فلسطين داري و درب إنتحاري

On the 60^th anniversary of the “catastrophe” we sit back and reminisce the same way we did the past 59 times. We damn our rulers for doing nothing; we damn America for helping Israel; we damn the international community for recognizing Israel; we hold protests, marches, and strikes; we get jailed, injured, and killed. We keep saying عائدون but we never do and there is no sign that we will ever do. We complain about refugees living conditions, about Israel’s lack of respect to UN resolutions, and the way Israel denies any wrong doing. We damn Hitler for not finishing his job and for giving Jews a powerful marketing tool. We get worked up if Abdullah visited Olmert, or Hamad received Livni. We boycott Starbucks, Sara Lee, and l'oréal. We bomb this and that, paint graffiti here and there. Give speeches and fire slogans. Build websites and spread the word. We even have a blog about it day…

We do all that, while we obviously fail to do the one thing that will eventually get us somewhere. The one thing, regardless of its nature, has eluded us all these years because we are a nation of retrospect. We are Arabs, the people that only look at the past to live the present. Without any goals, real plans, or concrete strategies. We live the present in misery thinking that it was meant to be. We look to the past and say what happened instead of what should happen.

We basically have to hit the wall really hard with our foreheads and start over. Think of the past 60 years as a sunk cost. A cost not retrieved no matter what. Would living under the control of the Palestinian authority, or government if a state ever declared, be any better? Would the ever delayed Palestinian state be any better than the remaining 20 Arab states? Would the Palestinians live a better life than the Lebanese (the Arab state with the highest level of democracy in the Arab world)? Would Palestinians have it easier than Arab Israelis?

I thought the previous title was inappropriate.