From the Oslo dream to the displacement trap

author

Ahmed Younes Shaheen

For more than three decades, specifically in the mid-nineties following the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Gaza Strip experienced an overwhelming wave of optimism and high hopes that prompted thousands of expatriates and displaced people to pack their bags and return to their homeland, carrying their life’s savings and dreams of building a “Singapore of the Middle East.” That era witnessed the opening of Gaza International Airport and the establishment of institutions of the National Authority. The returnees invested their money in the construction of residential towers, hotels, and strategic commercial projects, and they built homes. They thought that it would be a sustainable safe haven for their children and grandchildren, and although life in Gaza throughout the following years was not devoid of the tragedies of the land, sea and air blockade and repeated rounds of military escalation, the Gazans remained clinging to the passion for life. Their universities were graduating thousands of engineers, doctors and innovators annually, and emerging technological projects were imposing themselves globally, and the seashores and cafes were crowded with noise and laughter to escape the harshness of reality. Devoting the concept of human steadfastness at its finest, until the events of October 7th constituted a resounding earthquake unprecedented in modern Palestinian history. During two continuous years of a war of genocide and mass destruction, in which thousands of tons of explosives and systematic belts of fire were used, entire residential neighborhoods were leveled to the ground, and extended families and roots were completely erased from the civil registry, as the war machine did not target the fighters, but rather targeted in depth and with planning all the features of civilian life. The Gaza Strip witnessed A comprehensive and systematic destruction of infrastructure, including water networks, electricity and roads, and the demolition included cultural and historical monuments and old towns.And its mosques that had stood for centuries. In a malicious and intentional move, the occupation focused its bombing on the educational system, destroying ancient universities such as Al-Azhar University and the Islamic University. Hundreds of internationally protected schools were turned into rubble or burning shelters, in a clear attempt to commit the crime of “erasing knowledge” and depriving the people of Gaza of their basic right to education, and ignorant of an entire generation in order to break its will and future aspirations, so that the Gazan citizen suddenly finds himself... Deprived of all the elements of humanity, he runs among the rubble of his home and overcrowded shelter centers, not looking for reconstruction, a state, or a professional ambition. Rather, his daily battle is limited to securing a sip of polluted water, a scarce piece of bread, or a worn-out tent to protect him and his family from the cruelty of repeated forced displacement from one place to another under the sound of shells. This ongoing tragic reality has created a deep psychological rift and a deep existential shock in the collective consciousness, which made the greatest wish possible. The goal of hopes is transformed in a dramatic and painful way. After the dream was once “return, stability, and reclamation of the homeland,” today it has turned into “emigration and flight” towards any spot in this vast world that grants their children a simple and natural right to safety, education, and simple basic health care, so that queues coordinating travel and the exhausting search for safe passages or exit visas have become the prevailing scene for an entire generation that has come to see in departure and asylum the only lifeline and the last alternative to the scourge of death and oblivion, from which nothing remains of their childhood memories and homes but ashes. And the rubble, so that these sad wishes for migration and departure meet, in a bitter irony that melts hearts with pain, with forced displacement, which represents an old dream and a political plan.The Israeli occupation seeks to achieve it systematically and militarily by all brutal means, with the aim of emptying the land of its inhabitants and rightful owners and turning Gaza into an area inhospitable to human habitation.