-Essay-
BEIRUT — The peasants of Tsarist Russia are among the most wretched characters in Fyodor Dostoevsky‘s novels and short stories in the second half of the 19th century. Readers of Dostoevsky can never forget his detailed description of the life of the Russian peasant, completely isolated, impoverished and miserable as they emerged from the serfdom system of the time.
The world of that peasant was nothing more than the daily, arduous pursuit of gaining the minimum to survive — just to survive. Despite this, we find he lives a rich spiritual life surrounded by icons of saints and martyrs, with a yearly calendar of feasts to honor those saints and martyrs who are his patrons to herald the time when justice returns to prevail in the world and the weak are promoted to the status they deserved through their patience and faith.
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Nothing was left for those wretched people, even the lowest level of impoverishment, something that would offer some meaning, any meaning, to their lives — except that faith. Without that, death would have been more merciful than the life they lived. If we suppose that an “intellectual” told one of those pious, gentle, contented wretches that everything he believes in is an illusion, it would not be surprising if this pious and peaceful man killed that would-be intellectual on the spot. Dostoevsky features such intellectuals, appearing with such rudeness, in a variety of circumstances.
A stolen right
If we were to transfer this vision of Dostoevsky into the Arab world in the 20th century, I don’t think I am exaggerating if I said that we will find the equivalent of all those icons combined into a single symbol: Palestine. That symbol has the same magical effect on all “believers,” — the wretched ones like the peasants of Tsarist Russia in our country, and there are many others too.
There is a spell employed by these resistance believers — from the right and the left alike — when it comes to the catastrophe of October 7. It says that what happened (the attack and the subsequent war) was not the beginning of the story, but rather was just one of its repercussions. The story itself had begun long before that. We’re told to look instead at another date.
Palestine remained an icon hanging on the wall of our regrets.
Of course, the date that everyone is referring to is the launch of the Nakba of 1948 — our “icon” that is linked in an inescapable way to that right which was taken from all of us (all Arabs) — not just the Palestinians. Perhaps this is why Palestine has become, over the course of generations, larger than the Palestinians themselves.
Palestine, with its “stolen right” in the catastrophe of the Nakba, remained an icon hanging on the wall of our regrets. But compared to the icon of the Russian peasants in the 19th century, which did not have any benefits but also didn’t cause harm, our icon has done nothing but destroy lives for generations upon generations!
This destruction began with preventing any attempt to understand or comprehend what was happening in the world beyond, shortly after the catastrophe of World War II. The collapse of the ruling regimes in the surrounding countries and the arrival of the military regimes along with the traditional ruling elites inside nations, under the slogan of restoring this very right.
Geopolitics matter
All of this has led to the emergence of a new generation of fighters and militias who cannot live without a “cause” that they sell out to the highest bidder.
Throughout the long bloody path, right for Palestine to exist remained a whip in the hands of those who ruled our lands. They used that right to whip our souls, and to keep us like the miserable peasants of Russia, with no power or strength, except for that faith in that icon and whip.
We did not try to understand that what happened on the eve of the 1948 Nakba outside our region. There was a major problem, which was the Jewish issue, and its actual solution had begun even before World War II – since the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
It was not the ideal solution in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of Jews at that time, but it soon became almost the only option, after the horrific Holocaust in Nazi Germany. The solution, since then, was heading towards being at our expense, in Palestine, if not in the entire region.
And for 31 years between the Balfour Declaration and the establishment of the State of Israel, the Palestinians — the direct victims of such an unjust solution — did not try to understand the global political dynamics in the era between World War I and World War II. In fact, the matter was bound to lead toward joining one of the two warring camps in World War II — the camp that lost the war, and so we lost all our bets with it.
There is no need to mention the negative impact of that choice, not only on the reputation of a legitimate and just struggle to defend a people and its claim to a land, but also on two principles that should have guided us: humanity and justice. They are the sole force — the moral force that we have in our hands.
Yet those very values were put aside. We had the Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini visiting Adolf Hitler, the most horrific genocidal criminal in modern history. That visit cost al-Hussein a heavy price that could have been avoided if we hadn’t thought we could achieve salvation from an evil through a more horrific evil.
Rivers of blood
In the post-War world, a new opportunity emerged, represented in the partition project, which was rejected entirely. I was a teenager in the mid 1970s, when I heard one of my father’s friends saying that we had made a huge mistake in rejecting this last chance. We should have stayed in Palestine. When he left, I told my father that you should have kicked the man out of the house, because he is a traitor!
76 years after the Nakba, we have not been able to take a single step in any direction.
Perhaps, we ourselves, with our lack of self-confidence — this chronic disease that we still suffer from, to this day after the defeat of the Arab Spring — were the ones who wanted Palestine to become that icon and whip. So we dealt with that “disaster” with the principle of all or nothing. Many solutions could have been found, if we had an ounce of confidence, and looked at the world around us, and wanted to learn and understand, to know how to continue on our path, as human beings and not as victims.
And 76 years after the Nakba, in whose orbit we still revolve, we have not been able to take a single step in any direction, away from that wall on which our icon Palestine was hung. Who is more miserable among us, the peasants of Tsarist Russia, or the Palestinians and Arabs of the “cause” that refuses to be resolved, despite the rivers of blood that have been shed for its sake?
Admitting defeat
Now, in light of all that has happened, I do not think we have a way out of this catastrophe, except to admit that we have indeed been defeated, with the admission (even if it is a foregone conclusion in today’s balance of power): Israel has the right to exist; a right that it acquired from the strength of the model that it was able to impose by force of arms. It’s a “Jewish democratic state,” that discriminates between the citizens based on their race and religion.
We should build our own model, a more just and human model, in order to be able to refute their unjust model that is hostile to its immediate surroundings to the point of genocide. And in order to achieve this, we must get ourselves out of that cycle that can only continue with more blood, the overwhelming proportion of which is being shed by our people.
Why should I return and for whom and what?
The fine admission of defeat gives us the opportunity to breathe a little, and to put all the past defeats behind us, as all the defeated do as they choose to move on with their lives.
For this reason I have no desire to return to Haifa, where my family was expelled from Palestine on the eve of the Nakba. Return is not possible in the first place, but the reasons for my desire not to return are simpler than the “political balances” in a world where we have not yet found a foothold.
Why should I return, and for whom and what? I’ve also lost Damascus, my place, my city which I tried for 25 years to establish a relationship with as one of its sons, not a refugee. I fear to return to it now because the barbarians of the Bashar al-Assad regime destroyed it completely, under the banner of liberation. I will not find anyone I know there. And if I did find someone I know, I fear they would be completely different.
Yet in Haifa, I will not even feel that fear of a person or thing I knew that has changed… In Haifa, which I always dreamed of returning to, without knowing it, I will not find anyone or any place that I know. Even if I am destined to visit it one day, I will visit it as a tourist getting to know a new place for the first time.
