Who Burned the Child Ali Dawabsheh?

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Hardly a day passes recently without a Palestinian killed by Israeli bullets, sometimes by the occupation army, other times by Zionist settlers. Palestinians are killed outside the circles of confrontation, outside the circles of stones and bullets.

It is clear from the occupation soldiers’ conduct that they amuse themselves killing Palestinians, and the evidence for this is that some have been killed inside their homes or on their rooftops without having any intention of a stone-throwing confrontation with the soldiers. Every time, the occupation finds a justification for its soldiers’ criminal acts, constantly inventing ideas to clear the criminals of their responsibilities.

Last Friday, settlers committed a new occupation crime, an armed assault on the Dawabsheh family in the village of Duma near Nablus, burning the child Ali Dawabsheh (18 months old), while the parents suffered very serious burns, now being treated at the personal expense of the president of the Authority, not at the expense of the Palestinian Authority as he pledged before the world.

Palestinians — officials especially — rose up on the morning of last Friday against the Zionist occupation because of the child’s burning, heaping insults, curses, and abuse upon it, all of them placing the blame on it, on the grounds that it is the one that arms the settlers and guarantees them freedom to act in every form across the West Bank.

When we read the factions’ statements, it seems as though the occupation is expected to be polite and respectful, and not to permit such criminal acts against Palestinians. All the statements of the Palestinian factions and political declarations go beyond the very definition of occupation when they demand its government rein in the settlers and exercise tight control over its soldiers’ bullets.

Occupation, by definition, is a criminal, degenerate party, entirely contrary to the principles of human rights, the UN Charter, international law, and international ethics. Occupation, by definition, is repugnant and contemptible, working against the human being, always exposing people’s lives, interests, and property to danger. Occupation is repressive and savage, always inventing new methods to control people and place them in a state of fear and security anxiety, constantly working to spread terror and dread in people’s hearts and ranks. This is why placing on the occupation the responsibility for killing people and confiscating their property is an escape from the problem.

Placing on the occupation the responsibility for its own crimes is nothing but an affirmation of the occupation’s morality and definition, and in this there is no benefit at all. Whoever bears responsibility for the occupation’s continuation in practicing its ugly acts is the one living under the occupation itself, if he does not resist it to annul it and expel it from his life. The question: if the occupation reins in the settlers, does it become acceptable?

Many peoples have fallen under colonialism and occupation throughout history, and were never liberated from the enemies’ yoke except by the arms of their own sons, who carried the banner and confronted the occupation until they turned it into an unbearable hell, forcing it to decide to leave. Some Palestinians, and most Arabs, now speak of the Zionist occupation’s responsibility for the crimes, but do not speak of the absence of a Palestinian-Arab plan to deter the Zionists and remove the occupation.

The occupation does not stop its crimes through the power of morality or the power of law, but through the power of deterrence that can confront it and make it a very costly matter. Palestinians and Arabs have not developed a long-term plan to confront the Zionist occupation, and a large portion of Palestinians have exhausted themselves seeking Israel’s approval, as have some Arabs.

There is no resistance in the West Bank except sometimes at the individual level, which is why Israel finds no one to deter it, and does not hesitate to carry out its criminal acts, because it knows in advance there will be no Palestinian reaction, and if a reaction occurs, it will be feeble. It now understands the Palestinian arena is angry over the child’s burning, but it also understands the Palestinians lack the driving force to carry out a broad Palestinian movement that would corner the occupation, because of the deterioration of national culture in favor of hedonistic consumer culture.

Beyond this, resistance is banned by the Palestinian Authority, and resistance fighters, or those with intentions to resist, are pursued by the Palestinian security apparatuses according to security coordination between them and Israel, and how many resistance fighters have been arrested and tortured by these apparatuses. This security dimension is the first and fundamental reason Israel has accepted signing agreements with the Palestinian side and with the Egyptian and Jordanian sides.

Every Arab who wants understanding with Israel through agreements must turn into a faithful guardian of Zionist security. Those who coordinate security matters with the Zionists and cooperate with them against Palestinian resistance fighters are the first to condemn the crime of burning the child Dawabsheh, and these same people will continue tomorrow morning with the tasks of security coordination with the occupation. They are not ashamed to lie to people, and there is a considerable number of people who enjoy being lied to. The people of the Palestinian Authority hate speaking the truth, and there are those who hate hearing it, preferring to remain in manifest error.

The matter is not confined to security coordination — it also includes defending the settlers and providing them protection. If a Palestinian throws a stone at a settler, the Palestinian security apparatuses rush to pursue and detain the boy who threw the stone.

