Benjamin Netanyahu has closed the doors to negotiations, stirring anxiety among the Lebanese and Palestinians living on the land about their present and their future. The vast majority of them are in Gaza, where there is no longer any space for life, and Lebanese from the South, who have been displaced from their villages and towns.
What further exacerbates their fear is the scarcity of places that will shelter them for many well-known reasons; given the nature of the warring Lebanese tribes. Their present depends on a shell fired by a tank or a missile from a drone. As for their future, it seems to them like the known unknown; they do not know when the war will end, but they have become more able to imagine its outcome. This war, imposed upon them by their enemy following a miscalculation by their own people, will leave scars on their faces and bodies, on their homes, livelihoods, and country.
Scars that closely resemble those left on countries, societies, and armies that were more cohesive and resilient than they were... Peoples who were waiting for victory, sacrificing dearly and profoundly to achieve it, giving their systems more than they received, and postponing their words until after the promised victory, only to be met with disappointment when they discovered that their systems had deceived them. Before 1967, the hearts and minds of most Arabs were with Cairo, and even its adversaries turned their faces toward it in a moment of challenge, all of them accepting, albeit some reluctantly, the saying, “no voice rises above the sound of battle.”
The shock was that the enemy had resolved the battle in a few days. Since June 5, 1967, we have been reprocessing the defeat; we stubbornly call it a setback, just as we called our first defeat a Nakba, which was a tragedy. Today, we face the danger of new catastrophes and setbacks, with hot-headed leaders repeating the same saying: “No voice rises above the sound of battle.”
Because confrontation is almost inevitable, and because the crowds are visible, and the imbalance of power is also clear—not now, but since the 1973 war—those who were enchanted by the virtual sound of battle have understood and warned their systems against clashing with the American bull.
In this context, Professor Hazem Saghieh describes our current situation as follows: “We face a reality that was not as accurate then as it is now. The technical disparity makes considering violence as a solution to the major dilemma closer to generalized suicide. When we add the immense American and Western support for Israel, suicide becomes a mild description that fails to do justice to the situation.”
Once again, and perhaps not the last time, Israel is drawing those who wish to confront it into the same mistakes made by their predecessors. The unity of the arenas has suffered the same fate as the unity of the fronts. The war is no longer just against Hamas, but is aimed at settling the Palestinian cause. Supportive warfare has not forced the enemy to retreat, and Tehran’s offer to exchange its response for a truce had no room at the negotiating table.
These political and strategic calculations differ between those who live above the ground and those who live beneath it. For those below, survival is a victory. As for us above it, we are on the brink of a new setback, like in 1967, which will leave scars for a long time—not only on our bodies but also on our dreams, our freedom, the liberation of our homelands, and the restoration of Palestinian rights, as well as on our memory, language, and culture. From ‘Tantoura’ by Radwa Ashour to ‘Tharthara Fawq al-Nil’ by Naguib Mahfouz, perhaps a Lebanese novelist will one day write ‘Tharthara Fawq al-Litani’.
Indeed, the voice rises above the sound of battle because we do not want to squander what remains of our homelands and to lose Palestine forever. It is better for Palestine to avoid clashing with the raging American bull, which has turned a blind eye to the live footage of the mass extermination in Gaza, the daily killing and repression in the West Bank, and the destruction and displacement in South Lebanon. It has given its only ally everything it wants, so it can get what it needs. Benjamin Netanyahu has closed the doors to negotiations and opened the doors to...?
