القدس المحتلة - تقرير خاص - لم يجد فارس الرجبي وأشقاؤه الاخرون ما يقدمونه لشقيقتهم الوحيدة في يوم زفافها قبل أيام سوى أن يمسكوا بيديها ليزفوها إلى عريسها من بين أنقاض منزل العائلة الذي دمرته جرافات بلدية الاحتلال في العاشر من أيار المنصرم.

فارس لم يخف فرحته بزفاف شقيقته الوحيدة لأنها ستنتقل الى بيت زوجها وإلى مأوى جديد تؤوي إليه مع زوجها بعد ان حرمها الاحتلال بيت عائلتها وأحاله ردماً وأنقاضاً.

يقول:" رغم فرحتنا بزفاف شقيقتي الا أن هذه الفرحة تظل منقوصة.. كنت أتمنى أن تنتقل إلى بيت عريسها من بيتنا قبل أن يهدم، لكنه الاحتلال الذي يصر على أن ينغص علينا فرحتنا.."

خرجت العروس من ركام منزل العائلة في حي عين اللوزة بسلوان محاطة بعائلتها الكبيرة التي أصرت أن تكون حاضرة.. وأن تحبط محاولات الاحتلال إفشال العرس بعد أن داهمت محيط المنزل دورية كادت أن تفسد كل شيء..

يقول أهالي بلدة سلوان أن المشاهد المؤثرة لزفاف شقيقة فارس وهي تغادر عائلتها من بين أنقاض منزل العائلة حركت فيهم مشاعر كثيرة من التضامن مع العائلة والالتفاف حولها ومشاركتها الفرحة..

كانت سلطات الاحتلال استهدفت هذه العائلة مع أسر أخرى تنتمي لنفس العائلة، وأقامت في بناية سكنية مكونة من نحو ٤٠ نفراً قبل أن تهدمها الشهر الفائت بزعم البناء دون ترخيص.

يقول فارس البالغ من العمر (34 عاما)، وهو أحد سكان تلك البناية أن جميع من كان يقطنها من أشقائه باتوا بلا مأوى. ولم تسمح لنا طواقم البلدية الإسرائيلية من أخذ حاجتنا وقاموا بطردنا من المبنى". يضيف:" المبنى قائم منذ العام 2000، وهو يتكون من ثلاث طبقات تشتمل على خمس شقق سكنية." لم يشفع لنا لدى الاحتلال قيامنا بدفع نحو 300 ألف شيكل مخالفات للبلدية، بالإضافة إلى أتعاب المحامين والمهندسين.

فصل جديد من المعاناة عاشته العائلة لا يقل إيلاماً ًعن هدم منزلها قبل شهر.. وهي واحدة من فصول معاناة يعيشها المقدسيون عموما في سلوان حيث عشرات العائلات مهددة منازلها بالهدم وحيث أطفال يكتبون كل يوم هناك قصصاً من المعاناة مسببها الاحتلال…

لم تكن عائلة الرجبي المقدسية الوحيدة التي تزف ابنتها في طقوس زفاف غير عادية سببها الاحتلال الإسرائيلي الذي ينتهك حقوق المقدسيين في السكن والتنقل وحرية الحركة، ما ينغص عليهم في كثير من أحوالهم الحياتية.

فقد سبق، أن حرم محافظ القدس عدنان غيث في تشرين الثاني من العام المنصرم من المشاركة في زفاف ابنته الوحيدة منى، بعد تجديد قرار منعه من دخول "الضفة الغربية" وتجديد الإقامة الجبرية لمدة 4 أشهر.

ومنذ عام 2018 تلاحق سلطات الاحتلال محافظ القدس عدنان غيث، بقرارات عسكرية متتالية، وتخضعه لإجراءات عديدة تتراوح ما بين "منع دخول الضفة الغربية، منع التواصل مع قيادات وشخصيات مختلفة، فرض الإقامة الجبرية في مكان سكنه في سلوان، إضافة إلى عشرات الاعتقالات والاستدعاءات، وبالتالي كانت انعكاسات هذه الممارسات كبيرة على حياة المحافظ وعلى علاقاته مع محيطه وحتى داخل أسرته التي احتفلت في ذلك اليوم بزفاف ابنتهم "منى" دون أن يشاركهم فرحة الاحتفال والحضور مكتفياً بإيصالها إلى مدخل بيته لتنقلها سيارة العريس في موكب إلى رام الله حيث تقرر أن يقام الاحتفال هناك.

عائلة غيث التي ترقبت انتهاء فرض الإٌقامة الجبرية على رب العائلة في الحادي والعشرين من تشرين الثاني المنصرم، واضطرت لتأجيل حفل الزفاف أكثر من مرة في انتظار خروج الأب من قيود الاعتقال والإقامة الجبرية، وقبيل أيام معدودة من انتهاء مدة الإقامة الجبرية عادت سلطات الاحتلال لتجدد أمر الإقامة الجبرية عليه، وبالتالي حرم من مرافقة ابنته في يوم زفافها وفي لحظة فرحها التي انتظرها الوالد وانتظرتها العائلة معه.

