The State of Palestine
Recognition of a Palestinian state,
an act of cartography, drawing lines
on an idea that no longer corresponds.
It will take 100 trucks 21 years
to clear the poisoned debris.
The territory a geological stratum
of pulverized life, fifty million tons
of concrete, bone, and memory –
a landscape where the future is canceled,
and the past systematically erased.
The West Bank is dominated by settlers.
O’ Urushalim.
To speak of a state upon this ground
is to grant a title deed to a ghost.
A diplomatic séance, a collective agreement
hallucinating a political entity into being –
where rubble and the spectral absence
of 65,344 lives remain at the last count.
10,000 identified Hamas and Islamic Jihad,
Meaning 80 per cent of civilians killed.
The very premise is a fracture in logic:
you cannot grant a birth certificate
to a corpse on the autopsy table.
This is obscene when measured
against sanctioned legal obligations:
The state of Israel must stop the killing,
and make full reparation for the harm
and damage caused to Palestinians.
Recognition doesn’t acknowledge genocide;
it’s a smokescreen, a theatre of concern
staged by the very powers whose weapons,
whose vetoes, whose calculated inaction
manufactured the void it now pretends to fill.
The magician’s gesture. The flourish
of an empty hand that draws the eye
away from the mechanism of genocide
and the ensuing duty of humanity.
World leaders speak of a two-state solution,
while extermination operates in present tense.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s
four distribution sites in militarized zones
(open for as little as eight minutes at a time)
saw 1,373 Palestinians killed seeking food,
American contractors responsible for some –
This is not aid,
but a weaponized process of humiliation.
The recognition of a phantom state
is the perfect alibi for accomplices.
Governments pose as champions of rights
while bombs continue to complicity fall –
allies pull triggers on starving civilians,
and contracts for munitions remain in force.
It is a moral laundering operation,
washing blood from the ledger
with the ink of a diplomatic communiqué.
A firewall of plausible deniability, to say,
“Look at us! We are bold and have acted!”,
while the genocide, with its established
actus reus and mens rea, grinds forward.
The legal obligation is crystal clear:
the Genocide Convention demands prevention,
The International Court of Justice ordered
unhindered aid to the starving and
the erga omnes duty requires by all means
to stop the slaughter, secure accountability.
Recognition doesn’t appear on the list.
It’s a substitute; a placebo offered instead
of the surgery of direct action:
arms embargo, the medicine of sanctions,
and the long-term therapy of restitution.
Instead a discussion of architectural plans
for a city takes place while the city is burning,
refusing to acknowledge the foundation must
first be cleared of corpses buried in rubble.
Who needs a a phantom lever pulled
to give the illusion of hope and control
when it is connected to nothing but
the echo chamber of diplomatic self-congratulation.
For what is a state without a people
capable of self-determination
on their perceived ancestral land?
The destruction of Al Basma IVF clinic,
a direct hit and five liquid nitrogen tanks
exploded – 5,000 embryos obliterated
long before they saw the sun:
a calculated act to prevent even birth.
O’ Palestinian women, mothers of the earth.
Maternal morbidity has drastically surged,
neonatal and intrapartum death increased,
and post-trauma in impossible conditions:
no space, no medication, no equipment –
Targeted sexual and reproductive violence,
an unimaginable burden to bear:
maintaining menstrual hygiene without water,
caring for newborns without baby formula,
protecting children in circumstances
designed to exterminate life.
The West’s performative feminism
evaporates when confronted with this reality;
its concern for women’s rights proves
conditional – a privilege reserved for those
whose suffering doesn’t implicate allies.
The education system has been obliterated.
462 school buildings damaged, 80 fully destroyed,
a deliberate attack on the intellectual
and cultural reproduction of a people.
Heritage and religious sites bombed.
The Great Omari Mosque; the Anthedon Harbor –
a gateway to antiquity; the Roman cemetery;
the Al Pasha Palace Museum. More than half
of Gaza’s heritage we’ll never see again.
This is not a fog of war but clear intent.
Enabled in this vacuum of gathered evidence –
there’s no Palestinian future in this place.
The continuing invocation of Amalek states
a history erased and an unlivable land.
To recognize a state after this annihilation
is to agree to recognize a phantom idea –
a people stripped of past and future potential,
implicitly absolving the perpetrators of duty:
to stop the killing, to stop the destruction,
to provide restitution and satisfaction.
The true map of a state that doesn’t exist
is drawn by paths of two million displaced.
Its borders are the walls of a dog cage
where a mother and her four sons take shelter.
Its monuments the cohorts of child amputees.
Its archives are the records of thousands
of cancer patients left to die.
Its economy is the picking of hubeiza leaves
from contaminated soil. Its sovereignty violated
a thousand times daily by the sniper’s bullet
and the contractor’s shots, killing children
who are holding up white flags.
To recognize this state is to refuse
to call out genocide occurring in the ‘Holy Land’.
It’s the final act of complicity: to grant a name
to the silence that follows the explosion –
quadcopters killing women and children –
and to the void where a civilization once stood,
disappearing before our eyes while
the requirements of international law
are replaced by meaningless political gestures.
This is the astonishing state of Palestine.
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– More from Skendong: Laid Bare – Ancient Prophesy
Truly powerful – Angels wept!