No Eid For The Occupied And The Oppressed
By Reham Alhelsi
10 September, 2010
My Palestine
Every Eid, we greet our family, relatives, friends and neighbours with: next Eid in a liberated Palestine. Every Eid we send postcards, emails and messages which say: next Eid in a liberated Jerusalem. Every Eid we repeat so the whole world hears: Our Eid is the day of our return. For us Palestinians, there is no Eid until all of Palestine is liberated from the river to the sea and all refugees return to their homes, their towns and villages. Our lives were, are and will continue to be centered around three basic aspirations until total liberation. Without a free Palestine there is no Eid, without a liberated Jerusalem there is no Eid and without the return of all Palestinian refugees there is no Eid and there is no reason to celebrate.
These wishes are repeated every year with every Eid, with every occasion which is supposed to be a celebration, a joy. They are repeated to remind ourselves and others that we will not accept less than our legitimate rights and that no one has the right to relinquish one cm of Palestinian soil or to relinquish any of our legitimate rights.
A land usurped by strangers and a nation oppressed by occupiers knows no Eid.
There is no Eid for a mother who grieves her murdered child as long as his/her killer still roams his/her birthplace.
There is no Eid for a father hugging his child, trying to ease his/her pain with words, stories and promises of a better day, watching the beloved child die a slow death in a besieged homeland.
There is no Eid for a mother who wakes up on the morning of the Eid and wonders if her son/daughter who is in coma, because of the occupier’s bullet, will ever wake up and witness another Eid.
There is no Eid for a mother struggling to raise the children of the martyr and to keep his memory alive.
There is no Eid for a father who lies on his deathbed and prays, not for a recovery, but prays to be spared long enough, even for a minute, just to touch again the face of his imprisoned son/daughter.
There is no Eid for a mother who sits in the dark in her murdered child’s room on the Eid morning and holds his/her pillow, touches him/her, smells her/her and hears the laughter that will never again ring in that room.
There is no Eid for a father who is greeted every morn and every eve with the blood of his murdered child that refuses to wash away, but instead draws a map of homeland yearning for freedom.
There is no Eid for a child who tries to remember the face of his/her murdered father, the smile of his/her raped mother, the laughter of his/her butchered sibling.
There is no Eid for a child who receives his/her Eidiyyeh from the grandfather and hears him whisper: next Eid we will be free and you will get your Eidiyyeh from your father.
There is no Eid for a child yearning for every word, every description of the father, the mother he/she never knew.
There is no Eid for a child whose father was murdered, whose house was demolished, who sits in front of a tent he/she calls home surrounded by the villas and Mercedeses of those who sold out the blood of the martyrs.
There is no Eid for a comrade who mourns the friend, the brother, the sister that was snatched away from life by an occupier’s bullet.
There is no Eid for a comrade who recalls the sacrifices of those who took the path of resistance and tries keeping the flame of resistance alive until liberation.
There is no Eid for the occupied and the oppressed.
There is no Eid for those whose land is usurped by foreign colonists, terrorized by aliens, torn to pieces by monsters in human shape.
There is no Eid for those whose homes are made ashes by F-16s, whose fields are burnt by tanks, whose waters poisoned by warships, whose skies ripped open by drones.
There is no Eid for those whose dreams are shattered, whose hopes are broken and whose lives have been crushed by occupation and oppression.
There is no Eid for the occupied and the oppressed.
Their Eid is spent in cemeteries at the graves of loved ones murdered by the bullets, the drones and the tanks of the occupation.
Their Eid is spent in hospital at the bedside of loved ones injured by a merciless occupier while in their classes, while playing in the street, while sleeping peacefully in their beds.
Their Eid is spent at checkpoints, hoping and praying to be allowed to visit their imprisoned children.
Their Eid is spent in their ancestral homes, steadfast, protecting them from foreigners come from faraway lands to steal these homes.
Their Eid is spent in the fields, working them, touching the olive trees, the figs and the almonds, promising them that no harm would come to them from colonists who desecrate the land.
Their Eid is spent in the streets of every town, village and refugee camp, shouting out: We want our freedom! We want our Eid!
There is no Eid for the occupied and the oppressed.
There is no Eid without freedom. There is no freedom without resistance.
And freedom is alive as long as the resistance is alive, and one day we will be liberated. One day we will laugh again, we will dance again and we will celebrate again. One day, not far from now, we will have our Eid, a happy Eid in a liberated homeland.
Thus, on the eve of the Eid, long live the Resistance in all its forms because it is the only way for us to celebrate again, it is the only way to the Eid of freedom, it is the only way to Palestine.
