Alwaght- Last week, wildfires have been ravaging across Israeli-occupied land. In any part of the world, a wildfire is just a wildfire. But here in the region, where the land is abundant with religious history, stories of conflict, and ongoing bloodshed, the fires raging across Palestine bear profound significations.
Fire is an archetype largely associated with fury as well as God’s wrath. Now as anti-Zionists across the world exult over the incident, the natural element is being hailed as the avenger of the Palestinian cause.
Political Flames
The Israeli regime was built on the suffering of the Palestinian people. Pillaging their lands in the West Bank; driving many of them into mass exodus; imposing restrictions on their movement, depriving them of rights; besieging the Gaza Strip and launching wars against Palestinians living there; killing men, women, and children, torturing them, detaining them, demolishing their homes and much more crimes against the Palestinian people have been committed by the Israelis, who with the help of the west, marched into Palestine as if they were its rightful owners on the pretext that Jews inhabited it 3,000 years ago.
Cultural appropriation is another recognized Israeli form of theft. However, more recently, an Israeli bill calling for a ban on the Adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, fanned the flames of an even more criticized way of robbing Palestinians of their right to religious freedom.
Palestinians were outraged at the news calling to prayer from rooftops and churches in small but important acts of resistance.
Khaled Meshaal, Political chief of Palestinian resistance group Hamas, denounced the bill saying that “Israel is playing with fire.”
However, long has the Israeli regime been playing with fire. That fire is the Palestinian rage.
“The security establishment increasingly believes that several of the wildfires may have been politically motivated cases of arson, though they are likely a series of isolated incidents and not the work of a larger organization,” wrote Haaretz.
It does not mean that the wildfires burning parts of the occupied land has been set by Palestinians, in spite of what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is saying about the cause of the fire.
Even so, some claim that the Israeli regime should not be surprised if it had been.
Metaphorically, the occupying force that calls itself “Israel” is literally burning. Many hope that this phenomenon is a foreshadowing of what is to come, of the fate of this unnecessary evil.
Divine Punishment
Another theory is that divine wrath has come down on the Israelis for their transgressions.
“O house of David, thus says the LORD: ‘Administer justice every morning; And deliver the person who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor, That My wrath may not go forth like fire And burn with none to extinguish it, Because of the evil of their deeds.’” [Jeremiah 21:12]
For decades, Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims have been waiting for the day when they get to see the occupiers experience the terror they have spread. Perhaps this is not how they have imagined it would be but watching Israelis run away on the news is still a fulfillment of a nation’s long-suppressed ambition.
For all the times they forced people to run from their homes, they flee.
Many have recalled Ali Ahmad Dawbsheh, a little boy who was burned to death by Israeli settlers in an arson attack on the village of Duma in 2015. That’s why they like to think of these fires as divinity’s way of retribution. The event is not irony-proof.
A Foreshadowing
In many literary works, foreshadowing is used as a narrative device that serves to insinuate a future event.
Enemies of the Israeli occupation have long vowed that it will one day see its end. It is just a matter of time and method.
Verse 80 of chapter 2 from the holy Quran reads:
“And they (Jews) say, ‘The Fire (i.e. Hell-fire on the Day of Resurrection) shall not touch us but for a few numbered days.’ Say (O Muhammad Peace be upon him to them): ‘Have you taken a covenant from Allah, so that Allah will not break His Covenant? Or is it that you say of Allah what you know not?’”
With the wildfires ravaging through the land that was taken away from Palestinians, hopes that this would be the beginning of the end of the struggle are high.
The wildfires seem too accidental to be part of the confrontation but many are crossing their fingers. Perhaps, the fires have a mind of their own, or maybe this is nature’s way of foreshadowing the end.
At the same time, some have expressed concern about the fact that the fire is eating away what belongs to Palestinians. But for the most part, as when it comes to the frontline of resistance, many are saying that Palestinians’ olive trees that burn in the process are but martyrs of a greater cause.
