لحظة ادراك

 .Let us bury astonishment and mourn surprise

The feeling of astonishment has died; everything has become normal, everything expected. It is no longer useful to display more surprise or to assume the role of victim in everything that happens. The Palestine for which the sessions of the United Nations General Assembly were moved from New York to Geneva in 1974, so that Yasser Arafat could deliver his speech after Washington refused him an entry visa—addressing the world with a rifle in one hand and an olive branch in the other—that Palestine has become part of a past we now merely commemorate. That was when the Palestine Liberation Organization was the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and a difficult number in the equation of war and peace, before the emergence of these manufactured alternative lineages.

So why the astonishment and amazement when we see the name of Palestine summoned to Trump’s Peace Council as a footnote rather than the main text? When the representation of an entire people is reduced to a faded image within what is called the Peace Council in its most recent meeting—one that seemed closer to a role-distribution session than to peace-making? As though displaying surprise might grant us the role of the last guardian angel of what remains of national dignity. As though we knew nothing about the matter. The surreal canvas of the entire scene was one whose first line we ourselves wrote, when we fled the hell of a war we knew how to begin but could neither resolve nor stop. Donald Trump seized the moment—with his greed, his lethal narcissism, and his administration’s alignment with the ruling right wing in Israel.

In that meeting, the problem was not merely the spoken words, but the silent language surrounding the empty chairs devoid of weight; the language of applause that changes no balance; the language of smiles that conceal an implicit acknowledgment that our place has become marginal in a narrative written without us. Palestinian representation there was an image without a shadow, a voice without an echo, a presence invoked merely so it could be said that everyone had attended—while the decision moved far away down another path.

There was nothing in that meeting that warranted surprise. Surprise was supposed to have died years ago—on the day the homeland was divided, when the language of excommunication and treason prevailed, when blood no longer retained a color capable of drawing red lines around the forbidden, when agreement began to require a miracle. Since then, representation has been in decline—not as a protocol incident, but as the logical outcome of a long trajectory of fragmentation.

The factions, opinion writers, and political actors are angry at the image emerging from Washington: at the statement, the seating arrangement, the tone of speech, even at the very naming. Accusations are hurled—who failed, who colluded, who rushed, who negotiated poorly. Yet the most painful question remains suspended in the air: are we not the ones who paved the way for this scene? Are we not the ones who presented fragmented credentials and a shattered national decision on a silver platter?

It is not self-flagellation to say that what we have reached is the fruit of our own hands. History does not leap in a vacuum; it is a connected chain of successive wrong decisions that produce great disappointments. When the political decision was divided, the image was divided. When references multiplied and clashed, authority itself was lost. When factions act as though they are the state, the very idea of the state erodes. Those who unilaterally decided on war yesterday have brought us to where we are today.

In this vacuum, Donald Trump—prompted by Benjamin Netanyahu—found his widest space. Trump, who views the region through the language of deals rather than rights, understood early on that division was not incidental but an opportunity. He read the cracks as one reads maps and built his policies on a simple rule: if the house is divided, negotiating with each room separately is easier than negotiating with the house as a whole. Thus division transformed from an internal problem into an external pressure tool; from a national crisis into a lever that sees in Palestine nothing but a clause—open to redrafting and recycling.

When Palestinian representation in Trump’s Peace Council is reduced to something personal and symbolic, it is not only because the world has changed, but because we failed to keep pace with change through a unified house. Diplomacy, like war, requires a clear decision-making center and a single narrative advancing steadily. When narratives multiply within one house, the outside world sees only contradiction and hears nothing but grinding without flour.

Factional tension is understandable. The feeling of political humiliation is real; the sense of marginalization justified. But turning anger into mutual accusation without deep self-review is merely a continuation of the same path that led us here. It is unwise to revolt against the outcome while preserving the causes. Whether willingly or under duress, we handed over our elements of weakness to whoever cared to use them: our division, our disputes, our struggles over legitimacy. Our discourses diverged and were left to become investable political material. When the Peace Council convened, others had no choice but to deal with the reality we ourselves created—a reality that neither speaks nor negotiates nor holds accountable with a unified will.

The decline of representation is not merely a performance error but a structural crisis—a structure in which decision is distributed, responsibility scattered, achievement attributed to one side, and failure shared by all. In such a structure, it becomes easy for the outside world to set the ceiling of our presence, to place us on the margins at will, and to summon us to the center only for the sake of optics.

The feeling of astonishment died because we became accustomed to the scene: accustomed to being surprised and then forgetting, to becoming angry and then retreating, to writing loud statements and then returning to the square of silence. Each time this happens, what remains of the dignity of representation erodes, as does people’s trust in their leadership’s ability to safeguard their position. Most dangerous of all, the Palestinian public now clearly sees what the factions refuse to admit: what happened in the last meeting is not an isolated slip, but a station on a long path of decline. The real tension is not only among factions but between them and the street, which asks how long representation will remain hostage to disputes, and how long the national decision will remain divided among narrow factional calculations.

Self-review is not weakness; it is the precondition for reclaiming position. Acknowledging that we helped shape this reality does not absolve others of responsibility; it restores our capacity to act. The world respects only those who respect their own unity and deals as equals only with those who own their decision. Perhaps it is time to break the cycle—to move from the logic of accusation to the logic of evaluation. How do we rebuild a representation worthy of the name Palestine? How do we mend trust among factions and between them and the people? How do we prevent the repetition of a scene in which an entire people—with all its sacrifices—is reduced to a faded image inside a meeting hall?

The feeling of astonishment has died, yes—but the sense of responsibility has not. It is still possible, if the will exists, to turn all this anger into an opportunity for rebuilding rather than another round of recrimination.

The cause is bigger than a council, bigger than a meeting, bigger than a photograph. The cause is Palestine’s place in a world that shows no mercy to the weak and does not wait for the hesitant. If we wish to return to the main text rather than the margins, we must begin where we erred—at home first. Only then might the feeling of astonishment return—not because we are surprised by marginalization, but because we no longer accept it.