بيد أن المحافظ غيث، لم يحرم نفسه بالمطلق من مشاركة ابنته فرحتها، حتى وهو يودعها إلى سيارة العريس التي أقلتها إلى رام الله، وفي ذلك اليوم تداعي أهالي سلوان وعائلة غيث الممتدة وكل أصدقائه ورفاقه إلى تنظيم احتفال كبير عند مدخل البيت وقريبا من ساحته الرئيسية وسط دموع المحافظ الذي ودع كريمته وهو يتمنى أن يكون معها.

نشير هنا، إلى أن منزل عائلة الرجبي هو واحد من آلاف المنازل التي تستهدفها سلطات بلدية الاحتلال في القدس، ومنذ مطلع العام الجاري أقدمت بلدية الاحتلال في القدس على هدم العديد من المنازل في أحياء المدينة المختلفة خاصة في سلوان، حيث يتهدد الهدم الفوري هناك مئات المنازل في أحياء البلدة المختلفة، إضافة إلى أكثر من 6870 أمر هدم إداري وقضائي لهدم أحياء سلوان، من بينها حي عين اللوزة الذي توجد فيه حوالي 180 منشأة تجارية وسكنية من ضمنها مسجد القعقاع.

Gaza has cracked the world wide open. The masks have fallen from just about everyone and when all this is said and done, the Palestinians will take inventory on both friend and foe.

This horrendous assault on the Gaza Strip has laid bare some very uncomfortable truths. For one, the grossly unbalanced world order has not changed, even as the bombs fall mercilessly on Gaza. While our guts already knew this, it was still shocking to witness how the slaughter peeled back the layers of falsehoods, concealing the ugly truth. The world is still a binary equation of colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed and white vs black and brown, and there is no question under which category the Palestinians fall.

The colonialist past is playing out in real time today in Gaza and we, as Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” so succinctly described, are “the brutes”. We are the indigenous brown people, the sub-humans who are inherently violent and who are responsible for our own deaths.

This is also why the international and human rights organizations we erroneously banked on to do us justice, have fallen so sorely short. Now, over a month into this war on Gaza, not one country, not one international institution, including the mighty UN, has been able to force Israel’s hand. The result of course, has been devastating for Gaza. Not only have close to 12,000 innocent lives been lost in Israel’s “scorched earth” onslaught, but not one liter of fuel has been allowed into the beleaguered Strip, shutting off electricity, hospital generators, desalination plants and sewage systems. Babies have been taken out of incubators and Gazans are scrambling to find ways to desalinate seawater and building clay ovens to bake thin loaves of bread with dwindling supplies of flour.

And still, even in the bleakest of hours, we have found hope and solace in the millions who have raised their voices for us. The throngs of people marching in solidarity with Palestine in the streets of London, New York, Amsterdam, Jakarta, Sydney, and so many other cities, has been like a soothing balm for our broken hearts. We have seen journalists, celebrities and artists threatened, vilified and dehumanized in our name but who have pushed back against the intimidation and continued to speak up.

The world has split down the middle and the deep gash created by this genocide will take generations to mend. We have seen both ugly and beautiful from this world and, be assured, we will remember both.

Whatever you do, do not believe them. Push back against the insidious language and the dangerous narrative Israel is employing to justify the unjustifiable: a horrendous genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Do not believe them when they say they ordered people living in the northern Gaza Strip to “evacuate” for their own safety and to move south. This is no evacuation. The people of northern Gaza are not vacating their homes because of a fire or flood. No, this part of a much deeper, much more sinister plan hatched by Israel’s leaders, not today even, but many years ago. Today, as the bombs rain down on Gaza, slaughtering everything and everyone in their path, we must be very careful to use the right words to describe this nightmare.

Make no mistake, this is a genocide. When multiple Israeli leaders, military and political, actively call for the leveling of Gaza, dismiss the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians and even go as far as saying that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza is “an option”, their intentions become very clear. Hasn’t the Zionist movement always pedaled the phrase “a land without a people”?

The carpet bombing of the entire Strip is of course, the most immediate and visible manifestation of this objective. How better to get rid of an entire population than to kill them en masse? In any case, with the green light from nearly the entire western world, with the US at the helm, this has been both easily “said and done.”

However, this is not the only instrument of terror being employed against our people in Gaza. The term “evacuation” so casually being used by Israel and wholeheartedly regurgitated by the West is in fact “forced displacement”. This has nothing to do with the safety of Palestinian residents in the north, because frankly, there is nowhere safe in Gaza. Every region has been on the receiving end of the colossal bombs dropped on residential blocks, schools, mosques, churches, hospitals and shelters. Even those who still believed they could escape the bombardment were not safe as Israel bombed the displaced as they traveled on the southbound coastal road in search of refuge. Remember, Rafah and Khan Younis are in the south, both of which have been heavily bombed, killing thousands of civilians and burying hundreds of others under the rubble.

