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What Kushner and Bin Salman don’t understand

June 26, 2018 at 1:23 pm

Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman (L), Trump’s son-in-law and Senior Advisor Jared Kushner (C) and his wife Ivanka Trump (R) [PressTV]

“If only we could run away and fly with the kites,” sang Fairouz in one of her oldest songs, 50 years ago. Of course, never did she, or the Rahbani brothers who wrote those words, or even the masses who heard her sing these words and sang along to the melodies of Philemon Wehbe, think that a point in time would pass over the Arabs during which the kite that “the Moon’s Neighbour” sang to would become a firearm intimidating Israel.

Israel carries out 9 airstrikes in Gaza, in response to kites - Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Israel carries
out 9 airstrikes in Gaza, in response to kites – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

These kites even harm Israel, which has become accustomed to sleeping comfortably, indifferent to the efforts of some of its supposed enemies to build strategic balance, as they call it. They were also indifferent to the efforts of others to rank the highest on the list of the largest arms purchasers in the world.

A few sticks, paper, thread, and dough will suffice for their hearts to soar in the skies of the country, is probably what the children of Palestinian refugees said to themselves at two historical turning points. Each of these points were significant in the context of the conflict with the Israelis.

The first point followed the Nakba, when they busied themselves with handmade toys in compensation for their deprivation of entertainment, along with the most basic necessitates of life, in the refugee camps.

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The second came 70 years later, in coincidence with the return marches. During this time, they discovered that the components of these same kites they made were sufficient to a certain extent, albeit with minor modifications, to compensate for their lack of warplanes exhausted by the bombing of their Syrian brothers in Homs, Aleppo, and Idlib, their Yemeni brothers in Sana’a, Taiz, and Hudaydah, their Libyan brothers in Tripoli, Derna and Ajdabiya, or their Iraqi brothers in Mosul, Falluja and Ramadi, as well as many other brothers who are attacked in many other Arab towns, too many to list here.

Fairouz did tell us early on that “the glaring anger is coming and I am sure of it, from everywhere, it will come riding the steeds of fear,” in her song Zahrat Al-Madaen (A flower among cities), also written and composed by the Rahbani brothers.

However, no one would have expected for the fire of Israel’s steel planes to be responded to with fire carried by Palestinian kites. The invaders are unable to stop these fires from devouring the stolen fields and farms. This is occurring in an era that is mainly politically characterised by the rush of Arab governments to buy Israel’s satisfaction and approval, even if Jerusalem, with its mosques, churches and history, is the price.

This astonishing Palestinian invention, reminiscent of Vietnam’s Viet Cong revolutionary tactics in the battle against the American and French occupation in South Vietnam, seems to be a little too complex for the “deal of the century” heroes to understand its meaning and connotations. The main heroes are young men who believe that everything can be bought and sold, including the right of the people to freedom, the blood of their people, and their homeland, both land and sanctities.

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The American envoy, Jared Kushner, who was born about a decade after the defeat of the Americans in Vietnam, and spent his youth busy amassing money, is now coming to the region’s pockets, thinking, along with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and his Emirati counterpart Mohammed bin Zayed, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, that the state of weakness, division and fragmentation suffered by Palestinians, and Arabs in general, is a golden opportunity to force them to accept what they refused to accept for the past seven decades.

They think that a few billion dollars can force the Palestinians to accept the Judaisation of Jerusalem and to change the direction of their compass to point to northern Sinai and eastern Jordan instead of Yaffa, Lod, Ramleh, and Nazareth.

With its Great Return marches and its flaming kites Gaza says they are wrong. This will echo in Ramallah in the form of chants that warn the weak against engaging in the disgraceful deal, either by means of collusion or under the pretext of not being able to confront it. This is a message for Kushner and his Arab friends. If they cannot understand it today, then the experience is awaiting them in order to teach them in the future what their ancestors learned in the past, but what they didn’t learn.

This article first appeared in Arabic in The New Khaleej on 24 June 2018.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.