Ramadan Kareem to a Mourning Falasteen

The holy month of Ramadan begins tonight. It’s normally a cause for celebration, but it comes at a sombre time as we say goodbye to our dead and reflect on the tragedy of two days ago in Gaza. We are reminded of our ever-growing fragility and helplessness in the face of a futile world order that has mastered the art of condemnation and concern, but nothing more. Needless to say that there is a lot of frustration with recent events, but more so with the knowledge that such tragedies will undoubtedly reoccur because the global political system in place allows them to reoccur. In the absence of consequences and accountability on the perpetrator, the perpetrator will perpetrate again and again and will become emboldened with impunity. The evidence speaks for itself. We pray and hope that this holy month will bring with it something. Something of a change. Let us not aspire for peace, or freedom, or equal rights, or the illusion of a state that we have been sold by our political masters and the international community for decades and decades. Let it just bring with it an end to our killing, the preservation of life, the preservation of the flowing proud breaths of our youth, our future. This is what we have come to wish for, the simplicity of living. All those grandiose ideas of rights, freedom, statehood, independence, those have never been anything more than failed promises and unfulfilled aspirations despite our many sacrifices, despite our legendary perseverance, our mountainous steadfastness. Yet, the intangibility of dreaming has never been more real. Not because we’re defeatists, because we’re not. But because the realms within which we fight for those rights and ideals have been dictated on us, narrowed down and shrunk. Shrunk to submission, really, and nothing more. Submission to our oppressor’s vision of a methodology of peace, not even peace, but an open-ended methodology of peace. A fragmented and fake peace dictated upon us by people who are insensitive to our narrative, our history and our connection to this land. And if we dare refuse their terms and raise our voices in protest? Well, we have seen what that will bring upon us. Death and misery and a reminder that we stand alone. The ultimate deal, they say, a deal constructed by destructors of dreams and aspirations. Global, biased bullies that devise policy not through a measure of fairness and human rights, but twisted religious interpretations, interpretations that will always portray us as inferior to our neighbors and that will always position us on the wrong side of their moral compass. The ultimate deal. Welcome Ramadan, at least with you we see some lights, artificial as they may seem, but welcome nonetheless. Ramadan Kareem, Falasteen.