TANYA HABJOUQA / NOOR FOR “THE WORLD”
StoryAfter the failure of the Oslo accords, which advocated the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, little by little, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, the idea of a single state for all, binational, germinates.
North of Ramallah, perched on rocky hills facing an Israeli settlement, the village of Nabi Saleh is a symbol of unarmed Palestinian resistance. From 2009 to 2016, residents organized peaceful demonstrations every Friday, filmed attacks by Israeli soldiers and settlers, confiscated land… Sedition as professed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank: persisting , without weapons or means, to regain a few pieces of ground against the Israelis – or rather, not to lose too much.
Bassem Tamimi has dedicated his life to it. On the walls of her living room hang several portraits of her daughter, Ahed, with blond curls and piercing blue eyes, famous for slapping an Israeli soldier in 2017. From generation to generation, the forms of struggle are the same, but the goal has changed.
” [Lorsque les accords d’Oslo ont été conclus en 1993], I saw the two-state solution as a possibility of freeing myself from Israeli colonization ”, explains Ahed’s father, born in 1967, the year of the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. In the Israeli prison where he was then imprisoned, discussions between Palestinian activists were lively. Some movements are opposed to chords.
The Palestinian leaders made a risky bet with Oslo: they abandoned the ambition to retake all of historic Palestine, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, in the hope of obtaining an independent state in the territories occupied in 1967. But the peace process stalled, Israeli settlements expanded, and twenty-seven years later Donald Trump dealt one final fatal blow, paving the way for Israel’s annexation of part of the West Bank .
“We were wrong. We should never have abandoned historic Palestine ”, regrets Mr. Tamimi. Liberating the territories occupied in 1967 will not solve anything, he believes, contrary to the credo of the European chanceries and the leaders of the PA, taken up in chorus by the Arab countries. The Fatah activist, the movement of President Mahmoud Abbas, is now fighting for one state, where Jews and Palestinians live together, enjoying equal rights.
He came there through Ahed. “She and those of her generation say, ‘Our fathers trusted the world and Israel. They abandoned 78% of Palestine and got nothing. Is our generation going to do the same? Are we going to be imprisoned or die for 22% of the territory? ” Young people say no. They want to fight for 100% of the land. “
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