Bodies of the Palestinians who lost their lives after Israeli attack hits the house belonging to the Al-Raii family, are brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on July 13, 2024 [Ashraf Amra – Anadolu Agency]
If all the critical satirical poems written by Arab poets in the past eight decades that have passed since the establishment of the Zionist entity were gathered to describe the official Arab positions on what is happening in the Gaza Strip, they would not be sufficient to express the nature of one of these positions.
If all of Muzaffar Al-Nawab’s satires, Najib Sorour’s collections and Amal Dunqul’s cries in the wilderness were placed in one book, it would not be enough to give those who hold these positions what they deserve.
The past seven days have witnessed a massive reversal in the traditional equation that was based on the Zionist Occupation committing massacres, then attempting to justify them and claiming to investigate the mistakes made when implementing them. There is also the issuance of Arab statements of condemnation, which Tel Aviv usually throws in the trash. Now, there is the rise of a completely difference equation in which Israel enjoys the massacres and considers them victories, supported by international and Arab legitimacy, and in which the official Arabs are not ashamed to express their enjoyment of watching. Some even go as far as expressing schadenfreude towards the Palestinian Resistance and showing their understanding of the Zionist enemy’s motives in intensifying its raids, as was the case in Al-Mawasi in Khan Yunis. The Wall Street Journal revealed that Israel targeted the area where it believed Muhammad Al-Deif was located, with approximately eight tonnes of bombs, while Israeli F-35 planes also dropped eight bombs on the area, each weighing 2,000 pounds.
OPINION: Our collective complicity and shame over Gaza is rooted in the Holocaust
The crime committed in Al-Mawasi received no Arab reactions other than the announcement of a new round of deal negotiations, repeating the tedious scenes that have not changed for more than seven months, and which have led to nothing. Meanwhile, the strategy of naive attachment to the Israeli public continues, as the only means to convince the war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, to respond to the mediators’ pleas.
While the Arabs embrace, diplomatically and in the media, the Zionist public’s demonstrations and activities, they meet the Arab public with frowns, hostility and harshness if they try to express their anger at the genocide and ethnic cleansing their Palestinian brothers are facing, as most Arab capitals no longer allow their people to show solidarity with Palestine.
Logically, criminalising solidarity with the Palestinian people, which is happening in Cairo, for example, and recently renewing the detention of a group of young individuals who formed a group called “Students for Palestine” calling for helping Palestinian students in Egypt to pay their tuition fees, means the Israeli aggression is being served and protected from any popular anger.
This Arab shame takes a more exposed form in the reaction of the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, which moved from silence and disappointment to schadenfreude towards the Resistance and incitement against it. The man who openly and frankly declared his concern for Israel’s security and stability several years ago when he said at the opening of what was called Palestinian Freedom and Peace Forum, held at the PA headquarters in Ramallah in the presence of Zionist figures, “we do not seek either to flood Israel with millions (of refugees) or to change its social composition … This is nonsense … We are working for the future of Israel’s youth … We appreciate Israel’s sensitivity towards security, and its fear of the future and extremism, and we agree to NATO carrying out the mission of ensuring security for both parties, and we adhere to all our security agreements to confront the threat of terrorism.” This man is looking forward with an overwhelming longing and excitement to slaughter the Gaza Resistance and hand Gaza over to him in order to include it under the influence of his authority.
In less humiliating and colluding circumstances, I believe that the Palestinian people must realise now, more than ever before, the fall of the illusion of the so-called Arab umbrella for their project towards liberation. This is because Arab capitals competing to host Zionists, official and unofficial, will not be preoccupied with anything more than obtaining the role of the guaranteed pacifier that provides the Occupation with good time by transforming the issue of the Palestinian people into an issue of bad economic conditions, which can be addressed by pumping some millions of dollars.
This old type of disappointment, if compared to the essence of the Arab normalisation positions today, may be classified as the ultimate struggle in solidarity with the Palestinian people, because what is happening now is that Gaza is being slaughtered with a sharp Arab knife in the hands of a Zionist criminal.
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