Palestine
Caught between the iron of the
Mandate, which consumes bodies, and the gold of Zionism,
which devours the land, the Arab in Palestine lives as one condemned to death
or exile. If his body is spared, his homeland is not. His cry piercing deaf
ears and reaching hardened consciences stands as a warning sign in a community
tormented by harm, shaken by danger, and crushed by injustice.
It is a cry that speaks of life
stolen, and homelands seized a cry in which the voice of truth resounds, the
groan of justice echoes, and the protest of humanity trembles. It rises against
those who have turned such cries into a stratagem for colonizing lands and a
tool for enslaving nations.
The British Mandate and the Deal to Sell
Palestine
In bygone eras, barbarism used to
attack openly, plunder with a visible hand, speak plainly, and act with a clear
purpose. Today’s “civilization” has slipped the bloodstained hand into a white
glove, cloaked the prey in treaties of friendship and peace conferences, and
recast the meanings of force and usurpation in the language of law and the
terminology of science. Feigning concern for human sensibilities, it renamed
enslavement “civilization,” rape “mandate,” and
protection “trusteeship.” Thus, it plunged deep into the recesses of political
hearts, so they no longer know why the sale of one human being to another was
forbidden, yet the sale of an entire people to another people was deemed
lawful.
This is a nation among the earliest of
nations to advance in civilization and among the peoples most deeply rooted in
the lineage of freedom. It proceeds under a constitution lofty in its
foundations and venerable in its platform. Yet neither its inherited custom nor
its established law prevented it from openly selling Arab Palestine to the
refuse of the Jews though the Arabs are not its chattel, nor is Palestine its property. Then, to guarantee this false
sale, it mobilizes the power of government and the authority of the
constitution, staging under the British flag, and upon the land of Christ, the
most dreadful tragedies of justice.
They unleashed hunger upon the land
and sent gold in its wake, as though they were saying to the wretched Arab:
either the homeland without life or life without a homeland. Those whom
poverty crushed, and money dazzled sold themselves and their families, a
ruinous bargain, to the intruder. But the remnants of the swords and the
descendants of the conquerors chose instead to be buried with honor in its
noble soil rather than leave it in humiliation to the Jews and the British. So,
they met the famine with patience, the Mandate with resolve, and Zionism with
boycott, and they showed these three forces falsehood having bound them
together that the Arab who once conquered the world, sustained only by a
handful of parched grain and a sip of water, is neither defeated by scarcity
nor broken by hunger.
God be with you, O Palestine! How
greatly you endure the tyranny of power, the scheming of the wealthy, and the
cruelty of the oppressor.
Palestine’s Cry: Between the Bitterness
of Tragedy and the Hope of Arab Solidarity
Since the calamity, your tears have
never ceased to flow; since the ordeal, your wounds have never healed. Your
anguished, grief-stricken voice still resounds through the depths of the East
and across the horizons of Arab lands, crying out for help against a
catastrophe that weighed down Germany and broke the backs of states. Yet your
valiant sons, O Palestine, compete for the glory of death and the honor of
sacrifice. Do you fear that any violator might ravage your sacred soil when you see your blessed youth plunging into the depths of terror behind their aged
leader, his frail chest ablaze with the resolve of his forefathers, and his
white hair dyed with the blood of his sons?
The Arab homeland today is united in
affliction, for it has lost the youthful spirit that once animated it and the
powerful vitality that once filled it. It has become a crumbling structure on
the brink, whose parts no longer sustain one another.
Yet its collective rally to the
injustice done to Palestine inspires hope for the return of that spirit and the
revival of that vitality. May it be the rally of a rescuer who comes to aid,
not the outcry of a mere mourner steeped in regret. For the calamity of
Palestine is not remedied by weeping, nor repelled by sorrow.
The tragedy of Wadi al-Hawarith
is but a small reflection of Palestine’s fate if its people succumb to
promises, if their land is sold to the Jews, and if the Arabs refrain from
aiding their brothers in averting this calamity.
Indeed, all the nations of the world
together would be incapable of fulfilling the “Balfour Declaration” so long as
the land remains in Arab hands. But once they are induced to relinquish it at
the highest price and under the lure of gold law alone will scatter them
beneath every sky.
The Jew came to Palestine not to
cultivate a field but to purchase a homeland to colonize. Every inch of land
that slips from the Arab’s hand enters forever into the Jew’s possession, and
on that day, no protest or demonstration will return it to its rightful owners.
Protest and demonstration are merely
declarations of the truth, not its defense.
Two Means to Protect Palestine
Effective defense of Palestine rests
on two powerful means:
First: that leaders and scholars
secure a firm pledge from the people that no one, even under duress, shall sell
his land to a non-Arab no matter how temptations deceive him or how the
covetous lure him with false promises.
Second: that they undertake strong,
organized advocacy throughout the Arab countries, especially in Egypt, to
establish real estate companies dedicated to developing and settling Palestine.
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Source:
Al-Risala, Issue No. 23.
