Eater and Eaten in the Forests of Washington

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

When the tiger stalks the gazelle, corners it, and, before it pounces and sinks its claws into her — in that final instant separating life from death — a person is overcome by fear for the gazelle, and pity for her; he finds himself panting along with her, darting with her, fleeing, leaping, willing her to slip free of the beast’s fangs. But the moment she falls, and the fangs close around her neck, and life departs her, the thrill ends, and few people still want to watch the beast feasting on the flesh, because the peak of the thrill was that moment when the beast tries to clamp its fangs onto the prey’s neck and cannot — she resists, she struggles to survive, and in her defiance draws out human sympathy. But once she falls, and surrenders to death, sorrow descends upon the viewer’s heart, and a tear slides from the tender-hearted, as he watches the beast panting contentedly, licking the gazelle’s blood.

That is the scene that came to my mind as I watched Mr. Mahmoud Abbas — stripped of everything, even of Palestinian consensus — silently embracing his fate, meeting with Netanyahu in the forest of Washington, where there is no place for the weak except cast to the ground, devoured, torn apart between the claws. Perhaps this was the very moment the satellite channels had been waiting for, broadcasting it to millions of viewers, who split into two camps: the first imagined itself the prey, and waited for her to keep slipping away, to keep resisting; the second imagined itself the beast, leaping onto the prey’s back, sinking in its claws, clamping its fangs onto her neck.

The first camp grieves for the prey, angry at her after she closed her eyes and surrendered, facing her fate with resignation, offering up her own flesh; the second lives the moment of predation, seeing through the killer’s eye, savoring the victim’s fall, reveling in her agony as though it were the sweetest moment of victory.

Some people are concerned with the forest itself, in which this struggle unfolded; they are stirred by the atmosphere surrounding the eater and the eaten, attentive to the things that sheltered killer and killed alike. It is the forest of American politics — dry, devoid of feeling, the silent, frozen place where the players face off and struggle, but where Washington already knows, in advance, who the strong victor will be, and who the defeated weak. It is the forest that contains everyone, in which there is no escaping the struggle for survival.

The Washington negotiations, and before them Annapolis, and before that Oslo and Madrid, and whatever comes after them in Sharm el-Sheikh — all of them are negotiations between the neck of the Palestinian gazelle and the fangs of the Israeli beast, negotiations in which the Palestinian loses, every single time, a little more of his national flesh, his human blood flowing, his political life bleeding out, in preparation for that moment when he dies and vanishes before the camera that captures the image of the Israeli beast — grown fatter, fiercer, more violent — reveling in its moment of victory.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “آكلٌ ومأكولٌ في غابات واشنطن” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.