Resilience Business: The Industry of Reports Over the Ruins of Homes

Um Muhammad Al-Fajr hurries to prepare bread over wood, just hours before the arrival of the food security project teams that will list her as a "beneficiary," while farmer Abu Khalid hides a military order for the confiscation of his land in his pocket as he fills out a support application to buy seeds. These two scenes are not merely a passing paradox; they represent the true faces of a complex system that has transformed resilience from a collective liberatory act into a "manufacturing" process managed through reports and conferences. The word "resilience" has become easily invoked and consumed in our public discourse without accountability, yet in the reality of Palestinians in 2026, it has become a heavy burden placed on the shoulders of those living in the heart of confrontation for survival: the farmer under his olive tree, the mother in her tent, and the prisoner in his cell, where resilience is no longer a romantic act, but a constant struggle against a colonial machine that relentlessly drains the spirit and body.

We are witnessing today a dangerous transformation that can be termed "commodifying silence," where many institutions that were supposed to support national actions have slipped into a logic of business management governed by conditional funding and the neutral language of donors. The language has changed before the practice; colonialism has become a "complex situation" and a conflict, resistance has turned into "security tension," and liberation has transformed into "capacity building," shifting the issue from a national liberation project to crisis management that alleviates symptoms without addressing the essence of the disease. Today, we find climate adaptation projects in the Jordan Valley building water reservoirs while settlers control the aquifers, as if what is required from the Palestinian is to 'adapt' to the theft of his resources rather than to reclaim them.

In Gaza, workshops are held to empower women at a time when the occupation prevents the entry of fabric, turning empowerment into a skill without material, and resilience into a number in a protection report that classifies home demolitions as violations without having the cost of a single lawyer to prevent this demolition.
The natural outcome of this trajectory is to burden the ordinary Palestinian with the cost of resilience alone, while the elite are busy managing projects and drafting statements that turn people's suffering into deaf numbers, the farmer is left alone in front of the pastoral settler, and the family is left alone in front of the bulldozer. The occupation has successfully emptied resilience of its political content, attempting to transform it into a biological instinctual state confined to securing shelter, warmth, and food, such that survival itself becomes a drain on imagination and the ability to think about the future. Breaking this cycle does not require new slogans but rather critical courage that redefines our relationship with reality; we need institutions that adhere to people's priorities, not donor conditions, and discourse that clearly connects relief and rights without room for interpretation. The Palestinian's continued presence on his land is the greatest political act, but it cannot remain an isolated individual act. Resilience is not a profession nor a statistic in aid records; it is a resistant act experienced in all its harshness. The Palestinian today is not only alone, but has also become raw material for an industry that thrives on his existence rather than his freedom, and escaping this trap begins with rejecting the neutral language and siding with the genuine struggles of the people, because resilience that does not pave the way toward freedom is merely a postponement of pain. Today, Palestine does not need those who praise its resilience as it suffocates, but rather those who restore the meaning of this resilience, alleviate its costs, and transform it from a personal burden into a collective liberation project where everyone stands behind the steadfast in the field, sincerely asking: who really stands with him?