At last, a ceasefire

A ceasefire has been agreed although it remains to be seen how long it will last - and I'm certainly not daft enough to take any bets on this. I'm suspending my celebrations until I see how it works out. Notwithstanding that, we must not forget that many people are still going to be sleeping in leaky tents. A ceasefire will not mean a return to normality for them, but it will mean we can send better tents and warmer blankets, and we can get the sick and wounded out of Gaza for treatment. It means hospital patients won’t have the fear their doctors are going to be shot by snipers and their ward is going to be struck by a missile. These are not unreasonable things to wish for, are they? That sick people can be allowed to recover in peace? That even well people don’t need to worry the end could come at any moment? I just want these people to be safe and well.  It’s so sad that we live in a world where even the most basic of wants and needs is often too much to ask. It says a lot about societies that we allow so many bad things to happen.

Societies are weird because they are composed of people who are mostly wonderful, but as a collective can behave in cruel and bewildering ways. It’s not just Israel that needs to learn lessons from this genocide, it’s us too. Say what you like about how most of us westerners oppose the genocide, the fact is that we live in societies that make this sort of violence and cruelty inevitable. And I’m tired of it. I’m really tired.  

I'm tired of feeling an obligation to speak out against the war crimes my government is supporting in my name. I'm tired of feeling a responsibility for human suffering. I just want to live in a world where I don’t need to constantly fight my own leaders and we can all focus on kindness and unity and be what we are meant to be: communities. We aren’t supposed to be fighting like this.

My wish now is that we use all of this pain and suffering to wake us up. If empathy won’t be enough to wake us up, what about selfishness? What about the knowledge that if we don’t change, we could very well be screwed in the future. I don’t want to be living (or dying) in the next Gaza, do you?

The focus now should be on rebuilding and healing. And the Palestinians need to heal more than we can ever appreciate. Their land has been turned into a cratered moonscape with mountain ranges composed of rubble. So many souls have been lost under that rubble, but so many more are above the rubble, still determined to live, determined to hold onto their land, no matter what. That’s the thing about being indigenous, the land means something to you and you will do everything to hold onto it. You don’t destroy land that you know is yours and you don’t flee at the first sign of trouble: colonisers do that.

The Palestinian people will rebuild their lives, however slow and painful that process is. I remember seeing a video where Palestinians had joined up their tents and little girls turned those tents into beautiful areas adorned with plants and scattered flower petals. It was both desperately sad and inspiring. It was a sign that these people can never be beaten, that they can find joy anywhere, that they will turn even the moon craters and rubble mountains into something beautiful. That their olive trees will be replanted and new flowers will grow and even if they have to spend a lifetime in tents, they will make the best of it. They are not waiting for Israel’s permission to exist. They have lives to live now. 

When we look to Gaza, we should look with shame but also with hope. We should understand that if the Palestinian people can rise again, if they can show the passion and resilience needed to rebuild their society, we surely can fix ours.