The refugee camp of Yarmouk was ever present in his being, pulling him in and out of an abyss of persistent fears that urged him to never return. But what was this refugee without Yarmouk, his first haven, his last earth?
To understand what has risen and fallen we need to look first at Turkey’s situation in 2001. Turkey had become a republic in 1923 with Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) as its first president. He was the leader of a military group that sought to replace the long-declining Ottoman Empire with a modern republic.
Entire communities in the West Bank either have no access to water or have had their water supply reduced almost by half. This alarming development has been taking place for weeks, since Israel's national water company, “Mekorot”, decided to cut off - or significantly reduce - its water supply to Jenin, Salfit and many villages around Nablus, among other regions. Israel has been ‘waging a water war' against Palestinians.
“(At dawn) … I will resist ... (Since) upon the wall there is still a white sheet … And my fingers are yet to (completely) dissolve.” This is a translated verse from Mu'in Bseiso’ “Three Walls of the Torture Chamber”. He was -and remains - one of Gaza’s most influential intellectual and renowned poets.
If you have been following the Middle East ‘peace process’ business in the last quarter of a century, you are certainly aware that the ‘negotiations table’ is nothing but a metaphor for buying time and obtaining political capital. The Israelis want time to finalize their colonial projects in building up illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land; and the Palestinian leadership uses the ‘talks’ to acquire political validations from the so-called ‘peace-brokers’, namely the United States.
Last year, the media started joining the dots between the crisis in Syria and climate change. But they only got half the story right. They badly misrepresented the role of social movements in Syria; and they painted Syrian migrants as a source of violence and chaos. Most reporting ignored the complex relationship between climate, drought, migration and conflict.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019