We reject the normalization of our oppression
I’m back in Palestine, my homeland. Just hours before Trump’s apartheid plan was announced, I was in my village of Jama’een visiting family.
With news reports blathering in the background, I caught up with my family. I learned my uncle, a day laborer in Israel, is struggling to come up with 2000 Israeli shekels for a permit to enter Tel Aviv to work. Sadly, my grandmother's health is getting worse, and hospitals in the occupied West Bank with limited capacity and resources provide no real help. In my cousin’s village there are daily raids and many young men have been arrested by Israeli soldiers. As we catch up, a TV news anchor reads a statement from Trump asserting that all he wants is “peace in the Middle East.” We fall quiet, and then we chuckle with heavy hearts at the absurdity. “Strangling us to death is peace?” my uncle responds.
Yesterday morning, Israeli settlers set fire to a school in a nearby village. Settler attacks have become such a common occurrence that rage has been overcome by fatigue. Jama’een and the surrounding villages are situated at the heart of Israeli settlements that are notorious for their violence against Palestinians.
When I leave my grandmother's house to make it back to Ramallah, I pass by Zaatara checkpoint. Zaatara is known for some of the most heinous killings of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers. As I cross the checkpoint, I noticed an advertisement for an Israeli food truck across the street, and in the middle of the junction I spot a sign spelling out in big letters, “I heart Shomron.” Shomron refers to the Israeli regional council that provides services for 35 illegal Israeli settlements. The sign sits on the exact spot where a family friend was killed in 2014.
As I continue to Ramallah, I see Israeli settlement signs for “tourist visitor centers” and settlement “wineries” littered along the road. The hilltops claimed by the settlers rise up with empty housing units waiting for more people willing to prop up this violence. While political pundits debate concepts like annexation and apartheid, it has already become a reality. Israel and the United States are attempting to make the illegal Israeli settlements normal, and this new phase of the Israeli settler colonial project scares me the most. None of this is normal and we must refuse the normalization of our oppression.
After watching the grotesque and condescending announcement from Trump and Netanyahu last night, I felt numb. It wasn’t that I was shocked, rather profoundly sad about our situation as a people. I decided to go for a drive with a friend to see if there were any public protests. As we drove around Ramallah everything was eerie and silent; it felt like a ghost town. I felt the fatigue and collective trauma. Palestinians are simply tired. Surviving under settler colonialism takes so much out of one's soul and well being. The rage is here, but what can an occupied people do when the world turns their backs on them as they are being erased, crushed, and killed?
Those of us with the privilege living far from the daily violence of Israeli occupation, Palestinians and others, have a responsibility to carry on the fight for Palestinian freedom. We must raise our voices and put pressure on the U.S. government to stop its support of Israel’s settler colonialism and apartheid.
We refuse the normalization of Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and Israel’s ongoing human rights violations. We refuse to concede on the occupier’s terms. We will continue this struggle and let the world know that Palestinians will remain on our land -- from the river to the sea.
As Palestinian revolutionary novelist Ghassan Kanafani once said, “everything in this world can be robbed and stolen, except one thing; this one thing is the love that emanates from a human being towards a solid commitment to a conviction or cause.”
May our struggle towards freedom, justice, and decolonization continue. You can support a call for ending U.S. funding to Israel and Palestinians demands for justice by sharing and endorsing Freedom is the Future.
Much love,
Izzy Mustafa
Communications & Campaign Strategist
