Enough with the scars and scars... and let's turn the Ukraine crisis to our advantage

It is a farce of fate that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett brazenly continues his attempts to play the role of mediator in the Russian/Ukrainian crisis to stop the war, while he, the hard-line settler, refuses to meet with any Palestinian officials, and at any level to end the oldest crises in the Middle East, but rather in the scientist.

The strange thing is not in his attempts, as he is cheeky, expecting anything from him, but in the West’s praise and encouragement for these attempts, in which I see nothing but an attempt to give Israel an image that does not reflect its reality, and it will exploit the crisis to displace a few tens of thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Jews, whether in Ukraine or In Russia, more usurpation of Palestinian land for resettlement.

And if Bennett’s attempts were a real farce, what Western governments and their leaders, led by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, did in arming and supporting Ukraine, was the biggest mockery in every sense of the word, which revealed the racism inherent in it, and many Western leaders revealed , if not all of their falsehood and hypocrisy and hypocrisy. Johnson even outbid other Western leaders, with a step that takes place for the first time in the history of the British House of Commons, as he opened the doors of the House wide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to speak to the representatives directly, amid warm applause from all the representatives present, who received him standing. The applause increased when Zelensky concluded his speech by saying that he would fight and fight to the end. At the time when the Israeli parliament refused a request from Zelensky, who is of Jewish religion, to deliver a televised speech in front of its public body. The Knesset Speaker, Mickey Levy, justified this refusal by saying that the request came on the last day of the Knesset's winter session. Moreover, Boris Johnson's government decided to exaggerate its solidarity, raising the Ukrainian flag over government institutions.

For a moment, I wished Johnson would do to the Palestinian president what he did to the Ukrainian president, so that he would appear more balanced, fair, and less racist, false and hypocritical. For a second, I imagined a scene in which the President of the Palestinian people talks to the representatives of the British people and their lords, and explains to them his plan for peace, fairness to the Palestinian people and granting them the rights that British colonialism deprived of, more than a hundred years ago. Not only that, but it refuses to acknowledge its responsibility for it and to compensate the Palestinian people, at least, by recognizing their state not on all Palestinian soil, but on only 22% of the land. He added to that with new definitions of anti-Semitism. The most lip service to the British officials is to express their verbal sympathy, without taking any practical steps, and rather they are working to block any such steps.

I woke up from my dream to find myself sitting on the same seat living unrealizable wishes, at least for the foreseeable time, as long as our condition remains as it is. As for the BBC, which is the official mouthpiece of the government, it transmitted its broadcasts to Ukraine and transmitted its best international correspondents, whether in the Middle East or other regions, to broadcast its lies and exaggerate the transmission of the image.

There are those who conveyed the heinous crimes of the occupation army, during its four wars on the Gaza Strip, the last of which was in May 2021, and the towers destroyed by Israeli planes, and the suffering of the people of Gaza because of their ugliness, as images of destruction from Ukraine. Even Ahd al-Tamimi, the icon of the Palestinian popular resistance, tried to take her away from us. Her pictures were re-published and tapes were broadcast of her confronting and defying the Israeli occupation soldiers and screaming in their faces, as if she was a Ukrainian girl. And remain the era of Palestinian terrorism, and the era of Ukrainian resistance.

The Israeli writer Alan Pappe says in his article, commenting, of course, that there are young men and women in Ukraine who have the courage of Ahed Tamimi, but while the Palestinian Ahed Tamimi is described as a terrorist, the Ukrainian Ahed Tamimi is described as a resistance. The Palestinian youth and children who resist with stones, the heavily armed occupation soldiers, are described as terrorists, while the Ukrainian youth, who are facing Russian tanks with Molotov cocktails, are described as heroes. And when we talk about stealing our struggles, we must refer to the theft of national Palestinian costumes, as well as the popular dishes of falafel, hummus, Shakshuka and others, to the point of their insolence, to the extent that they are presented to Arab customers in the Emirates and Dubai, in particular, as Jewish folk dishes.

The positions of the leaders of other Western countries are not very different, as we have said, from the British position. The war in Ukraine revealed the worst of racism and hypocrisy in them when talking about the rights of peoples to self-determination, and their distinction between war and war, and between victims and victims. Widely open to the European refugee and providing him with the means of transportation, the doors are closed in the face of refugees from outside Europe.

They are talking about two million Ukrainian refugees, and this does not mean in any way that we underestimate the plight and suffering of the Ukrainian people, and they open the gates to all the surrounding countries, while the number of Syrian refugees, and I will not talk about the Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans, is many times that number, and they kept their borders closed in The faces of the vast majority of them, just as I will not talk about double standards in describing the Palestinian resistance as terrorism, as this is a repetitive and repugnant speech.

Yesterday, Palestinian Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said that Israel "continues to intensify settlements in large areas of our land, taking advantage of the international community's preoccupation with the ongoing war in Ukraine." He continued, "One of the ironies of international politics is that Israel, the occupying state of Palestine, is trying to be a mediator to resolve the crisis in Ukraine." The occupying state does not need a war to continue its terror against the Palestinian people and their land. The settlement activity did not stop even for one day, and the killing and abuse of the Palestinian people by the occupation soldiers and settlers did not stop. In the last week alone, four Palestinian youths were martyred by Israeli soldiers' bullets, during confrontations against demolishing homes and stealing land. We are absolutely against the occupation of one people by another, and we reject its justifications in any form, as there is no acceptable occupation and unacceptable occupation. How can a people under occupation support the occupation of a people by another people? We made a mistake once by supporting Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait and our people paid exorbitant bills.

He concluded by saying enough scars, slaps, and repeated repetition. What we have heard, seen and touched is not strange, nor could we expect any less. Whoever thought otherwise is for the purpose of justifying his inability. We must focus and work to turn the crisis in Ukraine in favor of the Palestinian cause, to get it out of the tunnel that the United States, Israel, and other Western and Arab countries have entered into. We will be more positive by emphasizing that the Palestinian people are not helpless, but are capable of resistance, as the Ukrainian people are. We say to Western leaders, stop being hypocritical and dealing with all issues, especially the occupation and the right to self-determination of peoples from one perspective, which is that all human beings are equal like the teeth of a comb, provided that we are more positive towards ourselves, our struggle, and our capabilities, which are many. And work to change our outdated methods of confronting the enemy, and we must practice all forms of resistance. We rub an onion in the eyes of those who try to stigmatize our legitimate struggle and resistance with terrorism.

Palestinian writer from the Al-Quds Al-Arabi family