Returning Home

After 475 days of savage bombing and wanton destruction of Gaza, especially in North Gaza - which took the brunt of the most concentrated bombing campaign in modern history - tens of thousands of Palestinians returned home this week. Exhausted, grief-stricken, and battered by unimaginable suffering, they set out walking to the north, with only what they could carry or load onto donkey carts. The image of this flood of humanity, as far as the eye could see in both directions, was nothing short of amazing. Here were the survivors, trudging up the coastal road from the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah to northern Gaza, to the ruins of Gaza City, once a thriving metropolis. To be sure, most of the them returned to rubble and a precarious future. But there was rejoicing: people were hugging each other, crying tears of joy after reuniting with family members and friends they had not seen for over a year and didn’t know if they would ever see again. There were “V” signs for victory. There were smiling children. Everywhere there was the steely determination to continue living. Despite having endured 15 months of unrelenting genocidal violence, and having sustained terrible losses that will leave deep scars for generations to come, there they were, offering this stunning testimony to resilience, attachment to the land, and the triumph of the human spirit. Their witness reminded me of a passage from the scriptures about the human qualities it takes to persevere in dark times: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”

The focus has shifted to the West Bank. The Palestinian people will continue to face egregious violations of their human rights by Israel, unfortunately with the full backing and complicity of the United States government and western governments. The Israelis have already violated the ceasefire multiple times, and Israeli media insist that Netanyahu is desperately seeking to blow up the ceasefire deal. There may be much less carnage in Gaza, but the Trump administration has greenlit escalating violence and aggression in the occupied West Bank. The far-right ideologues in the Netanyahu government who balked at the ceasefire deal have been reportedly promised, in exchange for their support, that the United States will at last permit the annexation of the West Bank. Virtually the entire West Bank is currently a closed military zone, with hundreds of new military checkpoints erected. The Israeli Occupation Forces plan to implement the same strategy they used in Gaza – to make it unlivable, so the Palestinians will have no choice but to leave.

Not only is this ethnic cleansing, a grave violation of international humanitarian law, but it will prove ultimately futile, as it did in Gaza. The force of the call of one’s native land is fierce and persistent. As the ancient historian Euripides wrote, “O country and home, never, never may I be without you, living the hopeless life, hard to pass through and painful, most pitiable of all. Let death first lay me low and death free me from this daylight. There is no sorrow above the loss of a native land.” Notwithstanding Trump’s callous calls to “clean out” Gaza, and pushing neighboring Arab states to “take” them in, the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people, whether in Gaza, East Jerusalem, or the West Bank, will refuse to leave their lands and their homes. Thus far, Arab countries have refused to go along with the dispossession of their Palestinian brothers and sisters. The United Nations Resolution 194 enshrined the right of return, and Palestinians and their advocates have repeatedly held up this principle. Israeli, Palestinian, and international peacemakers know that there can be no just and lasting peace without the Palestinian right of return. Clearly, international humanitarian law may not amount to much these days. But Resolution 194 expresses an inalienable human right, and by whatever means, it must be honored. The Palestinians who survived a genocide and returned home inspire us to finally honor it.