Gloomy days during the Zionist occupation

Lebanon War 1982

One of the difficult things during the first period of the Zionist occupation was that I could no longer move at night after seven in the evening, especially since we were in semi-destroyed houses with no water or electricity. By evening, the camp was completely silent. And darkness hover over the camp. But when the dogs howled, we knew there was a movement of Zionist soldiers to arrest one.

Sometimes I would stand near the door at night and contemplate the place. The place was lonely, with no sound, no movement, and no life. Usually, people would pass near my family’s house on their way to the mosque to perform evening prayers in the evening, but now there is no one at all. Even the cats were no longer wandering around. During the Zionist bombing, a friend told me that their cat ran with them to the shelter during the bombing. He said that it must have understood that there was danger.

I thought about the history and how many occupations knew this area until there was no single occupier who did not reach it. Not far from the camp, historians believe it used to be the headquarters of Alexander the Great, who besieged the city of Tyr for 13 months before he occupied it. A triumphal arch was built in the town, still Standing in the city, witnessing all these events.

This means that every generation of the population has had its share of war, occupation, and suffering. And every occupier has committed murder and crimes. But in the end, the invaders did not remain, all of them left, and the Zionist invaders were no exception. There is a golden rule that my father used to repeat. Everything that is built on falsehood is Void.

Yesterday I read an article written by Yehuda Barak, the former Zionist prime minister, expressing his concern about the future of Israel and saying that it may face existential risks in the eighth decade of its existence in the region.

Netanyahu also said things that meant that he would work to prolong the life of the Zionist state.

Indeed, prophecies spread around the Middle East about the collapse of Israel this year or that. We do not hear about the possibility of a state disappearing in the whole world except the Zionist state. The most famous of these widespread prophecies is that Israel will collapse in 2022. I do not know on what basis they predict it. Perhaps it expresses the wishful thinking of the people in Palestine and the region. The West has planted an entity based on aggression that does not belong to the region’s culture.

Some believe that the international developments after the Russian-Ukrainian war will change the world and end the West’s control over the world. This could harm Israel, which is entirely based on Western support.

One morning I went in my car with a neighbor to get a permit from the Zionist headquarters because they said no one has the right to move outside the camp without obtaining a permit.

We went to the Al-Bass area, which is located at the entrance to the city of Tyr. There were thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian residents gathered to obtain the permit. Seeing people standing in line was a sad sight, and their faces were thoughtful and broken.

There I met a Lebanese acquaintance who was also a teacher. He said to me with evident sadness. We are under occupation like Palestine. I told him that the occupation would end no matter how long it took, and it is a conviction I have had all my life.

After about three hours, we got the permit and went back to the camp.

When we reached the Zionist checkpoint near the camp, we were stopped by two Israeli soldiers who spoke to us in clear Palestinian Arabic.

They asked us where we were. We told them that we were from the neighboring camp. The soldiers were Druze Arabs who served in the Zionist army. One of them said he felt sorry when he saw the planes destroying the camp. This encouraged me to ask him why he served in the Israeli army. He said that they are forced to do so, like all Druze.

The Zionists, who came from more than 100 nationalities and languages, divided the Palestinian people into various groups, Muslims, Druze, Christians, and Bedouins.

The goal, of course, was to control the people and to dismantle the bonds that unite the one people who speak one language. The Druze are the only group who serve obligatory in the Zionist army.

But it should be emphasized here that there is an active Druze movement in Palestine to refuse forced conscription into the Zionist state. And there were several young Druze who refused to serve in the Zionist army and preferred imprisonment rather than serving in the occupation army.

I had previously worked as a teacher in a Druze town in Mount Lebanon, where I learned something about the Druze. The Druze are a religious group that exists only in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and a few of them in Jordan.

Although they consider themselves Muslims, they are influenced by Christianity and ancient Greek thought because they believe Socrates a prophet and are influenced by Hinduism. The well-known leftist Druze leader Kamal Jumblat used to visit India from time to time to have a dialogue with Indian philosophers.

The policy of dismantling societies, being against each other, and winning some for the Zionists is a Zionist strategy par excellence. They seek to put all groups in the region against each other to maintain the domination of the Zionists.

They have orientalist centers that serve this strategy. There are now on the Internet a lot of Zionist efforts to provoke hatred between groups in the Middle East, Muslims, Christians, Sunni, Kurds, Shiites, etc.

The Druze soldiers at the checkpoint asked us about our origin from Palestine, and we told them we were from Galilee. One of the soldiers said, “Why did you leave Palestine in the year 48 (the year the Zionist state was planted)?” I told him, “Have you not heard of the Zionist massacres against the Palestinian people to expel them from their homeland to establish a homeland for the Jews only. Apart from that, we were born in Lebanon as refugees after the expulsion of our people.”

We went on our way to the sad camp. I saw a few children playing happily. I thought they were lucky that they did not know what was happening. It was the second month of the occupation, and the gloomy picture was unchanged.

My father used to repeat an expression from the Qur’an that God changes one situation to another. I loved hearing that phrase that I knew from before, but when my father repeated it these hard days, it was as if I had heard it for the first time.

We were in a devastating situation and needed hope.

Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad

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