How blood-red is my homeland: Reflections of a Palestinian-Pakistani

It has been a year since the horrific genocide of my brethren in Palestine began, yet in the face of the irrefutable human suffering and infrastructural devastation, Israel’s Western sponsors have been hell-bent on proving the conflict burst forth with the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, unashamedly belying the years of systemic oppression and violence that predate it.

The truth of the matter is that it began in 1947 when the Zionist agenda of establishing the state of Israel by erasing the state of Palestine took hold. Palestinians have been facing massacres and brutality at the hands of Israeli occupation for 76 years now.

Great masses of Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia began settling in Palestine after the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which was in simple terms a promise from the British government at the time to facilitate the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people".

To create a new state where one already existed, Palestinians were massacred by the Zionists. At least 78% of Palestine was occupied, 530 villages and cities were destroyed, thousands were killed in mass atrocities and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee the country.

Around 750,000 Palestinians were forcefully expelled from their homes during the near-complete destruction of the state of Palestine between 1947 and 1948. My paternal family was among those who fled to Lebanon during the Nakba.

For those who stayed behind and refused to give up their homeland, the price has been catastrophic, as we have witnessed in this ongoing genocide that has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, most of them innocent children, and injured more than 100,000.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombed residential areas, schools, and hospitals without any regard. The massacre at the Al-Tabin School, which housed 2,400 displaced Palestinians, was maybe the most horrific example of the killing of innocent civilians. On the bloody ground, people frantically ran around looking for their children, as seen in videos after the bombing.

Sumaya Abu Ajwa was beyond devastated when she found her two foster daughters, 16-year-old Nuseiba and 14-year-old Retaj, dead, with Nuseiba’s body torn in two pieces and Retaj succumbing to wounds.

The nearby al-Ahli Arab Hospital, bombed months ago, functioned partially, with no burn ward. It was in no way equipped to handle the hundreds of injured people. The healthcare system of the occupied territory has been brought to ashes with relentless bombardment of hospitals. Among them was the largest medical complex in Gaza, the Al-Shifa Hospital.

As of now, only 17 hospitals in Gaza are functioning, that too partially due to the Israeli blockade of medical supplies. A severe lack of supplies has forced doctors to perform major surgeries without anaesthesia. According to new data, 65% of the insulin needed and half the amount of blood required by patients has been blocked from reaching Gaza.

WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic, in a statement, said that more than 10,000 "need to receive specialized medical care outside of Gaza. These people cannot wait".

A blockade of humanitarian aid is preventing 83% of food from reaching the strip, leaving half a million civilians at risk of starvation. 50,000 children aged between 6 to 59 months need urgent treatment for malnutrition.

Aside from starvation, disease and death, Palestinians also face sexual abuse from IDF soldiers. Horrific and disturbing video footage showed the gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner by guards at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev desert, southern Israel. The video was verified by Al Jazeera.

As for the Palestinians forced to become refugees in neighbouring countries, loss of contact with family members in their homeland, a gash in their identity as Palestinians, and survivor’s guilt became the price for living detached from the homeland.

As a Palestinian raised in Pakistan, I have often been told that I’m not Palestinian. The reasons are that I didn’t grow up in my paternal homeland, or an Arab country for that matter, and I don’t speak Arabic fluently. But, as I grew up, I realised that my situation was no different than war refugees anywhere in the world. We are raised in other countries, speak their languages and are denied our true nationality because of that.

My father came to Pakistan after both his legs were broken in the Israel-Lebanon war of 1982. He joined the Palestinian liberation movement and political party, Al-Fatah, as a soldier in his teenage years. When he was 15 years old, the first Israel-Lebanon war broke out after the IDF invaded Lebanon and occupied the southern territories. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), composed of many Palestinian parties, mainly of Fatah, engaged in armed resistance against the Israeli occupation.

My father was injured during the intense IDF bombardment of Beirut, where PLO soldiers were under heavy fire. A sniper targeted him with a rocket that struck the pillar he was using for cover. The impact shattered the pillar, sending debris crashing down on him, crushing his legs, and driving metal rods into his hip, dislocating the joint.

He ended up needing 37 surgeries in countries including Romania, Cyprus, and Germany, to reconstruct his hip joint and femur bone. The last of his operations took place in Karachi, Pakistan, which finally helped him walk again. My father has 97 screws in his left leg, and 33 in his right. He can only slightly bend his legs at the knees, and can’t run.

Later, he chose to stay in Pakistan to pursue a degree in engineering and married my late mom, Fouzia. He only visited Lebanon twice in the years after that, since PLO members had been driven out of the country after the 1982 war.

I have never visited my family in Tyre, Lebanon, due to my father's fears that we would be unsafe there.

The country’s current situation proves him right, as the IDF recently executed explosions of thousands of handheld devices, including pagers, walkie-talkie radios, mobile phones, laptops, and solar power cells.

These explosions mainly targeted Tyre, where most of my relatives live. The explosions reportedly targeted Hezbollah members, yet hundreds of civilians were killed, and thousands injured. The explosions were proof of the Israeli military’s blatant disregard for innocent civilians — only to kill a single Hezbollah member. Their latest tactic has been branded “terrorism” even by ex-CIA Director Leon Panetta.

At least 2,011 people have been killed and 9,535 have been wounded following the relentless bombing of Gaza, Turkey's Anadolu Agency reported citing local authorities. The offensive that has now indiscriminately expanded in the region has displaced at least 1.2 million Lebanese, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Among those murdered by Israel in Lebanon was four-year-old Naya Ghazi — loved online for her cute videos with hairdresser Hasan Kriek — who has been missing and presumed dead after her home was hit by an Israeli airstrike. Maya Gharib, a bride-to-be, was also killed along with her entire family. A UN worker Dina Darwiche and her youngest son, Jad, also became collateral damage in Israel’s airstrikes.

Throughout an entire year of the genocide, major powers of the world turned a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians, and yet, I feel more support from the common public around the world than ever before. Despite censorship that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg has admitted to, Palestinian journalists like Motaz Azaiza and Bisan Owda documented gut-wrenching atrocities on social media.

Various celebrities openly called for a ceasefire, including those from Hollywood and other parts of the world, as well as supermodel Hadid sisters, who are Palestinians themselves. Large protests were carried out across major cities in the world.

Thousands of students in the United States stood their ground in the face of threats of expulsion and demanded that 130 universities and colleges financially divest from Israel. A poll from CBS shows that 61% of Americans want their government to stop arming Israel.

As I worry for my family in Beirut and Tyre, I applaud the courageous people around the globe who have made our demand for a free Palestine a global chant and hope for the suffering of Palestinians to end soon.

Maryam Al-ainain is a staffer at Geo.tv. She posts on X @MaryamNasi17291

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer's own and don't necessarily reflect Geo.tv's editorial policy.

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