On the Edge of Salary ... and on the Edge of the Homeland ..

Three years have passed, and the Palestinian public sector employee stands on the edge of waiting, not knowing if he is an employee receiving a salary for his work or a professional beggar mastering the art of standing in lines of hope. For three years he has been receiving meager salaries, akin to how a patient receives painkillers that do not cure the illness but merely postpone the collapse... Three years of promises, statements, speeches, and justifications, until words became cheaper than the paper they are written on, and steadfastness became a slogan raised in the face of the hungry whenever conditions become dire, as if steadfastness has transformed from a noble national value into a magic recipe that governments throw at people whenever they fail to find solutions...

In this nation burdened with wounds, the employee no longer opens his phone expecting a message from the bank announcing the arrival of his salary. Instead, he opens it dreading the new losses, the new deductions, and the new humiliations. The salary has become an exceptional event, and normal life a distant dream... The employee who once planned for his children’s future now plans how to survive until the end of the month, and how to distribute what little remains amongst medication, food, electricity, water, school fees, and university tuition...

The most painful scene is that this employee who has devoted his life to serving public institutions suddenly finds himself chased by everyone... the bank chases him because it wants its full payment without reductions, and financing companies pursue him like hunters stalking their injured prey, while electricity bills pile up like mountains on his chest, and water bills remind him of his inability every month, and telecommunications companies do not care about tales of steadfastness and national speeches, and private schools await their fees, and universities want their tuition, and pharmacies demand payment for medicines, and the grocery store owner who once gave him grace periods is now drowning in debt himself... The employee has often transformed from a productive citizen into a person who apologizes constantly... apologizing to the grocer, apologizing to the landlord, apologizing to his daughter who needs money, apologizing to his son who wants a university book, apologizing to his wife who keeps postponing household needs... until apologies have become a parallel job to his original one.

As for the officials among us, they have mastered the art of talking about crises more than they have mastered the art of solving them... Every year they bring the same reasons, the same excuses, the same explanations to the people, as if time has stopped at one point. The occupation is a reason, deductions are a reason, regional conditions are a reason, financial crises are a reason, and all of this may be true, but the question that haunts minds is... what did you do during these three years? Where are the plans? Where are the alternatives? Where are the visions? How did the crisis transform from an exceptional circumstance to a permanent way of life? At this stage, the princes of the moment have emerged, those who sit in high towers and talk about steadfastness from behind closed windows... asking people for more endurance, while they failed to explain how long this endurance will last... They demand patience from the employee but offer him only more delayed appointments... They demand steadfastness from him, yet they do not tell him why their positions remain unshaken under the weight of continuous failure.

In the corners of the scene stand the kings of new groups and oligarchies, those who transformed public matters into spheres of influence, interests, and closed zones... Groups clash over shares, positions, and gains, while the simple employee tries to convince his son that the university will wait a little, trying to convince the landlord that the rent will be delayed another month, and trying to convince himself before anyone else that tomorrow might be better...

The painful paradox is that the employee no longer fears poverty alone, but has come to fear his dignity threatened every day. The poor may suffer from lack of money, but the employee who thought himself stable and then found himself unable to meet his obligations suffers from something deeper... he suffers from repeated feelings of helplessness... he suffers when he sees the eyes of creditors... he suffers when he avoids answering calls... he suffers when his phone becomes a source of anxiety rather than a means of communication... he suffers when he discovers that long years of service did not protect him from breaking...

But the truth that must also be said is that the responsibility does not lie solely with the governments... Employees themselves bear part of the scene... not because they are the cause of the crisis, but because they long accepted to be silent victims. They accepted suffering to become routine. They accepted salary shortages to be normal news... They accepted to limit their complaints to private gatherings while remaining silent in public spaces... For prolonged silence does not solve crises; it grants them additional life...

And so does the submissive, silent people who have become accustomed to coexisting with everything... A people who rebel against a small bill but remain silent in the face of a complete system collapse... A people who curse the circumstances in private meetings and then return to their lives as if nothing had happened. A people consumed by disappointments until they consider suffering an unchangeable fate. And this is the most dangerous stage of breakdown, when injustice transforms from an exceptional condition to an acceptable reality, when the exception becomes the rule, and when people lose their ability to rage...

