Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ is a death sentence for Palestinian hope
Palestinian girls play during an activity at a summer camp organised by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza City on July 11, 2019. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP) (Photo credit should read MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images) Image by Getty Images
I have lived my whole life under the Israeli occupation. I was born under occupation, went to school and university under occupation, and became a surgeon under the occupation. The occupation is a cruel reality that permeates every corner of our physical and psychological beings.
For so many years, I was genuinely hopeful that it would end soon. I was hopeful that after all this suffering, there would be closure. I hoped that our children, Israeli and Palestinian, would not grow up to be occupiers or occupied, oppressors nor oppressed, but rather free, dignified siblings living in their beautiful Motherland.
Now, I not so hopeful anymore.
I am a father. My son is six years old. He does not comprehend the reality of the occupation yet. He finds the guns, the gear and the strange language of the soldiers amusing.
I look at him and I can’t be hopeful as I used to be. I am scared, not only for the prospect of my son also living his entire life under the occupation, but for his very well-being in his native land.
In truth, Trump’s facade, the “Deal of the Century,” is of little historical significance. It is not the first and will not be the last outline of a peace plan that will have no real outcome. It will not survive the test of time and will not have any impact on the ground.
But the ideology, the ethos and attitudes that created this charade and manifested into that map, this ideology is what scares me and should scare every sensible person who still has hope for peace, freedom, and equality for all of us living on this shared land.
It is one thing to try and fail to make peace. It is another thing to create a permanent status of oppression and subjugation.
We have failed in the past, but at least then there was hope that both nations were growing up in their realization of the presence of the other and empathizing with the narrative of the other. We knew that our lanes were far apart, but we believed that they were not necessarily parallels but destined to meet at the end of the road in a common point of mutual recognition and embrace.
Today is different. The ethos and ideology of the current Israeli administration is not to safeguard their crucial national interests, but to crush and corner the occupied in every imaginable way. To them, a field in Jericho or a hill in Nablus is worth it all.
We are no longer told we should accept being occupied and oppressed because it is temporarily important for our occupier’s crucial interests. Now, we are now bluntly told that we should be subjugated and humiliated because we are not worth the dignity and the freedom.
We are told we do not belong to our land. We are not considered natives and deserving of what remains to us of our, albeit small, land. We are spoken of and treated as a pile of unnecessary human stock that should be cornered in the smallest space possible and removed altogether if the circumstances allow.
This is the ideology that created Trump’s macabre plan, and it is such a sinister ideology that only promises hate and destruction for my son and for that young soldier carrying the large gun. It is an ideology that unwinds history and unlearns the lessons of the historical drama over the past one hundred years.
It’s an ideology that is both arrogant and blind to the fact that we are both perennially on, and of, this land. We both exist and will continue to exist.
Those who have adopted this ideology do not understand that our history is shared and our heritage is in so many ways common. They do not see a common future because they fail to see or comprehend their neighbors’ presence.
In history’s darkest moments, the Jewish soul always found light in the dark. Learning from our brethren, I hope that the public display of the absurd and evil fantasies animating this deal be a wake up call for empathy.
May we reclaim our shared destiny from those who are striving to instill fear and hate. May my son’s memories of soldiers with big guns, and the soldiers’ memories of stopping a six years old at a checkpoint, be just memories of a bygone chapter in our mutual history.
Thameen Darby is a surgeon, a father and a husband. He lives in Nablus, in the Occupied West Bank.
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