Together we lost the war, together we will win the fight for humanity
Netanyahu’s “together” collapsed pretty quickly, and the victory he promised is unattainable. We’ve all lost in this war, including the Palestinians celebrating the ceasefire. Now starts the battle for compassion
By Samah Salaime • Translated by Keren Rubinstein
It’s hard to sum up 15 months of horror and war when one is still seized by genuine anxiety that this complicated deal will collapse any moment.
We all (meaning sane people who want to live) want some quiet and to be able to breathe again. We’ve grown tired of seeing images of destruction, of killing and suffering of innocent people in Gaza, of the families of abductees in their protest vigils, images of endless displacement and orphanhood, hungry and injured people everywhere, unfathomable death, pain, and trauma.
One of the abductees’ parents said candidly in an interview: “We don’t trust the prime minister. We know that he made the deal because he was pressured to do so”. It seems he’s right. The feeling is that this agreement was forced on the Israeli government a minute before Donald Trump’s inauguration. Benjamin Netanyahu’s theory, by which whatever doesn’t work with force will work with greater force, had worked. Feeling scared of a surprise from the Trump administration forced his hand, and he will surely come to miss the days of Jo Biden.
This agreement stands upon foundations made of matchsticks and threatens topple or catch fire at the drop of a hat. Clearly Hamas has desires and has an interest in an end to the war, though a significant number of Netanyahu’s supporters openly demand not to end the brutal war until Gaza is entirely and unequivocally reoccupied, and the first new settlement is established on Gaza City’s amazing beach. The lives of the abductees are not at the top of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich’s agenda.
With levels of trust at rock bottom, and a still unquenched bloodthirst and desire for destruction, it is not entirely unreasonable to imagine the military bombing Gaza, claiming that Hamas had violated the agreement. We may return to October 7 at any moment.
Two days following the ceasefire, exhausted and left with nothing, Gaza’s injured residents slowly make their way towards the rubble mounds that were once their home, and while hundreds of family members in Israel wait with baited breath for the next phase of returning abductees kidnapped in the shocking attack nearly a year and a half ago, and while tens of families embrace the Palestinian prisoners that have been released, I ask myself, who won? What happened to the slogan that’s taken over our public space, “together we will win”?
This delusion, sold by the Israeli government to the world, and especially to its own shock-stricken citizens in the aftermath of October 7, has clearly been shattered for some months now. These two falsehoods — that there’s a “together” and a victory — have completely come apart. But at the start of the war, Israeli society gathered under the cover of this messianic Right- wing government and supported the war wholeheartedly, enlisting towards the total victory promising things will stay tranquil forever.
All the weapons in the Zionist arsenal were lifted from the Jewish nation’s history and deployed in battle: the Am Yisrael Chai existential war, the chosen and persecuted nation, the antisemitism and the Holocaust, we shall forever live by the sword, everyone hates us, it’s us or them, and more. For a long time this worked on all fronts. There were moments of a spurious togetherness. There’s no victory, but there’s plenty of pain, revenge, incitement, racism, destruction and hatred.
The romance between Netanyahu and wars has grown. The addiction to the smoke of bombardments has increased, and the prime minster understood that war is better than a ceasefire, than freeing the abductees, than returning citizens who were moved from the north and south to their homes, than negotiations with Hamas. It’s certainly not the time to talk about a political solution with the Palestinians. The war was what kept him in power. It was a distraction from his trial, aroused sympathy and solidarity against the courts in the Hague, and kept the elections at bay. At the same time Netanyahu maintained fancying settlements in Gaza and continued cultivating hopes of annexation on his backburner. This was Netanyahu’s real victory and of those he feels truly at home with.
The citizens who poured out into the streets before the war to save democracy and the judiciary system, those who insisted that there’s no link between the Occupation and democracy, and Jewish democracy can exist alongside the oppression of another people undemocratically — they all obeyed their call-up notices en-masse into the air force and elite combat units [Duvdevan, Nahal and Golani]. The “Brothers in Arms” who wanted to believe that a war will bring back the abductees and bring peace, died in futile battles in refugee camps, or returned injured in body or soul.
They were deceived and told that bombing and razing hospitals, schools, theatres and residential buildings, that tens of thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands of hungry, injured and dying refugees, that these are the images of victory that the Israeli nation yearns for. But when they arrive overseas on their Passover vacations, the images of victory they uploaded to social media will see them singled out, and not together. Do they trust this government to protect them?
All us Palestinians and Israelis who do not want to fight any more, and don’t want to be killed on the way to building the holy temple, we who don’t want to pay taxes that will pay for illegal settlements for Hilltop Youth, and for keeping them safe, and certainly not to assault a Palestinian sheep herder; we who are worried about the future awaiting our children between the river and the sea — we’ve been left alone in the battle for peace.
A significant number of our potential allies for peace and democracy had “sobered up”, deserted the small sane block, and joined the cosy and fierce tribe of “the Jewish nation”. I hope that sobering back up goes smoothly for them. I hope that now, some of them understand they aren’t wanted in that tribe, and that they too will be accused of betrayal soon, if they dare take a stand. They too will suffer when another fascist law is passed late one night.
The ceasefire agreement and the taste of its first iteration prove to us that the war’s three goals as stated by Israel’s government are one big scam. Defeating Hamas was not achieved, Al-Qassam soldiers accompanied the three miserable abductees and every moment of international glory was used to display their power, with which Gaza’s exhausted residents will have to contend.
Returning the abductees is not over, and we’ve only learned that negotiations reunite them with their loved ones. You talk with the enemy and carry out deals to return hostages, rather than bombarding it. Any reasonable person knows that Israel could have avoided the deaths of many of the abductees at the start of the war or at least since last May. Tens of thousands of innocent victims from the eradication of whole neighbourhoods is not the way. Period.
The third aim, promised by Yoav Gallant, Benny Gantz and Netanyahu, was restoring security for Israeli citizens. But there is no security anywhere in this country. Without a deal, there is no security. Without peace, there is no security. Destitute, starving, and sick Palestinians won’t bring security to the southern neighbourhood of this small piece of god’s land. It is time to understand that the fate of Israelis and of Palestinians is intertwined and that one cannot come at the expense of the other.
We’ve all lost in this war. Yes, even the Palestinians celebrating the ceasefire. At the end of those humble and human celebrations of those who’ve survived the inferno of war, each bereaved mother will go back to the tent to quietly cry over the death of her children. Every orphan will go to sleep alone in the wet, cold tent with tears in his eyes, deprived of his absent mother’s embrace. Pictures of cheer and joy in the streets of the annihilated Gaza are real, because in the end, life defeats death, because in the tent city, one night without bombs has become every child’s dream.