Australian journalist and spokesperson for UNICEF James Elder spoke this week in a press conference shortly after leaving Gaza: “I’m furious that Christmas is likely going to bring increased savagery and attacks as the world is distracted by its own, you know, love and goodwill.”
The irony of hell unleashing in the birthplace of Christ himself is not lost on many of us. Christmas festivities across Palestine have been cancelled, and even at a distance it feels almost impossible to find spirited joy in celebrating as violence rages on in Gaza and the West Bank. “Peace on Earth” falls more than a little flat this year while impunity floats lightly.
Before the current crisis, Palestinians lived through occupation and oppression with a mindboggling determination and enduring spirit that one day things will be better — an oxymoronic condition of “pessoptimism” (al-mutasha’il), named by Palestinian writer Emile Habiby in 1974, and explained by the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said as “a great feeling … to wake up in the morning and say: ‘Well, they didn’t bump me off'”.
Through this 75-day nightmare, Gazans have held on with spirit, solidarity, courageousness and sumud — steadfastness in sticking to the land like the roots of an olive tree — most of us outside can barely begin to understand. In Gaza in 2020, a medical colleague, Dr Salah*, described it to me as such: “Even though we are cursing the life of Gaza, under siege, under blockade. But when death is coming, we catch the life. Because the life is beautiful.” But even endurance has its limits, and the olive trees are losing grip.
My friend Mahmoud*, a university professor, messages: “We struggle to remain alive and resilient. Keep me in your thoughts.” Immediately after, he asks for assistance to evacuate to Australia.
Mohammed, a paediatrician, writes: “When my family members were released naked and barefoot, they had to walk two miles on the rubble to get to the shelter which Israel bombed just now. I should evacuate. I’m losing my kids. Mentally and physically.”
Many Gazans have started looking outside, including to Australia, for hope, peace and life. It is torturous for those who have arrived at this mindset to leave behind their homeland and loved ones, alive or dead, while there are no guarantees of being granted visas or permitted to cross the border into Egypt.
Eman,* a primary care doctor, asks: “Can I request your support in following my visa application from your side? I’m sorry for asking. I’m trying to hold on to any glimmer of hope.”
Ahmed, a taxi driver, pleads: “If you can send me coordination from your country for our exit from Gaza to Australia, you will save our lives from death — me, my wife, my little daughter. I am very sorry for asking you.”
In 2007, not long before his death, revered Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish described the ebbs and flows of pessoptimism through hope:
Without hope we are lost. The hope must spring from simple things. From the splendour of nature, from the beauty of life, from their fragility. One may forget the essential things occasionally, if only to keep the mind healthy. It is hard to speak of hope at this time. That would look as if we were ignoring history and the present. As though we were looking at the future in severance from what is happening at this moment. But in order to live, we must invent hope by force.
“Please don’t apologise,” I find myself writing back to my friends. “We will keep doing whatever we can.”
As a baby boy is laid in the manger in Bethlehem, in the West Bank, wrapped in a keffiyeh in the rubble, my good friend Mohannad messages from his rain-soaked Gazan tent: “We are still vivacious with high spirits, no matter what.”
*Names have been changed
