Defeat: It is when a sister returns to her younger siblings with swollen feet and empty plate after standing for long hours at the door of a charitable organization.
Absolute defeat: It is when a father rushes out of the house, breathless, searching for a way to save his family from danger and returns on a tired donkey cart, exhausted, only to find them under the rubble. He then screams in the void: Oh God, they died hungry.
Victory: It is when a man wins over a human crowd gathered around a relief truck to secure a sack of flour.
Absolute victory: It is when you see a daughter dancing happily as she sees her father returning with the sack of flour on his shoulder. Two hours later, she brags about him to her friend at the tent nearby: “Papa is a hero!”
Alliances: It is when a group of young men come together at night to shield one among them whose mission is to climb onto the truck and snatch a sack of flour from the jaws of the devil.
Negotiations: It is when a mother tries to convince her children to sleep without dinner, but they refuse and protest by sticking to the ground. It is then when the father steps in to mediate and succeeds in convincing all five of them to share a single loaf of bread. Only plain bread.
Temporary truce: It is when the children endure their hunger and stop crying at least until morning.
Permanent truce: It is when the children die of hunger and stop disturbing the world.
Diplomacy: It is a vague, flexible concept. It is not bigger than a palm. The immoral world wraps it tightly while it watches such shocking scenes and hides it somewhere in the lower part of a naked body of the truth.
Dr. Said Muhammad Al-Kahlout
Psychologist & Writer
Gaza, Palestine
14/6/2025
