Al-Qalam 
It is the end of the second week of the Gaza truce, and our screens are finally silent. The stream of bloody videos has been replaced with joyous images of prisoners reuniting with their families, most of them after decades.
Hamas has finally emerged from the tunnels, pristinely clad and perhaps with even greater power and popularity than before October 7.
The thousands of Palestinians returning to their homes in North Gaza are a testament to the iron will of a people who belong to the land and to whom the land belongs.
Although most Palestinians have lost everything in this war, they have not lost faith. If anything, this war has not dampened the resistant will of the Palestinian people; it has hardened it. They have defeated the world’s greatest superpower and its allies and a nuclear state armed often with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and empty bellies and a league of arab nations which turned its back on them. For 15 months, Palestine solidarity activists tried everything in their power to bring an end to the atrocities. Boycotts, marches, pickets, demonstrations, embargoes and the like took place. And to what end? How effective were these actions ultimately? Did they stop a single bomb from falling? Did they bring the Israeli captives home? Did they bring about the release of Palestinian prisoners or stop Israel from annexing (a word which here means stealing) more land from the Occupied West Bank? Did these actions move the Biden administration to pressure Israel? Did these actions move Trump to pressure Israel into ending the war? Did it lead to the arrests of the war criminals of the wicked and wild west?
It is an arguable question. Of course, these actions were meaningful. But the question is, to whom? Certainly not the Palestinians. They didn’t need us. They didn’t need us then, and they won’t need us in the future. These actions were meaningful to us, the activists.
The Palestinians opened our eyes to our larger responsibility to ensure freedom and justice. We learnt that solidarity is not about empty words but about sustained action and commitment to a cause. We learnt that we were all engaged in a battle between good and evil, and we figured out who the bad guys were. Hint: it rhymes with ‘fail’.We realised that although our powers to create change were limited, it did not mean that we shouldn’t use them. We learnt that we are amongst a shrinking minority of people who were able to differentiate truth from falsehood, and we learnt that merely showing pity is not a form of solidarity and that we had to take practical, pragmatic steps to truly be in solidarity with Palestinians. We learnt that when we unite over a common cause, we are stronger, and that strength frightens our enemies. We learnt that the world is indeed divided into good and evil, and we must choose a side because we will be questioned by our children and grandchildren when they will ask the inevitable question: well, what did you do about it?
The majority of the world turned its back on Palestine for years before the 2023 war began. Once the dust has settled, they may well do so again until the next one begins because it will. Currently, Israel is licking its wounds in a side street in Tel Aviv and plotting its next move. But until then, we keep moving, we keep striving. The job is not done until we see the complete dismantling of the zionist state and the decolonisation of Palestine. Fortunately, we will have the Palestinians right there by our side, helping us do this.
Z. Khan Durban, Morningside
