Dreams or Nightmares? (A Fictional Account Of Alternative Possibilities In Palestine)

17/10/23

     Drones fly over Settlement Walls, on the top of hills in modern day Samaria and Judea. Some are shot down by programmed protection, but many sail past, exploding over the illegal Settlements, causing irreparable damage, and carnage to those who came here in later years, completely happy to settle in Palestinian lands, despite the concept of Partition which could have brought a relatively fair or effective peace. There are by now thousands of illegal settlers, but today many are killed and injured in the wreckage of their ‘new’ homes. Protective soldiers and weaponry is brought to bear to protect from further damage, but significant damage is done. Arab armies are coming to join, invited to the West Bank to buttress the forces of Palestine Liberation! The survivors, who are many are offered free passage to the proper Israel border, including the injured who may travel. The right wing dreams of further colonial expansion and the creation of Lebensraum for the people of David are over. Palestine has been defended by this outrage, which the Israelis were reluctant to do for themselves by voluntarily disbanding the ‘illegal’ settlements, which have been there for so long, although many more have been built recently as the right wing of Israel see their chance to take over yet more of the land, even if disbanding would have bought them peace at an earlier stage.

9/11/23

    But on the edge of the border, which has been in place since 1948, the year of Nakba, the forced removal of many thousands of Palestinian Arabs (how many?) from their farms, houses and villages, the Arab forces stop. Their leaders know that to go further will bring all out war, a war of survival for the Israeli settlers of the last 75years. The Israelis will fight with everything to survive any final attempt of the Arabs to defeat them. Many Israelis perceive that the Arabs have learned nothing in the 75 years since their homelands were taken, but in that time the oil Kingdoms and Emirates have grown very rich, and the near Arab States of Egypt and Jordan, and Lebanon too have learned to coexist the hard way with the new Israel, which has given them a bloody nose on a few occasions. In relatively ‘normal’ times many Palestinians have worked in Israel in the fields or many other workplaces. There could be mutual benefits from coexistence and not destroying Israel. Now the Palestinian refugees have new homes, even if they are in overcrowded refugee camps, and the Israelis who took over the original partition lands are well settled. Besides it is believed that Israel does have some nuclear bombs. It is believed that some of the right wing Israelis are quite mad enough to use them against fully Palestinian targets such as the Gaza Strip, the Little town of Bethlehem, or Ramallah, Jenin or Hebron, (or perhaps Jericho once again – not for the first time in history!) Now the illegal settlements are dismantled and the illegal Jewish settlers are killed or fled. They have agreed after some debate that they will not attack the land which has become Israel. They will reach agreements with Israel. A two state solution will suffice, because it is the only way of not creating a bloodbath and achieving a practical peace. No one wants nuclear weapons to be used, and some of the Israelis are hotheaded enough to press those buttons.

   Their fellow Arab nations have, to every one’s total surprise, actually heeded the call. An army has been created of alliance and threat, poised to attack Israel further if they do not agree to a practical peace deal.

21/11/23

    “Raise your white flags. You will not be harmed, as long as you begin to walk down from these hills. There will be a bus from the main road, which will take you to West Jerusalem. You can take up residence in the crowded blocks of flats there. Or build your houses in the Negev desert. if you don’t wish to live too closely with your brothers and sisters in the crowded blocks, as we Palestinians have lived in the refugee camps of Gaza.”

     Some brave Settlers refused to leave their settlements. They should not have been surprised when Arab rockets and drones fell into their defended hilltop settlements guided by Saudi drones to the places where they hid. Snipers took them out where they were visible. The Palestinians could have expected no more when the settlers moved against Palestinian villages and even towns in the recent times of state sanctioned Settler takeovers. A sadly pathetic group of them decided finally, and just a little bit too late to surrender, rather than be killed by the Arab army. They had had their chances to leave earlier and had failed to conform, so they deserved nothing less than to be caught by the Arab guns. The commander was about to give the order to shoot them, but another officer interceded. “Sir do we really want any more blood on our hands. To shoot now is to descend to the low levels of the Israeli savages who rained bombs on our people in Gaza, and stole our lands. Can we not show them a better way?”

    The commander had lost parents and children in the bombing in Gaza, so he cared much less for Israeli life than he once had, and these were Settlers, new settlers claiming land on the West Bank, which had been declared Arab land years ago in the original partitions. As far as he knew no Jews had even lived here for many centuries. Certainly there had been none here during the years before or after the original partitions of Palestine. These settlers were greedy right wing Jews, committed to wresting these West Bank territories from Palestinian control and heritage. They were not good people. They had come here to take these lands from the families already settled here for centuries. It would be so easy to order the shots, but something, perhaps the memory of kinder Israelis in past times, or the hopes for a more constructive future without the errors of the past, made him think again. Why harm these men, had they not already been taught a great lesson, that they could not just take what was not theirs, and expect to get away with it!

(this is merely a fictional account of what might have been possible, or might be possible!)