Victory did not come. Defeats were followed by defeats. We remained heroes waiting for “our moment” — even when we were crushed to the ground. The military, tyrants and occupiers trampled us. And that moment never came.
I will not try to explain here why that is the case. But I will try to present a clearer vision of the obstacles that make all projects in our region a dream, and how that has so often led to destruction.
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During the Tel al-Zaatar massacre in 1976 (an attack on a UNRWA-administered refugee camp housing Palestinian refugees in northeastern Beirut that ended with the massacre of 1,500 to 3,000 people), my friends used to write at night on the walls in our neighborhood in Damascus: “A lion is a lion in Lebanon, a mouse is a mouse in the Golan.”
As children, we thought that this slogan reflected the truth that everyone knew: the then president of Syria, Hafez Assad, was too cowardly to confront Israel, the aggressor. Did we realize that the question was not one of his bravery, but of his autocracy?
Some of my friends had dark experiences when they were still children — the oldest was no more than 16: they were arrested and spent years in the tyrant’s prisons. That tyrant stole years from their lives, leaving a void that would stay with them for the rest of their lives.
One friend died at about 30, due to the effects of the torture. We gathered at his grave and remembered his “heroism.” He had been the first to go into the street to write that slogan about the lion and the mouse.
All about the slogan
The first civil movement of anti-Assad protests by professional unions (lawyers, physicians, engineers and teachers) began in the late 1970s, when I was leaving high school and starting my university studies.
I was only starting to become aware of the world and the domination of the Ba’ath party in Syria. I was barely one year old when the Ba’aths seized power. I had been educated by their system, and only understood the Ba’ath’s holy trinity: unity, freedom and socialism.
I did not understand the political chatter circulating in the public space except what we had been educated by the Ba’ath system. It was a system that operated like a gang.
It was necessary to have a slogan.
Within the scope of general discussion, it was never acceptable to start with the details of our simple lives, and what we directly and urgently need for ourselves and our families — aside from any “geopolitics.”
It was always necessary to have a “slogan,” even for many who opposed the existing regime. And they themselves opposed the regime, not because it didn’t allow people to live comfortable and happy lives in their country, but because it was not loyal to those great slogans. Such slogans were only an excuse to perpetuate the regime’s control over the country!
In other words, the majority of those who opposed the regime were actually fighting it on its own ground — we didn’t have any other ground to stand on. And thus the slogan that guided us: what is taken by force, can only be recovered by force.
A solution was possible
With the beginning of the second intifada (uprising) in the Palestinian territories, following Israeli leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in early 2000s, I was concerned that this intifada would be aborted. I was in my late 30s at the time, but didn’t know the goals of that intifada, apart from protesting the “desecration” of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.
At the time, the Palestinian cause was just a step from fulfilling the Oslo Accords. The (Palestinian) state project was supposed to be launched, but would ultimately fail under the weight of Islamist and Zionist extremists.
There were many points that could be discussed to reach the final peace as a supreme goal. A settlement could have been achieved if there is a powerful and courageous political elite to tell the whole truth to the public on the Palestinian side; and a political elite that really wanted peace on the Israeli side.
It was the extremism that won in the end; not only the stoking of conflict in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, but also those who follow the Palestinian cause from afar, and are concerned about the liquidation of “their cause”!
I was one of them. At the time, I didn’t care about anything related to those who pay the price of that Intifada, the Palestinians in the West Bank. The result of this five-year-long Intifada was what the Israelis orchestrated from the moment Sharon visited Al-Aqsa.
It was the conclusion desired by Israeli extremists: No, we don’t have a partner on the Palestinian side; and the peace project is just an illusion that we alone will pay for; and there is nothing else the Palestinians can get more than areas that are managed by them under our direct supervision.
Although the matter was clear from the beginning, we were all taken by the heroism that regained its glory when the stone returned to Palestinian hands again. We forget that while the first stone led to the beginning of the road to establish a state, the second has still so far led us nowhere.
When Oct. 7 happened, it didn’t take long to understand the magnitude of the disaster.
There was never a real or realistic political program, with specific goals that could be achieved. Our heritage here was “our cause” and the return of the spirit to it, the one that was taken away by the Oslo Accords.
The scene ended with death by poison of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Magnitude of Oct. 7
When October 7th fell over all of us, it didn’t take long to realize the magnitude of that disaster.
I certainly wasn’t alone to reach this conclusion. I was 61 at the time with two revolutions against a brutal tyrannical regime in Syria, the second of which needed 30 years to start — with the determination to proceed to the end. The regime, Bashar Assad’s regime, chose itself and burned the country along with those who remained in it.
I needed this whole life to realize something very simple: if we don’t preach a message of life, then what do we preach for?! If we are unable to determine a clear human meaning for the value of “heroism,” as a demand for the betterment of our lives, and not a challenge to death — and we continue to associate it with the same inflated meanings that the tyrannical regime created — then let that “heroism” go to hell.
Even if Assad was a lion in the heart of Jerusalem itself, for us, he will remain a tyrant and a criminal whose place should be a prison or a psychiatric hospital.
The problem is that the October disaster — in the eyes of the overwhelming majority, who are far from the battlefield — is a refreshing new horizon for that “heroism.”
I feel sorry for those people, so many the same age as my children. I would like to tell them about my experience. Then I tell myself: “But, what about the one (experience) they themselves must live through?”
The right to live cannot be denied to the Palestinians. Life in the Gaza Strip was never a life. The Israeli blockade is the main obstacle without any doubt — but was it the only one!?
Hamas also made life more difficult. Gazan voices began to rise after the October disaster, denouncing old practices, which continued after Hamas seized power. Those voices clearly say that the real, well-established siege, around the Gazans as a whole, was partly by this jihadist organization, which shares equal responsibility with the Israeli siege, if not more.
Hamas and its fighters, leaders and their families disappeared in tunnels
And yet weren’t the scenes of the enormous destruction of Gaza, and its people, enough? Those people left without even a roof to protect them, while Hamas and its fighters, leaders and their families disappeared in tunnels that cost millions that were never used to build a decent sewer system.
The “hero” does not look at where people should relieve themselves, and as a hero, he does not feel the need, even to relieve himself. This is not sarcasm directed at Hamas. This is what we have been doing for decades since we understood the meaning of the whole life as revolving around one value: heroism.
A lost book
The eventual distant victory that was promised did not come. Defeats are followed by defeats. We remained the heroes waiting for “our moment.” I understand that there are those who invest in this feeling of humiliation and the truly sincere and burning desire of millions. The price was actually paid to brokers of heroism — the stars of the government-funded media.
We did not despair, counting on the moment in which we would become like the “The Count of Monte Cristo.” I mention the adventure book, written by 19th century French novelist Alexandre Dumas, because it was given to me by that friend who would later be tortured to death. He had told me that it is a story I would never forget.
I held on to the book for a few years after my friend’s death, as a reminder of him, and also because I liked the classic hero’s tale. But within a few years, I had to sell it along with my other books to have money to buy bread.
