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NO MATTER WHAT, PALESTINIANS WILL NEVER GIVE UP  
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Ahmad Ibsais
October 16, 2024
The Nation
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_ The last year has shown that our love of life, and our fight for
our freedom, will never be extinguished. _

A man plays with a baby as Palestinians struggle with power outages
due to Israeli attacks that destroyed the infrastructure in Gaza City,
Gaza, on October 13, 2024., Photo credit: Hassan Jedi / Anadolu // The
Nation

 

In the last year, the world has seen the _sumud_, or steadfastness,
of my people over and over again. You could witness it in the children
who planned
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press conference to beg the world to recognize their humanity after
the first Al-Shifa Hospital massacre, the mothers who continued to
find ways to feed their families after Palestinians were killed trying
to retrieve flour
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or the parents who rebuilt their tents for the fourth time after the
unfathomable atrocity of massacring people in a “safe zone
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The killing of innocent civilians is a terrible reality that
Palestinians have been forced to endure with sickening
regularity—including this week’s horrific attacks on north Gaza
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which shocked the conscience of people across the world. Yet, even as
our very existence is met with genocide, the people of Gaza
embody _sumud—_the unbreakable refusal to submit to subjugation. It
is the moral backbone of Palestinian resistance.

Gazans love life. Despite the ongoing bombardment, despite the
killings, despite everything. They have devised makeshift solutions to
daily life—like a hand-washing machine made from a bicycle
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a clay oven
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from mud and straw to bake bread, and generators assembled from
whatever machine parts they can find. These are just a few acts of
stubborn perseverance under siege, of _sumud _crystallized.

_Sumud _in the diaspora must be an active force propelling us to make
Palestinian liberation possible. The first step is to squash the sense
of protest fatigue or feeling emotionally spent by the struggle. We
have no excuse to grow weary when Gazans create _sumud_ by their
life and blood.

Historically, _sumud _has been both active and passive. Passively,
the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank embody it by remaining on
their land—hence the Palestinian phrase “existence is
resistance.” Actively, _sumud_ has meant replanting the olive
trees burned after each settler assault, rebuilding the homes
demolished with an underlying assumption that it may be demolished
again, and resisting forced expulsion from the land.

In the diaspora, our _sumud_ must be equally tangible, not an
abstract ideal. _Sumud_ cannot simply be just about bearing witness
to death and dispossession, as some would suggest. Sitting with
the images of inhumanity
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a minimum. We have to believe that what we do in our daily lives is
having an impact, and not succumb to the despair that Israeli society
so desperately wants to create.

The second step is a commitment to providing the means for survival
and resistance. This material support is not just charity but a deeper
solidarity with the Palestinian cause. That means pressing elected
officials in the United States and elsewhere to stop funding and
arming another nation’s war. We in the Palestinian diaspora,
alongside our peers in the West, must continue to use our privilege in
a “free
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nation to protest by every means. We must hold corporations who profit
off the violence accountable through boycotts and divestment. We must
work to end the complicity of organizations sending weapons
or technologies
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Israel.

We must also be granular and targeted in our support, from sending
eSIMs so Gazan journalists can continue doing necessary work to
helping Western doctors establish telemedicine
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decimated hospitals that are left in Gaza.

Israel has tried to break _sumud_. The physical destruction alone has
been part of this effort: over 60 percent of Gazan homes destroyed
after more
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dropped than the totality of World War II; the ethnocide
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bombing of mosques, churches, libraries, museums, and so much more;
the planting [[link removed]] of
Israeli flags over the ruins of Gazan society; the publishing
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plans to turn parts of Gaza into Israeli resorts; and holding
over 9,000
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in Gaza and the West Bank hostage, where they are arbitrarily detained
and tortured in detention camps.

Israel’s efforts have been similar in Gaza and the West Bank for
decades: the burning
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trees, a symbol of our connection to the land; banning
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Palestinian flag; and expanding illegal settlements that erase
Palestine from the map. However, Palestinians have never cowered to
Israel’s horrors—and they never will. In fact, as the world has
become increasingly used to Palestinian blood, and done nothing to
stop it, we must reaffirm the right of Palestinians
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defend their land and fight for their freedom.

Israel has been unable to subdue Gaza despite relentless military
campaigns. Now, the Zionist project has shifted focus to the West
Bank, targeting refugee camps in Jenin, where the population has been
deeply entrenched in the struggle for liberation.

The refugee camps in the West Bank, particularly in Nablus, Jenin, and
Tulkarem, are not merely places where the displaced survive. They are
incubators of the collective Palestinian consciousness, which
continues to reject colonialism and the violence that sustains it.
Israel’s tactics in the West Bank are strikingly similar to those it
has used in Gaza. The siege mentality, the demolition of homes, the
targeted assassinations of resistance leaders—these are tools of
occupation that have been wielded for decades. And yet, just as these
measures have failed in Gaza, they are destined to fail in the West
Bank. Occupation, no matter how brutal, cannot erase the will of a
people determined to be free.

Now, we see our Lebanese neighbors, and brothers in struggle,
experiencing the same acts of state-sponsored violence—villages
across the south forced to flee as their homes are indiscriminately
bombed under the pretext of fabricated claims of occupation officials.
They, too, exercise resistance by simply existing on the land and
refusing to submit to the acts of terror inflicted upon them.

_Sumud _is a uniquely Palestinian motif that has taken root on our
land over generations. Our _sumud _has emerged in the context of our
people’s ongoing dispossession and struggle for self-determination.
It is our collective will to maintain our identity even as Western
colonial powers would aim to deny the word “Palestine” itself.

Palestinians have shown what it means to see our land get stolen yet
still believe in our right to return to it. We have taught the world
what it means to live under occupation yet still hope for a better
future. We have shown what it means to live through generations of
ethnic cleansing yet never lose pride in our being.

Hope is a nonnegotiable part of the struggle. It was at this time last
year that I finally understood the _sumud_ of my people—our
inability to be crushed and a spirit of resistance that exists in
every trace of the Palestinian landscape.

_[AHMAD IBSAIS is a first-generation Palestinian American and a law
student who writes the newsletter State of Siege
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_Copyright c 2024 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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Distributed by PARS International Corp
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