Against erasure

The return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on January 27 felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a single street, the coastal Rashid Street, at the furthest western stretch of Gaza. Though these displaced masses were cut off from each other in massive displacement camps in central Gaza and the Mawasi region further south, they sang the same songs, chanted the same chants, and used the same talking points.

During their forced displacement, they had no electricity and no means of communication, let alone coordination. They were ordinary people, hauling a few items of clothing and whatever survival tools they had following the unprecedented Israeli genocide. They headed north to homes they knew were likely destroyed by the Israeli army.

Yet, they remained committed to their march back to their annihilated cities and refugee camps. Many smiled, others sang religious hymns, and some recited national songs and poems.

A little girl offered a news reporter a poem she composed. “I am a Palestinian girl, and I am proud,” her voice blared. She recited simple but emotional verses about identifying as a “strong, resilient Palestinian girl.” She spoke of her relationship with her family and community as the “daughter of heroes, the daughter of Gaza,” declaring that Gazans “prefer death over shame.” Her return to her destroyed home was a “day of victory.”

“Victory” was a word repeated by virtually everyone interviewed by the media and countless times on social media. While many, including some sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, openly challenged the Gazans’ view of their perceived ‘victory,’ they failed to appreciate the history of Palestine – indeed, the history of all colonized people who wrested their freedom from the claws of foreign, brutal enemies.

“Difficulties break some men but make others. No axe is sharp enough to cut the soul of (someone) armed with the hope that he will rise even in the end,” iconic anti-apartheid South African leader Nelson Mandela wrote in a letter to his wife in 1975 from his prison cell. His words, written in the context of South Africa’s struggle, feel as if they were written for Palestinians, especially Gaza’s latest triumph against erasure – both physical and psychological.

To understand this better, examine what Israeli political and military leaders said about northern Gaza immediately after the start of the genocidal war on October 7, 2023:

Israel will maintain “overall security responsibility” for the Gaza Strip “for an indefinite period,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with the ABC News network in November 2023.

One year later, the Israeli army reiterated the same sentiment. In a statement, Israeli Brigadier General Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that there would be “no return” for any residents of northern Gaza.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich went further. “It is possible to create a situation where Gaza’s population will be reduced to half its current size in two years,” he said on November 26, stating that Israel should re-occupy Gaza and “encourage” the migration of its inhabitants.

Excerpted: ‘The Great March of Hope: Gaza’s Defiance Against Erasure’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org