It was a typical November Wednesday at Egypt’s Port-Said. The year was 1869, and the wind picked up against three stands erected outlooking the water onto the mediterranean sea. French empress Eugénie just inaugurated the Suez Canal. Lovingly dubbed “the artery of prosperity for Egypt and the world”, the canal connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and goes on to become one of the world’s most heavily used shipping routes.
Britain and France had bought majority shares of the e Suez Canal Company and were given a 99 year lease on the canal. Several nations such as Egypt, Turkey, Britain and France also agreed under the 1888 Convention of Constantinople that every country should have free navigation of the canal despite any ongoing periods of war or peace. Meanwhile, Zionism and the Holocaust in a post World War II world 1945 was continually ensuring that Jews were descending upon Palestine in droves and expelling the local populace. Soon after, in 1948 during the Nakba (“disaster” or “catastrophe” in Arabic) the Israeli military raped, pillaged and killed Palestinians, leading to the permanent displacement of over 700,000 indigenous people.
Fast forward to 2023, and bed-bug infested France as well as Britain and its stepchild, the United States of America among many “weaker” players like Canada, all have their eyes pointed at approximately 228 kilometers west of the canal- and into Northern Gaza. The nations await with bated breath to accept all the money and influence to be generated from the absolute annihilation of its people.
image © Hatem Ali/AP
With a population of 2 million people out of which 80 percent were dependent on aid, fifty percent of this heavily populated Gaza strip are children. Walking through the 365 kilometer squared area, you may not immediately be able to see the marred wounds in a society of early childhood PTSD. You will however undeniably see fully loaded machine guns and acts of terrorism as an every-day atrocity for the people monitored by the Israelis who are wardens of the world’s largest open air prison. Seventy five years of torture and tyrrany, and you could still argue that the absolutely incredible hearts of Plaestinians have always been more free than the rest of the world. What is free is also an unshakable belief and goodness.
The most recent and intense carpet bombing of Gaza in 2023 is where the United Nations and several nations of the world turned a blind eye to the massacre taking place. Mothers and fathers had to display body parts of their children, blasted due to relentless carpet bombing – in front of half a dozen cameras before the world began paying attention the way it does right at this moment. The entire world, which had been raised with the sounds of “never again” and the comforting idea that international evil will never be allowed to be so blatant and bold as Nazi Germany… suddenly shattered. No nation (or group of nations) will ever be able to buy the silence of everyone, right? Good will prevail… it’s just not possible that the whole world will allow a group of people to be brutally massacred with the whole world watching… right?
What hasn’t been able to permeate money-hungry Arab nations only interested in “normalizing” genocide however, is that the price of them turning a blind eye may end up implicating their own citizens and future…
So how does this connect to the Suez Canal and shipping routes? The Suez canal, located in northern Egypt is a major player in the circulation of goods, oil and weapons from Asia, Africa and more importantly, the middle-east to the rest of the world. Approximately 12 to 15 percent of all the trade in the world and 10 percent of the global oil distribution goes through here. Now let us go all the way back to 1948, when Egypt barred Israel from the canal after the horrifics of the Nakba. About eight years later, on July 26 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company. The Egyptians were taking back control of the canal.
Soon after in 1963, a memo submitted by Lawrence Livermore Patriot Laps in the United States of America to President carter proposed the idea of the Ben-Gurion canal which would require nuking areas of the Negev desert with 500 nuclear bombs to make way for something that will dwarf the Suez Canal. This canal would go through Gaza and would be 50 meters deep, (10 m deeper than Suez) and 200 meters wide. The proposed canal is estimated to bring more than USD 6 Billion annually to those that would control it and ensure a steady supply of oil/weapons and goods from the reserves in the middle east. The formula is simple: bring oil out, bring massacre and weapons in. Either way, the target is the complete clearing of Gaza and a wipeout of its citizens.
Coincidentally (or perhaps not) it was in 1967 when Israel defeated disarrayed troops of Syria, Egypt and Jordan within a mere six days and took over the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter facilitated the signing of a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel and that appeared to be that. Over the next few decades leading up to today, Israel has seeped into the very fabric of structures designed to keep a nation from committing genocides like the ineffectual United Nations as well as the very thing that delivers news from Palestine into our hands- social media. Meta, who owns Facebook, Instagram and Watsapp moderates its content (especially what needs to be taken down) with its Oversight Board which ” independently reviews some of the most difficult and significant content decisions” and appointed none other than the former director-general of Israeli Justice Ministry, Emi Palmor to the 20 member board of the Committee in 2020. What was Palmor most famous for before she got there? She headed the creation of thousands of accounts on social media to report and censor accounts and channels that shed light on the Palestinian cause.
Never before however has a group of the biggest powers of the world in control of major channels of the world so spectacularly failed to push decades-old propaganda. The world is waking up to the simple faith and belief of the Palestinian people. A faith they do not place on any governments, defense contracts or “normalization”, but upon the belief that Allah’s will dictates every victory (tangible and unseen) in this life. With billions all over the world – in person and online- showing support for Palestinians, there is still hope amid this darkness.
Maldives and the Palestinian cause has always been inextricably linked. For no other reason than justice and muslim solidarity, Maldives has not only organized massive fundraising campaigns, but as one Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah put it in 2020 when he said, “Boycott Israel. Boycott its goods. I mean, even the little Maldives today – the tiny Maldives – cut off trade agreements with Israel. If the Maldives is not afraid of Israel, why are the United States and the European Union, and Arab States so terrified of challenging Israel and its horrible crimes?”. From the smallest organizations and community groups throughout Maldives to massive rallies, Maldivians have come together in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. None of us will breathe easy until Palestine is free.
Leave A Comment