrainian inch. The world was mobilized to support “color revolutions” here and there. It was appalled by what it called human rights violations.
Suddenly, the world started looking away. It became deaf and blind. It started repeating phrases to lift the blame, while its first duty was to stop the killing. Invoking practices that accompanied the Oct. 7 attack does not cover the open massacre that followed. Moreover, this attack is the result of a long conflict and not its first spark. There is no excuse for the world and no fig leaf for its conscience.
The fire must be stopped quickly and permanently, so that the world can see the sea of rubble in Gaza. To remember that the number of new graves is equivalent to the population of a small city. To see the mothers who are waiting for children who will never return. To smell the scent of anger and despair and what heralds renewed cycles of revenge. Neither can Gaza die nor can the people of Gaza be wiped out. History says that leaving the wounds of a catastrophe inflamed only promises new tragedies for the families of the perpetrators and the victims alike.
I was stopped by the sight of American planes throwing humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza. The mere occurrence of this constitutes an acknowledgment of the extent of the calamity that is befalling the residents of the Gaza Strip and the size of the crime committed against them by the Israeli army. There is no doubt that throwing aid is useful. But we are not talking here about Austria or Finland. We are talking about the US. About the “single superpower” or something close to that. About the party that protects Israel whenever it is exposed to danger.
The scene of its president rushing to visit Israel after Oct. 7 was striking. Likewise, naval fleets and airlifts arrived. This role, in particular, imposes a great responsibility on America. It is its responsibility to put a hand on this conflict and stop the scenes of the new Nakba in a way that prevents its repetition.
Regardless of the objections to Washington’s policies, it is the only power capable of assuming a task of this magnitude. Russia, which is preoccupied with Ukraine, is not able to play this role, nor is China willing or capable. Europe has also seemed lost in this conflict. It had lost both the compass and its image.
There is no choice but to contain the new Nakba. The issue is much bigger than the survival of Hamas symbols in Gaza or the fate of Yahya Sinwar. The matter concerns the future of a people and stability in the region.
A mere return to past decades shows that the first Nakba was the main cause of destabilization in the region. The slogan of liberating Palestine was often raised to cover ambitions or justify policies. This is without forgetting that the massacres of the first Nakba were much smaller in magnitude than the current atrocities. All the projects that shook the region were based on the Palestinian cause.
Containment begins with a permanent ceasefire, followed by the removal of Benjamin Netanyahu from the scene.
Ghassan Charbel
The scenes of the first Nakba produced confrontations, wars in capitals, hijackings of planes, assassinations and exchanges of strikes in multiple theaters. The assassination of Palestinian leaders has not succeeded in killing the Palestinian cause. The mission was passed from generation to generation. The Palestinians maintained the flame of resistance under occupation and in remote camps. Some extremists sometimes used the injustice done to the Palestinian people to launch plans that put Palestinians and Arabs in conflict with the entire world.
The most dangerous thing that could happen is that the horrors of the new Nakba are not contained through a permanent and viable solution that opens the door for and guarantees the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. The world will commit a great sin if it hastens to forget the horrors of the new Nakba and allows it to produce generations of extremism that will explode within societies and the world, similar to what we witnessed previously, but this time more severely.
There is no choice but to contain the second Nakba. Containment begins with a permanent ceasefire, followed by the removal of the architect of the second Nakba, whose name is Benjamin Netanyahu, from the scene. In parallel, a binding political path that leads to the establishment of a Palestinian state must be adopted. We say Netanyahu is the architect of the second Nakba because he deserves to be named as such. In his first meeting with Yasser Arafat at the Erez crossing after assuming the premiership for the first time in 1996, Netanyahu was frank. He told Arafat that he was not concerned with the Oslo Accords or any similar references.
During his long reign, he has launched waves of settlements and has been busy weakening the Palestinian Authority and spreading despair among the Palestinians, paving the way for the “Al-Aqsa Flood.” The failure to contain the second Nakba heralds nothing but floods, confrontations and arenas.
- Ghassan Charbel is editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. X: @GhasanCharbel