Over the past year, Israel’s genocidal violence has officially killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Estimates put the actual death toll at more than 180,000. Simultaneously, Israeli occupying forces repeatedly carried out bloody attacks in the West Bank, massacring more than 740 Palestinians. Last month, the colonial regime extended its violence to Lebanon, where on September 23 more than 500 people were killed. In two weeks, Israel murdered more than 2,000 Lebanese.
The Israeli army has razed entire neighborhoods of Gaza, digging up roads with bulldozers, bombing infrastructure and public service facilities, and pulverizing residential buildings. Health and educational facilities have been destroyed – water stations, power plants and solar panels have been destroyed. In short, Israel attempted to destroy everything that sustains life in Gaza.
Palestinians have been ordered to “evacuate” the vast majority of the Strip and are crowded into 16 percent of its territory. This same strategy to empty the land has been applied to parts of the West Bank and now Lebanon.
People are told they will be able to return once Israeli “military operations” are over. But we all know that the massacre is aimed at clearing land for colonization. This has happened before – during the 1948 Nakba – and Palestinians have never been allowed to return home despite a United Nations resolution demanding it. This is why the Palestinians will not leave.
For some outsiders, the Palestinians’ enduring attachment to their land may seem difficult to understand. This is particularly incomprehensible to the Zionists who expelled so many of us, in the hope that we would simply move elsewhere in the Arab world and assimilate. But the Palestinian people have not given up their legitimate rights to their land for more than seven decades now.
The question of why Palestinians refuse to leave their homes and ancestral lands, even in the face of incessant bombings, raids, settler encroachment and economic dispossession, is a deeply personal question and fundamental to Palestinian identity. . This is not simply a question of geography or land ownership, but of a deep connection to the land that is woven into the fabric of Palestinian history, culture and collective memory. There is stubbornness in this decision, certainly, but also a deep understanding that leaving would mean severing a bond that has been in place for generations.
As an agrarian society, Palestinians place a special place on land in their culture and collective consciousness. The olive tree is the perfect symbol. Olive trees are ancient, resilient and deeply rooted – just like the Palestinian people. Families take care of these trees in the same way they take care of their heritage. Harvesting olives, pressing them into oil, and sharing that oil with loved ones is an act of cultural preservation.
This is why the Israeli army and settlers like to attack Palestinian olive groves. Destroying an olive tree is more than an attack on Palestinian livelihoods. It is an attack on Palestinian identity. Israel’s attempt to annihilate it is reflected in its incessant war against Palestinian olive trees. From 1967 to 2013, it uprooted around 800,000.
Attachment to the homeland is present even among us, the Palestinians of the diaspora. I myself was born in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, but grew up outside Palestine. Even far away, I never stopped feeling a connection with the Palestinian land.
My family was forced to flee during the second Intifada. My father had watched the Israeli army steal his father’s land and turn it into a military checkpoint, and my mother was shot at by settlers on her way to work. Their decision was not to emigrate voluntarily; it was an act of survival.
Over the past two decades, I have returned to Palestine regularly, watching settlers gradually encroach on Palestinian land, trying to displace more Palestinians from their homes. What I remembered as a child were groups of illegally built houses that grew into entire towns, besieging Palestinian towns and villages from all sides.
But seeing Palestinian olive trees burned, Palestinian water diverted and stolen, and Palestinian homes demolished, I also witnessed resistance and defiance. Palestinians installed water tanks to survive periods of water cuts imposed by the Israelis. They would rebuild their homes at night after demolition and rush to help communities like Huwara when a settler raid was about to take place.
Over the past year, Israeli violence has become genocidal, but Palestinian “sumud” – steadfastness – has not diminished. From Jenin to Gaza, Palestinians – subjected to incessant attacks and bombings by Israel – have continued to resist the colonial assault by the simple act of living and surviving.
The more the occupier tries to make life impossible for Palestinians, the more Palestinians find band-aid solutions to make it possible – whether it’s a washing machine powered by a bicycle, a clay oven made from mud and straw to make bread or an electric generator. assembled from random machine parts. These are just a few acts of stubborn perseverance, of crystallized sumud.
Meanwhile, in the diaspora, our hearts and minds have never left Palestine. We watched with pain and terror as the genocide unfolded and the leaders of the countries where we sought refuge turned a blind eye. Many in the West do not believe that Palestinian life has value. They don’t see us as human beings.
This relentless dehumanization of Palestinians has sowed hopelessness and hopelessness within our communities. But we do not have the right to give up as the people of Gaza continue amid the horrors of genocide. We must awaken the Palestinian sumud in us and mobilize to tell other societies that we are here, that we exist and that we will persevere in a world determined to erase us.
The metaphor of “we are the earth” is not only poetic. This is a reality experienced by the Palestinian people. When Palestinians are asked: “Why don’t you leave?” they respond with “Why should we?” This is Palestinian land, cultivated by the blood and tears of generations of Palestinians. Leaving him would mean losing everything. This would amount to allowing the erasure of our history, our culture, our collective soul. A year after the start of this genocide, the Palestinians remain here because they must.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.