In 1979, the United Nations chose November 29 of each year as a day of solidarity with the Palestinian people, which coincides with the United Nations resolution to partition Palestine. The year is 1947.
This day witnesses the organization of conferences, demonstrations, and the issuance of statements demanding that the Palestinian people be granted their stolen rights and the full implementation of international resolutions.
Who helps whom?
On the Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Tel Aviv Tribune Net communicated with a number of Palestinians, from the Gaza Strip, inside and outside the Strip, to send their messages to the international community on its Day of Solidarity with them.
In the first attempt to make a phone call with a Palestinian citizen in the Gaza Strip, who works in civil defense, the phone rang several times with no answer, which is normal in light of the electricity crises and internet outages in Gaza. There was also no response to WhatsApp messages, but after an hour the response came. From another number, “The person wanted on the first number was martyred a few days ago.”
With the steadfastness of someone who is not waiting for support and who is not shaken by his resolve, the voice coming from Gaza answered, “Would you like me to help you with something?” The matter was beyond comprehension. Who wants to help whom? And what question about solidarity could be directed to those languishing in the cold tents? However, he did not miss the opportunity to make a final request: “I hope that the international community will let me see my children and sit with them in a house, even on mats, but its walls protect them from the frost of the tents. We ask the international community to stop the war and let us live… just live.”
The voice coming from Gaza, refused to mention his name, and said that he no longer fears death because of the horror of what he saw over the past year, but he does not want his children to spend their lives like what they are going through today, or to end up as refugees in distant countries.
“The solidarity that Al-Ghazawi wants is not statements or conferences. We want the world to remember us while we are alive. It is not necessary for us to die for them to remember us.”
“A year is like a thousand years”
From the Egyptian capital, Cairo, master’s student Faraj Al-Ghazawi – who came to “Umm Al-Dunya” to study media at Cairo University 5 years ago – says that he does not know whether his presence in Cairo before October 7, 2023 is good or bad, “so staying away from Gaza in… That day guaranteed my life, but it also ensured my death every day, and I yearn for any news about my family who left their homes, displaced with every wave of displacement until… Today they settled in tents in Deir al-Balah.”
The last year of Faraj’s life in Cairo passed, like a thousand years, between his fear for his family and his misery in life without the minimum needs that he – as a university student – his family sought to provide for him, but he found in the Egyptians’ solidarity with him and with the Palestinians in Egypt, enough for him to survive. International Day of Solidarity, which the United Nations celebrates every year.
Faraj says, “The international community killed us with its silence twice, once when they divided us, and once when they remained silent about the violations we face at the hands of the Zionists.”
The popular solidarity that Faraj found in Cairo, every time when someone knew that he was of Palestinian nationality or from the people of Gaza, he did not find anywhere else, according to his description: “If Egypt is the mother of the world, then the people of Egypt are the father of peoples. I found nothing but warmth, welcome, generosity, and feeling.” “It fills them with negligence with us, and all the assistance they provide is based on the fact that they are fighting side by side with us.”
“Let us live”
As for Weam (24 years old), the wife and mother who took refuge in Cairo with her children, leaving her husband behind to complete his journalistic work in the furnace of war that does not know when it will end, she in turn came to the capital without knowing anything about it.
She says that she was received well and received aid that she did not ask for. Hugging her children every day while they slept in one bed gave her warmth and reassurance. She did not realize how difficult it would be if fate were not kind to her and she continued to face war and loss in Gaza.
On the Day of International Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Wiam does not ask for much. She just wants to be reunited with the rest of her family, and for her husband to be able to come to Egypt, or for the war to end and for them all to gather in their home again.