No, this Israeli scheme, being cloaked in the uncontroversial word “evacuation” is just a continuation of what the Zionist project began in 1948, which is to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous peoples. Why else would the Sinai even be on the table? And why would anyone even lend an ear to this dangerous proposal?

The reason this is still even a debatable option is because the United States and much of the western world, namely those countries with a shameful colonialist past themselves, are actively complicit in Israel’s plans. They know that whoever is pushed across the border into the Sinai, will never be allowed to return. It was not that long ago when close to a million Palestinians were forced out of their homes to escape the terror of Zionist massacres in 1948, keys in hand, which would never be used again. There are still living survivors of the Nakba, it was that recent, and yet here we are again, watching in horror as the world facilitates for a fresh, new Palestinian catastrophe.

So beware when you hear words like “evacuation” or ‘temporary refuge.” These are outright lies. Remember that 70 percent of Gazans are already refugees, expelled from their homes in 1948 during Israel’s first attempt to annihilate the Palestinians. Since they could not finish the job then, they are back now with the cruelest of intent. Israel has already surrounded and divided northern Gaza from its center and south and we have all heard Israeli voices, both official and civilian, making floor plans for ‘amusement parks and beaches’ after the Palestinians are ethnically cleansed from Gaza.

The fact is, even if the approximately one million Gazans who fled from north to south to somehow try and escape the bombs, are able to go back to their cities and camps, they will be returning to a wasteland. Their homes are probably gone, all of their belongings and memories vanished, buried deep beneath the rubble. If they are “lucky”, their memories will be the only things buried. More likely than not, members of their family are still missing, also buried under layers and layers of gray, unyielding cement.

The Palestinians have seen this horror movie before. They will not be forced out of Palestine again, even if their displacement is candy-coated with terms like ‘evacuation.” Don’t believe Israel. Don’t believe the United States. Believe us.

What ink is the most indelible? What color will not wash off easily? What is even stronger than waterproof ink? Because in Gaza they are looking for magic markers that will not be smeared by blood or made illegible by debris and dust. Does Gaza have enough magic markers for all of its children to write their names clearly on their bodies in the event they are blown to pieces by an Israeli bomb? Or will the trucks delivering the trickle of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza be bringing in fresh new batches for them?

This is not a scene out of the Hunger Games or any other dystopian novel about the end of the civilized world as we know it. If it were, images of children writing their names on their bodies before they are bombed in their beds, would at least fit the script. We were horrified and fixated in equal measure as we read or watched the Hunger Games, where innocent civilians fought to escape death in the ‘arena’ of the games, with the only chance of survival being if you were the last one standing. However, we were lulled by the fact that this was fiction, the product of someone’s imagination who lived in the real world, where children are cherished and valued, their innocence protected.

The scenes today are from Gaza, the small, crowded and impoverished Palestinian Strip of horror. This is where children or their parents, are writing their names in bold black letters on their arms, their backs, their hands, so that if and when they are killed and reduced to torn and mangled flesh by an Israeli bomb, someone will know who they are.

It is beyond anyone’s worst nightmare, this war on Gaza. The word genocide is not thrown around lightly, not by Palestinians or the world at large, but this is what it is being called and rightfully so. To date, at least 6,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip, thousands of whom are babies and children, day in and day out, since October 7. Its residents have had no reprieve from the bombs, no rest, no ample food, water or fuel. They are either mowed down in Israel’s killing field, or they are being starved to death and like any war, the smallest victims are the ones that weigh the most heavily on our hearts.

I am the mother of two children. They are young adults now, but will forever be the lights of my life. Today, as I watch children literally being blown to pieces, as I see them searching amongst white shrouds of death, looking desperately for their loved ones, I cannot but imagine my own son and daughter in their place. They may be young adults, but they are my babies, and I would trade in my life for theirs in a heartbeat. So, it is almost unbearable to think, even for a moment, that if fate had dealt us a different hand and we were residents of the Gaza Strip, these children writing their names on their hands could have been my own.

When you read this, don’t only conjure up an image of the children of Gaza, perhaps too foreign or too ‘brown’ for you. We are all acutely aware of the process of dehumanization that Palestinians have been subjected to by the colonialist west and of course, by Israel. So instead, conjure up an image of your own children, as horrible as that may sound, having to scribble their names on their hands as they watch their world exploding around them.

Maybe only then, will the enormity and the horror of what has befallen Gaza, dawn on you. Our children have become Israel’s easiest targets and it is slaughtering them with chilling ease.

The malevolent forces at work, busy annihilating my people, will not stop out of mercy or compassion, even for the thousands of slain children. It will take a power, even stronger than this killing machine to force their hand. Let us remember, “President Snow” from the Hunger Games was only defeated when the Mockingjay’s righteous army of people brought him down.