The Flood of Return.. A Milestone in History

The majestic march of the displaced Palestinians towards their homes in northern Gaza was described as the “Flood of Return.” This is an accurate and profound expression, inspired by the word “Flood” that was given to the operation of October 7, 2023, and also recalled the word “Return,” which was and still is the title of the Palestinians’ suspended dream for 77 years, then some ignored and forgot it and the “Flood of Al-Aqsa” awakened it from its slumber. One of them even considered the scene of the march to be a prelude to a “rehearsal” for the great return narrated in the stories of grandmothers to Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, Lod, Ramla, Ashkelon, and Safed.

The scene was dazzling and full of evidence and messages; we know throughout the years of conflict that a significant number of Palestinians, who were destined to live, emigrated to distant exiles or to neighboring countries, and did not return to their homeland except rarely, but this is the first time that hundreds of thousands of them have been displaced against their will, and then the arrogant enemy has forced them to return to their homes after destroying them.

Not to mention that it is the first time in the history of the conflict that the Palestinian resistance launched a major attack on its own initiative against Israel on the land it had usurped, during which it bombed some of its cities and forced millions of its residents to take refuge in shelters.

It is a courageous Palestinian initiative that surpassed previous clashes with the enemy that occurred during the years of conflict. Let us not forget that we are talking about the last and most important battle that the Palestinians fought alone without any Arab aid or support, while the United States stood in the Israeli trench the entire time.

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I was struck by the words of one of the returnees who told a television reporter that he had lost everything: his wife, his three children, his job, his home, his father, his sister, and everything he owned in this world. But he was eager to return to his home to find their graves and pray for them, and then spend the rest of his life on the ruins of his home, embracing its soil and longing to rebuild it.

This reminded me of what an Israeli commentator wrote, comparing the eagerness of the Palestinians to return to their destroyed homes with the lines of Israelis crowding in front of airline offices in their attempt to leave Israel and return to their original country after months of war. He said in this regard that comparing the pictures exposes and reveals the truth, and shows the difference between the true owners of the land and the newcomers who have just arrived.

This is just a small part of what we watched and observed in Gaza during the dramatic return that astonished and surprised the world, and shocked the Israelis who were waiting for the manifestations of the “absolute victory” that their prime minister spoke of, after he promised them the complete elimination of Hamas, and the triumphant return of the prisoners with the power of the “invincible” army. But they were surprised by the shocking facts that exposed the lies and deception of their leadership.

In contrast, some writers have spoken of the latent power of the Palestinian people, who have proven to be invincible. Even the outgoing US ambassador to Israel, Jacob J. Lew, was published in The Times of Israel in a farewell interview in which he warned Israel of future changes, and that it must be aware that in the next twenty years the United States and the rest of the world will be led by generations that do not know the Holocaust or the 1967 war, but rather the current war on Gaza.

In this regard, there is no escape from admitting that Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa shed light on much of what is happening around us, Palestinian, Israeli, Arab, regional and international. This allowed us to see what was hidden or concealed on those fronts. The latent Palestinian power was surprising to us.

Israeli arrogance and euphoria also tempted some of its leaders to speak out about what was previously unspoken about us. They spoke openly about annexing the West Bank, which they had plundered, to the settlers, so that it would become part of their state, similar to the occupied Golan Heights, and about the land of Israel inhabited by the Lebanese, in addition to other beliefs that generations of Israelis were raised on, that the Arabs are the newcomers who inhabited the land of Israel.

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Our problem is not with the extremists who market myths and cling to legends to justify the occupation and its expansion. Rather, it is with the rational people who did not realize that the world after October 7th is different from the world that preceded it, and that there are tangible, fundamental changes that have appeared in the new world. Israel, which imposed on us, has a large share of those changes, and there are several indicators of that, such as its transformation into a pariah state, condemned by international justice, and pursued on the worst charges known to humanity, which is the genocide of the Palestinians.

Its senior officials and soldiers are also subject to prosecution and arrest in many countries around the world, on charges of committing war crimes, a matter that the Israeli authorities have recently realized, and have begun taking serious measures to warn them of that possibility.

We have not talked about the reactions inside Israel after the cessation of fighting, despite the controversy surrounding it, but we do not need more evidence to decide that in the world after October 7, it has become a state of ill repute among its supporters who have supported it all the time, so much so that its brutality sometimes surpassed the performance of the Nazi regime, which is a model for violating the humanity of people, especially after everyone saw it on the screens with their own eyes.

The meanings and symbols evoked by the majestic return of the displaced to their homes in northern Gaza are many, some of which go beyond the longings and dreams of return, despite their importance. Some of them relate to the role of our Arab brothers in rebuilding the Strip after the US President called for pumping their billions into rebuilding California after the fires that recently swept through it.

More importantly, the great Palestinian awakening that occurred during the Al-Aqsa Flood was considered by some to be an inspiration for the transformations of the world that followed it, in terms of daring and courage in challenging the tyrants of the forces of hegemony and injustice in the world.

This is what justifies some analysts in linking the repercussions of October 7th with the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria with all its tyranny and authority. This is the same audacity that encouraged South Africa to challenge Israel before the International Court of Justice, and forced the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and its Minister of Defense - despite international pressures and threats to the court.

It is the same one that encouraged 8 countries from the South to form an international legal group to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, in addition to other movements that declare rebellion against the tyranny of the major countries that have monopolized international decision-making since the end of World War II in the 1940s.

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From this perspective, we can say that the Al-Aqsa flood was not only a manifestation of the latent power of Palestinian nationalism in the face of Israeli aggression, but it also became a distinctive historical sign of the ability of the oppressed to challenge the forces of tyranny and arrogance in the world.

Perhaps the Islamic Revolution in Iran scored a point in this file about half a century ago, when it was launched with goals that included challenging American and Israeli hegemony, but regional and geographical circumstances did not allow the experiment to mature and bear the desired fruits at that time for reasons that would take a long time to explain and require a separate study, both internal and external.

There is an important fact that we must extract from what we see in this new world, which is that we are facing a historical circumstance with strong evidence ready to unleash the energies of rebellion against the plans that seek to form a new world order, after the flaws of the post-World War II order were exposed, which stood silently and biased towards the forces of occupation and genocide.

As for us at least, we have the right to reject and resist by all means the displacement and annexation policy of the West Bank, and even to reject the two-state solution that some promote, while the Knesset and the popularly supported Israeli right reject it. Knowing that we are not obliged to give up some of our land to adventurous strangers coming from Poland, Chicago, and elsewhere.

We have no choice but to absorb the developments of the post-October 7 world, especially after the Palestinian resistance nullified the project to occupy northern Gaza, which everyone imagined, given the axioms of the reality of the conflict since 1948, had also been stolen.

The importance of the return of displaced Palestinians to the north goes beyond the symbolism of the return itself. It establishes something else, new to us - Arabs and Palestinians - which is that it is possible to obstruct and thwart the Israeli will, and even defeat it.

It is a modern realization that we have in its meaning and its message is extremely important in the collective Arab consciousness, and that it is possible, in fact, and not a dream, (despite the heavy price) to stop an Israeli reality that aims to occupy the land, and to abort plans to redraw the map of the Middle East anew to fit the balance of power of the world before the flood of Al-Aqsa.

*Quoted from Al Jazeera Net