Palestinian steadfastness. An attempt to understand the causes and motives

Palestinians face all attempts by the occupation to displace them through their legendary steadfastness (AFP)

Sarah, an Irish girl, was not exaggerating when she expressed surprise at the certainty that makes the people of Gaza endure all this pain. In a widely circulated video, the girl wondered about "Islam" as the deepest framework on which the Palestinian bereaved lean, giving them patience for harm that surpassed all others in modern and contemporary history.

The girl put her hand on the essence or distant cause of the steadfastness we see in Gaza, a cause shared by the Christians of Palestine as well, who recognize the "Passion of Christ" not as a "historical matter" or "symbolic", as Europeans do, but as it is still ongoing, almost every of them feels it, otherwise one senior priest would not have said in response to the Israeli aggression targeting mosques: If they destroy all the mosques, we will open the churches for the call to prayer from their minarets, calling Muslims to the five daily prayers.

The need for certainty

I am not talking here about the religious depth that is strongly present as a motive for patience and endurance in most of the discourses of the resistance, especially Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but that which dissolves into the Palestinian public sphere, and translates into what people utter when they see their families have fallen martyrs, or seriously injured, or their homes demolished and displaced, or they talk about the lack of adequacy, or even subsistence in food and medicine, as well as shelter and clothing in this winter, which portends extreme cold.

It is natural for people in adversity to turn to religion to strengthen themselves and protect their souls from collapse or surrender to hateful worldly oppression. Whether a person takes up arms to fight his enemy or receives the blows of that enemy, he needs certainty, nothing above religious belief, to ensure his existence and continuity.

Palestinians do not lose sight of the biblical tendency that Israelis bestow on the current war, as we saw in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech, or the presence of rabbis with their calls and advice, and even their instigation, at the heart of the battle.

Getting around extreme conditions

In fact, it is not only religious belief that stands behind the legendary steadfastness of the Palestinians, but there are other ills, on which only those who have carefully read the diaries of suffering that Palestinians live under occupation from the Nakba until the start of the "Al-Aqsa flood" can stand on and understand their effects.

Many have gone through harsh experiences, from those who had the first experience of displacement in the year of the Nakba, to young children listening day and night to grandmothers' and grandparents' tales of the diaspora's frost, confusion and longing for home.

Palestinians have come to realize that any brokenness, complacency or panic – which pushes them to flee or surrender – will have serious consequences for them, even more painful than the continuous bombardment of their heads, despite its abundance and ferocity, targeting people and stone, green and dry. Patience with fire and temporary blood – even if the war is longer than their expectations – is less than patience with alienation and alienation when they lose their land and are lost in people's countries as happened to them in the past.

Palestinians have learned many methods and tricks to help them circumvent the harsh conditions that confront them, from the many coercive and even bloody practices they have been subjected to by the Israeli occupation over many years.

Since they are practices that do not cease, the Palestinian people have become able to endure them, as long as the drums of war have sounded on their heads, as long as they have seen killing, destruction and imprisonment, and as long as they have lived under a tight siege that almost counts their breath, and finally it has appeared that it infringes on them the "calories" given to them by the food and drink that are allowed to pass over to them.

The scenes of blood, smoke and rubble that we see in the current aggression on Gaza have been repeated in all of Israel's previous wars on the Strip, making what is happening with the "Al-Aqsa flood" - in the eyes of most Gazans - nothing more than a very intensive dose, in its breadth, depth and length, but it does not differ from its predecessors in the tactics of the Israeli army and its excessive brutal behavior.

A popular incubator for resistance

I am not talking here about the adaptation of the Palestinians in general, and the Gazans in particular, to the suffering and deliberate humiliation, but about their extraordinary and strange ability at the same time to realize the goals and objectives of the occupation because of what it insists on doing regularly, and it is confirmed every day that it is a fixed strategy for it, presented in an open book, and does not change with the change of governments in Tel Aviv.

As well as their ability to empty this act of its meaning and thwart its goals, foremost of which is to silence the Palestinian voice forever, in accordance with the erroneous assumption on which Israel built its presence in this place, namely: "The Jews are a people without a land, they came to a land without a people".

Moreover, this time, more than the previous ones, Palestinian civilians realized that targeting them was aimed at exposing the back of the resistance and breaking its will, by making it appear that it was not interested in what was happening to its popular incubator, or aimed at pushing this incubator to disbelieve in the resisters, and perhaps beyond that by rebelling against them, or even betraying them.

Since the 2006 war against Hezbollah, the IDF has been conceiving excessive harm to civilians to pressure the resistance. In recent days, we have seen American officials calling on the Palestinian resistance to surrender to save civilians, and some voices and pens consistent with the occupation have picked up this call, repeated it, and insisted on its request.

Despite the severe harm to civilians in Gaza, most of them understand the long accumulations that preceded what happened on October 2023, <>, and see them as preludes that should have led to the result that took place, and do not view the matter as irrelevant to what preceded it, as some hasty or malicious people do.

There is a reason related to the valor shown by the resistance and the impressive success it undertakes on the battlefield, which made people believe in its behavior, tighten its hand, and bond around it, in order to prove, fight and respond to aggression as a loser.

Since the Battle of Karama in 1970, the Palestinians have not achieved a victory over the Israeli army, which goes beyond mere defiance and confrontation. Many of them believe that the strategic loss that Israel has now suffered will be a major turning point in the conflict and a strong push towards the achievement of an independent and long-awaited Palestinian state for which it has paid a heavy price.

Civilians – both in Gaza and the West Bank – know the magnitude of the sacrifices made by the resistance, in sweat and blood, and believe in its devotion to the cause of their country, and therefore virility forces them to bear the harm with it, especially as they rely on it to avenge them, and most importantly to bring them closer to obtaining their inviolable rights.

Confronting collapse and uprooting

One of the reasons for the steadfastness of Palestinian civilians is that they are well following how their great sacrifices led to the restoration of their cause on the international scene, after Israel had succeeded in blowing piles of dust on it and removing it from the political equations in the region, by moving from the rule of "land for peace" to "peace for peace".

Another reason – which seems very important in terms of Palestinian psychology – is that it is the first time Palestinians have seen Israelis forced to leave their homes and live in refugee tents because of the strikes of the resistance, to taste some of what they have been doing to the Palestinian people for seventy-five years. Despite the difference in the two cases, the Palestinians are satisfied, at least, that the people will be touched by ulcers that have touched them for many years.

There are many reasons and motives for the steadfastness of the Palestinians, some of which are stable in the depths of their souls, and some of which appeared in the current aggression against them, but in any case they deserve consideration and consideration, and they deserve to be one of the brightest examples of the ability of a people to confront, challenge and confront all factors of collapse and uprooting.