When the Earth Dries Up… and the Chairs Remain Wet

It seems that Palestine has finally entered the era predicted by some of the esteemed officials: the era of heavenly solutions for earthly failures.

After all that this great people have endured, from refugee tents to waiting offices, from martyrs and prisoners to the disrupted salary queues (for some and some) and from roadblocks to barriers within minds, we have discovered that the crisis is no longer in the lack of solutions, but in the abundance of saviors and the scarcity of homeland.

We are faced with a political scene that deserves to be taught in books of dark satire: land being devoured every day, people growing poorer, occupation swallowing geography, and settlers roaming the villages as if the law were tailored to their rifles, while some of our esteemed administrations still seek the right table for the meeting that will discuss the timing of the next meeting.

Thirty years of the wondrous Oslo Kingdom.
Thirty years of committees begetting committees,
of tables that bore tables
and chairs that transformed from service tools to political lineages inheriting the homeland as if it were a piece of family furniture.

In the meantime, the occupation has not ceased to present its own “earthly solutions” in its own way:
creeping annexation
unrestrained settlement
open extermination in Gaza
and daily rampages by settlers in the West Bank
and the most dangerous of all: pushing for more brutal laws against Palestinian prisoners, culminating in the law to execute Palestinian prisoners as if imprisonment were no longer enough for them, wanting to turn the cells into legislative gallows.

What a bloody paradox:
where some are enacting laws for death
and here, others are forming a committee to study the impact of death on salaries.

And since the tragedy in Palestine is not complete unless shared with the pockets, the insane rise in fuel prices has hastened to add another mockery to the bloody scene.

The citizen who could barely afford the cost of the road to his job is now faced with choosing between gasoline and bread, between getting to work or keeping the light on at home.

Even cars in this country now think twice before moving.

As for the official living in an orbit higher than that of the people, he still thinks the problem lies in the citizen’s lack of patience, not in the explosion of all aspects of life, the latest of which are prices, dead salaries, humiliating installments, or a homeland in which moving has become an adventure between a death checkpoint and a killing decision.

Dear sirs, the people who have endured the occupation, the division, corruption, the slow institutions, and the whims of saviors no longer ask for speeches or wooden statements.

They seek immediate solutions.

Solutions that begin from within before outside:

Firstly: For example, declaring a national economic state of emergency to stop the bleeding of salaries and dues and to place the issue of prices and fuel at the top of priorities.

Secondly: A true restructuring of the executive administration, not just swapping seats among the same faces but injecting young blood capable of making decisions before the decisions grow old in drawers.

Thirdly: An urgent political and legal move at the international level to confront the execution projects against prisoners and to transform this issue into a global public opinion battle no less important than the battle for land.

Fourthly: Stopping the legacy of political and administrative nepotism because a homeland is not managed according to lineage but according to efficiency and sacrifice.

Fifthly: Restoring the spirit of the first Fatah, the spirit of the movement that was born to lead the people, not to sit atop their fatigue.

This is not a cry of the powerless
nor noise of troublemakers,
but a cry from the honorable people of Palestine
and the sons of the Fatah movement who know that silence at this moment is a betrayal of the idea before it is a betrayal to God and the people.

To His Excellency President Mahmoud Abbas
and to the dear brothers in the Central Committee:

The people no longer wait for a space vehicle
nor a Japanese director
nor a new committee.

The people want a state that resembles the blood of its martyrs
and an institution that resembles the patience of its employees
and a decision that resembles the magnitude of danger.

We are tired of waiting…
but this time we do not write to complain only
but to say clearly:

Either you save what remains of the people's spirit immediately
or the people will write the end of the era of wet chairs themselves over a land that dries up from life day by day.