Palestine and the Arab world danced, cheered and wept, from Rabat to Baghdad and from the islands of the moon to Lebanon, out of joy over the victory of the young talent Mohammed Assaf, one of the residents of the Khan Younis camp. He won the Voice of Palestine with a song of Palestine and sang of the symbols of unity and steadfastness, and he raised the kufiya and the Palestinian flag high.
I will not hide from you: when I watched the video of the victory episode, I could hardly hold back the urge to cry in my eyes. Yes, the tear rolled down my cheeks out of joy and rapture. My chest expanded, my body shuddered, and I was overcome by a feeling I cannot depict when I saw the masses of my steadfast people in Ramallah and Haifa, in Gaza and Nazareth, in the camps of Lebanon and in Amman dance for joy over the victory of a son of Palestine.
Mohammed Assaf sang and danced, and the Palestinian people wept, and the masses of the Dad from ocean to gulf supported him for restoring dignity to Palestine. Sixty-five years, and the Palestinian camp everywhere raises the flag high and struggles for dignity, national rights and self-determination. And here is the son of the camp, head held high with his resounding voice, uniting the people that factions of its political leaderships had torn to shreds and robbed of its dignity and self-respect.
Mohammed Assaf restored dignity to his people and his homeland after they had tasted the bitter flavor of humiliation and degradation over the past 22 years and still do. The people of Palestine were humiliated when its influential leadership was marched to the conference of selling the cause in Madrid, gave up the unity of the people and the homeland, and joined as a minor party in the Jordanian delegation – and thus began the march of humiliation that brought us to the abyss and inflicted on us the national destruction we live today.
With its reckless policy, the influential leadership of the PLO humiliated the symbols of the Palestinian people led by Dr. Haider Abdel Shafi when it opened the door to the secret negotiations with the Zionists in Oslo behind the back of the official delegation and signed the document of selling the homeland in the courtyard of the stronghold of colonialism in Washington, offering the Intifada of dignity and its leadership as a sacrifice on the altar of colonialism. And it did not stop there, but signed the Paris economic agreement that tied our people's sustenance to the occupier, opened its markets to the goods of the criminal Zionist, harmed the national industry and agriculture, destroyed them, broke the backbone of the national economy, and forced us to live on begging and to watch day after day how our farmers' dignity is trampled under the feet of the Zionist colonizers.
The influential leadership gave up, for unnamed things, the greater part of our homeland and forgot Jerusalem and the Jerusalemites, the camp and the refugees – all this for a trivial VIP card controlled by it, and by its effect, by a small Zionist soldier. The influential leadership gave up the United Nations resolutions that consider our land occupied, seized land, and the land of Palestine became disputed land ... What shame and disgrace!
By giving up our national rights and our dignity, they opened the door wide for colonial expansion in occupied Palestine. The Zionists build the settlements, and one sees those who claim patriotism fighting over the chair of a demolished throne!
The people of false patriotism play a game called “state and government” that has no power even over the air they breathe. They revel in the positions, villas and privileges for themselves and their families, while our brave prisoners languish in the occupation's prisons. They flock from one salon to another and scurry from one futile negotiation to another, while the dignity of our people's sons is trampled daily underfoot at the Zionist checkpoints. They revel in resistance and leave Naelin and Ain al-Hilweh and Yarmouk and Jerusalem and Haifa alone to struggle for Palestinian dignity.
A thousand greetings to you, son of the Khan Younis camp, son of the steadfast people – with your throat and your kufiya you restored dignity to all of us and united us under the flag of Palestine after the feet of the new claimants of patriotism in Gaza trampled it. Yes, our flag, the flag of Palestine, is white, green, red and black, and not what some call for. Our flag is not only green!
You gave us back, Mohammed Assaf, the kufiya that some exchanged for the suit and the headscarf.
Yes, you proved to every reckless merchant that the camp and the refugee are a symbol of steadfastness, defiance and Palestinian honor, and are not a commodity traded in the halls of luxury hotels.
You gave us back the unity of the people that was torn to shreds, its land, for sham governments and ministries.
Congratulations to you, you who raise the flame of national art, the banner of Palestinian dignity raised before you by Mahmoud Darwish, Edward Said, al-Asheqeen, Rasheed Hussein, Ismail Shamout, Tawfiq Ziyad and thousands of Palestinian artists and writers who still defend with their art our national identity and the unity of our people and our land, Palestine.