Nations do not collapse solely due to lack of money, but they collapse when they lose their sensitivity to crises. They collapse when hunger becomes regular news, and helplessness becomes a normal occurrence, and debt becomes part of daily identity... They collapse when people become used to receiving blows without asking who is responsible... They collapse when the citizen transforms into a number in financial deficit lists, not a human with life, rights, and dignity...

And here stands the Palestinian employee today in the middle of the road between his duty and his right... fulfilling what he can, while his right shrinks month after month. He goes to work every morning burdened with worries on his shoulders, and returns in the evening loaded with even more... He does not have the luxury of resignation, nor the ability to confront, nor does he find anyone to rescue him from the ongoing whirlpool of depletion...

The biggest question now is not when will full salaries be paid, but how did we all allow ourselves to reach this point? How did a temporary crisis transform into a chronic reality? How did the employee who represented the middle class, the backbone of society, now stand at the doors of banks and financing companies searching for another grace period? How did a person who served his country’s institutions for many years become someone pursued by debt from every direction? Three years of waiting are enough to make a dream age, and three years of promises are enough to make words lose their meaning, and three years of forced steadfastness are enough to turn steadfastness itself into a heavy burden. Therefore, new speeches are no longer required, nor new statements, nor new explanations. What is required is honesty in confronting the truth, courage in bearing responsibility, and a genuine will to emerge from this long tunnel... For homelands are not built solely on slogans, nor are they managed just through crisis management, nor is the dignity of their citizens preserved by perpetually asking them for patience. Homelands are built when the citizen feels that his effort is not cheap, that his dignity is not a postponed item, and that his rights are not a grant given when circumstances allow... And until this is achieved, the Palestinian employee will remain a living witness to one of the harshest stages in his history, a stage in which he found himself trapped between the hammer of need and the anvil of promises, between a reality that grows harsher every day and speeches that only become more repetitive...

And perhaps the most dangerous thing that can happen after all this devastation is for people to get used to it, for hunger to turn into a daily detail, and for financial humiliation to become a fate passed down from month to month and year to year... Therefore, it is no longer acceptable for everyone to remain prisoners of waiting, expecting a miracle from the sky or a solution to drop from behind closed doors... It is no longer acceptable for employees and the people to remain fuel for others’ wars, accounts, interests, and bargaining... It is time for voices to rise loudly against everyone, against all those who brought people to this level of helplessness and exhaustion, against governments that have become addicted to managing crises instead of solving them, and against the officials among us who have often asked people to endure while they left them prey to hunger and debt, and against the princes of the moment and the kings of groups and oligarchies who busied themselves dividing influence while the citizen shared a piece of bread with fear... And if the occupation is the root of the calamity and the source of the siege, starvation, and economic suffocation, then let the shout also be against the occupation, and let the confrontation begin with it before anyone else, not only with slogans but with actions, rejection, and legitimate anger. For hunger does not recognize narrow affiliations, and poverty does not differentiate between one faction and another, and violated dignity does not ask its owner about his position, color, or slogan.

What is required today is not more silence or justifications, but an uprising of awareness above all, a dignity uprising against all those who participated, be it actively or passively or through inaction, in creating this miserable reality... For peoples that remain silent for long about hunger become partners in its continuity, and peoples that fear raising their voices lose their right to complain about the echo of restrictions... And between hunger imposed by the occupation and impotence crafted by policies and silence established by fear, people have no choice but to reclaim their voice, their rights, and their anger, and to declare clearly that dignity is not a postponable item, and that the person they demand every day to endure was not created to live as a beggar at the doors of banks and financing companies, but as a free and dignified citizen in a homeland that deserves life... And when people reach the last edge of endurance, revolution against all causes of oppression becomes not a political choice or a party stance, but an act of survival and a cry of existence against all those who thought this people had become accustomed to breaking.