Gaza and read your newspapers tomorrow on (Letter of Mustafa Barghouthi)
Ramallah, December 27, 2008.
and light tomorrow, your newspapers, which ended the truce in Gaza . It was not a siege, then, but a form of peace, that concentration camp wiped from hunger and thirst. It depends on what the difference between peace and war? From Accounting of the dead? And the children consumed by malnutrition, what account you complain? He died of war or peace, those who die because there is no electricity in the operating room? It's called peace when there are missiles - but what is it called when everything else is missing? And read on your newspaper tomorrow that this is just a preemptive strike, only legitimate, inalienable right of self-defense. The fourth military power in the world, its muscles against nuclear rockets tin, and papier-mâché and despair. And I will be out of course, that no, this is not an attack against civilians - and on the other side, but how could it ever be, if three men chatting in Palestine, here on the street corner, are the laws a group of Israeli resistance, and therefore an illegal group, a fighting force? - If official documents are marked as enemy entity, and without the slightest ethical bank, the cancer of Israel? If the goal is to eradicate Hamas - all this strengthens Hamas. Arrive on board the fighter export the rhetoric of democracy, a board game back then strangle the exercise of democracy - but what other option is left? Do not let it explode on him suddenly. It is not fundamentalism, being bombed right now, but everything here is opposed to fundamentalism. Everything in this indistinct ferocity not a hate free returns equal and opposite, but a word of dialogue undermines the clarity of thinking the courage to desert - is not an attack against terrorism, this, but against the other Palestinian, and other third while dodging missiles close complicity between the Fatah and Hamas myopia. He was going to kill me in self-defense, I had to kill him in self-defense - the tell so one day the survivors. And read on your newspaper tomorrow, it is impossible to any peace process, Israelis, unfortunately, do not have someone to talk to. And indeed - but how could they ever have and, entrenched behind the eight-meter concrete wall? And above all - why should it, if the Road Map is just another weapon of mass distraction for the public International? Four pages in which we, for example, are asked to stop terrorist attacks, and in return, they say, Israel will not take any action which could undermine confidence between the parties, such as - quote - attacks against civilians. Assassinate civilians undermines confidence, undermines the right, is a war crime not a matter of courtesy. And if it is an Annapolis peace process, while the only map that proceeds the meantime, here are the lands confiscated, olive trees flattened houses demolished, the settlements expanded - so why is not the peace process, the Saudi proposal? The end of employment, in exchange for recognition by all Arab states. We can have if only a sign of reaction? Someone there, to hear the case, on the other side of the wall? But I'm here to tell you the wind. Why read only one line tomorrow, on your newspapers tomorrow and only then read only, still, indifference. And it's just that I feel, while F-16s flying over my loneliness, to hundreds of collateral damage that I know as a name, life to life - only an endless vertigo of abandonment and loss. Europeans, Americans and even the Arabs - because where is the sovereignty over Egypt, the crossing of Rafah, the Egyptian moral, to seal the Rafah? we are simply alone. Fashion shows here, delegation after delegation - and talking, he would have said Garcia Lorca, the words remain in the air like corks on the water. Offer humanitarian aid, but we are not beggars, we want dignity, freedom, open borders, do not ask for favors, claim rights. And you arrive, angry and participate, ask what you can do for us. A school?, A clinic perhaps? Scholarships? And every time we try to convince you - no, not the generous solidarity, Bobbio taught, only the severe justice sanctions, sanctions against Israel. But answer - and neutral each time, and thus participate in the imbalance, not partisans of the winners, it would be anti-Semitic. But who is more anti-Semite, who has spoiled Israel step by step for sixty years, to disfigure the most dangerous country in the world for Jews, or those who feels that a Wall marks a ghetto on both sides? Rereading Hannah Arendt is perhaps an anti-Semite, now that we Palestinians are the scum of the earth's, is anti-Semitic return to illuminate its pages on power and violence, the last race subject to British colonialism, which were then the British themselves? No, not anti-Semitism, but the exact opposite, to support the many Israelis who try to escape a Nakbah called Zionism. Why is not an attack against terrorism, this, but against the other Israel, the third and different, while dodging the single thought of close complicity between the left and the myopia of the right. I know what I read, tomorrow, on your newspapers. But no self, no need for security. All this is called only apartheid - and genocide. Because no matter which Israeli policies, technically, sock or no to the definitions mm delicately chiseled by international law, his aristocratic formalism, his claim that objectivity is not just another side here, that supports and increases the strength of the winners . The gas of these aircraft is your neutrality, your silence is the sound of these explosions. Someone was heard in Berlin, in front of another wall. How many more deaths, to feel like citizens of Gaza?
Mustafa Barghouthi with Francesca Borri
