Pages of history drip with my blood
and my grandfather’s tears.
for his murdered olive tree.
You penetrated her body with the bucket teeth of your bulldozer
and uprooted her to death in front of his eyes.
This happened before I was born, long before the 7th of October.
But what if I didn’t resist at all,
Would the Nakba never have happened?
Would the Naksa never have happened?
Nor the Sabra and Shatila massacre?
Would the killing that led to first intifada never have happened?
I wasn’t born yet, so remind me why you committed the Nakba?
The Naksa? Sabra and Shatila? All the oppression since the first intifada?
What if I didn’t resist at all,
and the 7th of October savage attack that killed
1,269 Israelis had never happened?
Wouldn’t the sixth attack that killed
more than 23,000 Palestinians have happened anyway,
eventually, little by little if not all at once?
And what about the previous five assaults and endless escalations?
The Cast Lead assault of 2008, when you attacked Gaza
at 11:00 a.m. while the children were in the streets
returning from their schools.
The Protective Edge when you killed my friend Haytham
who was in the market trying to get some vegetables.
Or 2021 when I woke up with whirring in my ears
from the huge explosion of your missiles attacking my building.
What if I didn’t resist at all,
would you then recognize me as human?
As a person with life who abides in fear of
dying in the blink of an eye
in one of your sudden attacks?
Would I then be able to sleep
without the sound of drones that buzz the
echo of death into my ears?
Would I be a person without haunting memories instead of
one carrying the picture in my mind of my sister, Eman,
her four kids Mohab, Aser, Mohaymen and Eliaa,
and my best friends Essa and Ouda gasping their last breaths
under the rubble?
If I didn’t resist, would I have the same full rights as you?
Instead, you see me as a human animal,
drop bombs over my neighborhood Remal
the massive black cloud of the explosion
occupying the blueness of Gaza’s sky.
You chop me into pieces, burn my flesh, and penetrate my bones,
throw my corpse on the streets to be eaten by worms,
and the hungry animals and birds of prey,
until I am humiliated even in death.
What if I didn’t resist at all,
but be the obedient citizen you dream of?
So, if I want to visit Beersheba, my original home
Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem
to see the roads and old alleys where my grandfather walked,
to taste the oranges of Jaffa
my mother used to brag about.
or to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque,
you will allow me in?
Have you ever allowed me in?
How long will you stop me at checkpoints,
strip me naked or keep me covered but delayed?
If I sit in my house in Al Sheikh Jarrah,
where you have beaten Palestinians,
tried to kick them out of their homes,
shot them to death,
would you kick me out too?
I must ask, will I ever be safe?
How many pieces will you amputate from me
and the body of my land?
