Amid turmoil in Gaza from Israeli attacks and the spread of the coronavirus, Haider Eid shares a celebration of Palestinian life and resistance.

Palestinians find inspiration in the first anti-apartheid movement and other struggles against settler colonialism in their call for BDS and secular democracy in historic Palestine.

The Israeli government’s goal is clear: establish an apartheid regime through annexing parts of the West Bank, and liquidate the Palestinian cause all together. Haidar Eid discusses what Palestinian political strategy should be in this moment.

Mahmoud Abbas declared that the Palestinians are ending all agreements with Israel and the US. But a real break from the Oslo Accords would also include ending the fiction of the two-state solution.

Haidar Eid writes, “In Gaza, staying at home leads to some existential questions and deep soul searching. With time to reflect, I am tempted to cross that invisible thin line separating fiction from reality. The real world of occupation, blockade, apartheid, settler-colonialism, and coronavirus on the one hand, and on the other, the imaginary world of my favorite authors.”

The myth that the Palestinians keep “missing opportunities” for peace is being revived from Jared Kushner, to Tony Blair, to Mohammed bin Salman.

Roger Waters on the importance of international solidarity with Palestinians: “The aim … is to focus world attention on the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza in the hope that the scales will fall from the eyes of all, ordinary, decent people round the world, that they may see the enormity of the crimes that have been committed, and demand that their governments bring all possible pressure to bear on Israel to lift the siege.”

Haidar Eid writes, images of an entire family killed in an airstrike in Gaza while they slept will haunt Palestinians for generations to come. “We will tell our remaining children about this heinous massacre the same way our parents and grandparents told us about the Deir Yassin massacre.”

Jared Kushner told a conference of business leaders in Saudi Arabia that, “Israel is not the cause of all the suffering of the Palestinian people.” Haider Eid says Kushner’s combination of racism, Orientalism, and colonialism can only be described as “Palestinophobia.”

Haidar Eid discusses teaching Ghassan Kanafani’s The Land of Sad Oranges to students in Gaza. He says it not only provides insights into the tragic loss of the Nakba, but raises questions of what justice means today.