The streets and lands of the West Bank were previously under the Palestinian people’s control, and the Palestinian used to roam various areas with ease and reassurance, while the settlers had no share in calm movement, and never moved without guards and vehicles. Now the situation has changed — settlers are spread across the roads in the West Bank, sometimes roaming beautiful natural sites without finding any deterrent, all because of the Authority’s obligations toward the security of settlers and Zionists generally.

Whoever leaves his home’s doors open invites thieves, criminals, and aggressors to violate the home, and this is what is now happening in the West Bank. The doors are flung wide open, and the aggressors gnaw at people’s bones without accountability or oversight. This is why I see that it is the settlers who carried out the operation of burning the child Ali Dawabsheh, but we are the ones responsible for the disregard of Palestinian security, and we are the ones who open the way for the Zionists to treat us and our capabilities with contempt and go to greater lengths assaulting us.

The peoples of the earth resist the unjust, the despotic, and the aggressors, and this is not an innovation but a historical pattern we are departing from in this dark stage of our history. We want to be liberated by appeasing the enemies, arming ourselves with weakness, weeping, and wailing. Our actions do not constitute salvation for us — they instead extend the rope for the Zionists to go even further in encroaching upon us.

International laws, or the way international decisions are made, are what created the Zionist entity, and it is what displaced the Palestinian people and continues to displace it to this day, in the camps and in various parts of the earth.

Palestinian officials always say Israel violates international laws, and does not abide by international law and international legitimacy. This is true, and the occupation itself contradicts every international, religious, moral, and historical law. But there is one legitimacy Israel holds to, the most important kind of legitimacy in this world lacking justice: the legitimacy of power.

Power is the foundation, and every law, value, and moral principle collapses before the powerful, and before us in this world are countless examples of the truth of this statement. The International Court of Justice ruled that the wall Israel built is illegal — what happened? Israel continued building and no one deterred it. Now before us is the International Criminal Court, and assuming the court decides to convict Israel, what international measures do we expect against it? I expect nothing, and the conviction ruling will be like other rulings issued at the international level.

We must not wager on the courts or on so-called international legitimacy — we have no wager before us except on our own arms. A conviction ruling might affect Israel’s standing in the world, and might contribute to some of its isolation, but it will not liberate Palestine, and will not bring back the refugees. The question that must be present when assessing any step taken against Israel is: how will the step change the daily reality of the Palestinian on the ground? If no resolution or step is reflected in Palestinian reality in any way, this means the Palestinian people will witness no change in its conditions. This resembles the governments the Palestinian Authority forms, knowing in advance that these governments do not govern.

We have strong arguments on the international stage, and despite the strength of the truth and the strength of the Arab and Palestinian argument, we have so far been unable to convince the concerned states to take measures against Israel, and unable to influence the Security Council to take decisive resolutions similar to those it takes against Arabs and Muslims, the reason being that we have chosen to trade on our own weakness.

We have built great hopes on our own weakness, believing this would draw out sympathy and pity for us, causing the colonial states to decide to pressure Israel by adopting harsh sanctions. Perhaps our wager on our own weakness is a unique case in human history. It is historically known that individuals and nations build strength to confront challenges of various forms, but Palestinians preserve their weakness, especially during the years of the Palestinian Authority’s existence, to solve their problems.

The Palestinian Authority is very cautious in the process of uniting the Palestinian people and building new strategies to gain popular momentum and the strength necessary to deter the enemy, seeing no path to achieving Palestinian ambition except through the occupation. This is why it always works to preserve the state of weakness currently existing in the West Bank, indeed deepening it too, in order to win the approval of the Zionists and their supporters among the Western states. This is a strange, bizarre political theory, and it ought to be included in the textbooks for political science students.

There is an argument the Authority holds, saying that preventing Palestinian resistance fighters from resisting and confiscating their weapons serves the Palestinian people. The justification goes as follows: Israel will be angered if resistance ignites in the West Bank, and will respond by making Palestinians’ lives difficult, redeploying military checkpoints, imposing curfews, demolishing more homes, and banning travel, and so on.

So what is better for Palestinians: adhering to calm and non-resistance, or turning their daily lives into hell? The answer is adherence to calm, and this is why the Palestinian Authority is keen on citizens’ interests even with the occupation’s continuation. We notice here that the Palestinian national interest has become entirely tied to the occupation’s continuation, and this is a new political theory that must also be taught in universities.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “من أحرق الطفل علي دوابشة؟” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.