October 7th, Kibbutz Be’eri. Shoshana Karsenty (85) is taken out of her home by Hamas gunmen. Video footage by kibbutz security cameras silently shows, from afar, only the small steps of one woman, being led to her death.
Tears choke the throat: there is no escape. All the same, Telegram and news channels are full of such images, more gruesome and gut-wrenching. It is an ocean of horror that is now part of this place’s history, memory and the life that still remains to be lived – for those who are alive.
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Two weeks before October 7th, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu stood before the United Nations General Assembly and spoke. In his speech, he sailed from Dubai to Casablanca, from India to Europe. He did not mention the city of Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip nor Kibbutz Be’eri, just a few kilometres to the east. He warned against “AI-driven wars” and waxed poetically about “fields of prosperity and peace”. In the war that broke out on October 7th, cheap drones subdued expensive technology, and the fields turned red with blood and horror. In his hands, Netanyahu held what he called “a map of the Middle East… Here’s Israel in 1948.” But Netanyahu held a lie: an ahistorical “map” in which Israel is, since 1948, the single entity controlling the entire area from the river to the sea. It was a map that completely erases Palestine and the Palestinians, one that if presented by a Palestinian he would be immediately accused of intending to destroy Israel.
Deir al-Balah? Palestinians? Netanyahu acted – and continues to act – in order to kick the Palestinians to history’s margins, if not to its dustbin. That UNGA speech of his was perhaps the most grotesque expression of this abysmal vision, a vision well-understood and broadly supported in Israel. Two weeks later, with brutal cruelty, Palestinians broke out of the blockaded Gaza Strip onto centre stage. If you believed Netanyahu’s map – the map he presented from the most important international stage in the world – you would have had no idea where they could come from. Probably from nowhere.
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The number of dead since then – Israelis and Palestinians – is already approaching 50,000, possibly more. The number of injured must be tenfold. More than a million people were forced to leave their homes. The Gaza Strip is in ruins. Israeli communities in the north and south are destroyed. The trauma and sadness have touched almost each and every one of the approximately 14 million people living between the river and the sea. Look from Dubai to Casablanca, from India to Europe – and you will find that the disaster here is of historic proportions.
In an attempt to justify their position, some Israelis speak as if history began with the atrocities of October 7th. In an attempt to justify their position, some Palestinians speak as if history does not include the atrocities of October 7th. In between, millions are looking ahead fearfully, knowing that the scars of the past will not necessarily heal, terrified that the sadness and pain may well be the engine for an even worse future.
History, surely, did not begin on October 7th; it also goes without saying that it definitely includes it. No one can erase what preceded that day, nor what transpired on it – or the blood that has been shed since. Keeping emotionally connected to the trauma, crying and grieving, is painful. But what other choice is there? It is also difficult to look ahead into the future and once more articulate what remains true and necessary: that we – all of us – have no future here except one in which we – all of us – will have full, just and equal life here.
For such a future we must begin seeing each other – to understand the pain and the suffering, to feel the humanity and the hope: exactly the opposite of Netanyahu’s and Yahya Sinwar’s project. Not to erase the history of anyone living here, but to recognise it. Not to sail to the ends of the Earth, but to stay in close contact with our shared homeland. Not to say empty words on a distant stage, but to speak truth in Israel/Palestine.
This was not a year of healing from grief, as the war never stopped. Among the ruins of Gaza there are still our hostages and their refugees. Fear creeps into the heart: maybe this horror is the new status quo? But, for better or for worse, few things are truly permanent. Between Kibbutz Be’eri and Deir al-Balah, the distance remains constant – and the heart remembers Mahmoud Darwish’s words: more road remains ahead, to walk further and further.
Hagai el-Ad is based in Jerusalem and is the former executive director of B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. He tweets at @HagaiElAd
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