NASSER MASHNI
The shuffle of the heavy feet of more than a million Palestinians forced from their homes in northern Gaza was barely audible against the sounds of Israeli strikes of October 13.
And yet, this footfall resonated across the globe, evoking a deep sense of foreboding and horror for Palestinian communities.
The Israeli state called it an evacuation that was designed to enable its military to more effectively target Hamas militants in Gaza City. It issued similar orders in southern Gaza a month later on November 16.
The language is sanitised, civilised even, in stark contrast to the reality on the ground, where terrified civilians are herded along surveilled corridors
Palestinians’ feeling of foreboding comes not from imagining what the socalled evacuations feel like and what they mean. It comes from remembering. Since 1948, Palestinians have lived this reality. The past six weeks are merely the latest instalment in a 75-year-old process of displacement and dispossession.
We know that after the ‘‘evacuations’’ come Israeli orders denying people their right to return to their homes. We know that once people are ‘‘evacuated’’ from their homes, other people will move in.
As Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf wrote about the Nakba, the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war:“Leaving a place doesn’t make someone a refugee. It’s forbidding him or her from coming back that does it.’’
Though there might be a sense for some that things are different this time, the violence we’re seeing in Gaza cannot stand alone from its context. In understanding Palestine, Israel and the many sides to what is now occurring in Gaza, that context matters deeply. This did not begin on October 7 – it is the latest chapter in a decades-long violent conflict tied to a settler-colonial process.
The Global North has featured in this history with its own forgotten statements and commitments. More words to add to the pile.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on November 8 that ‘‘the United States believes key elements should include no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza – not now, not after the war … No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.’’ Thirty years ago, the US told Palestinians they were committed to the creation of a Palestinian state.
In 2005, we were told Israel had withdrawn from Gaza. And yet to this day, Israel has maintained control of all the city’s borders, its airspace and its waters, with the assistance of Egypt. Nothing goes into Gaza, nothing leaves Gaza – including the Palestinian people living there – without Israel’s nod.
In March, Israel’s parliament repealed the law that underpinned the 2005 withdrawal, in effect opening the door to legalising a return of settlers to the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Though the Americans made their complaints on this issue known, no tangible actions were taken.
The pile of words is now a putrefying heap. And the killing continues.
In just six weeks, more than 12,000 Palestinians and more than 1000 Israelis have been killed. The death toll has exceeded that of the Srebrenica massacre of 1995, where more than 8000 Bosnian Muslim men were killed. The scale of this loss of life is horrific, before we even consider those at risk of dying in Gaza from disease or starvation.
Palestinians have heard enough words. That these horrors are being met by more empty words is an injustice that is too intolerable to bear. It is why we now protest in record numbers across the globe, turning the streets red, green, white and black in our grief, frustration and desperation for clear and decisive action and for signs of humanity from our elected representatives.
Our leaders must hear us and heed our calls for a peace and for selfdetermination for Palestine. This is the only thing that will preserve our collective humanity.
Nasser Mashni is the president of the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network.