In 1988, after many years of saying No to Israel, I had a revelation and that was my moment that I publicly acknowledged Israel’s right to exist. Not because I loved hummus, but because the oil-slick of endless conflict was starting to stink.
I switched lanes, from All-out war to Two-state solution and that led to the 1993 Oslo Accords which were my golden ticket to glitter.
Picture a room of suited politicians, a few napkins, and me handing out signatures like they were coffee shop loyalty cards. The moment I walked out, I realized my keffiyeh had gotten an extra sparkle.
In 1994 I won the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for that, and I remember thinking, 'Is this it? Do we just stop now?' But of course peace isn't a trophy you put on a shelf, it’s a marathon where someone who isn't interested in peace and is more concerned in stealing your land keeps moving the finish line and occasionally throws rocks at you and all the time the media wondered if i was a terrorist or a martyr.
When Benjamin Netanyahu became Israeli prime minister in 1996, he turned the already-tense Israeli-Palestinian relationship into a full-blown conflict as he believed that a Palestinian state was as mythical as a unicorn riding a camel, it was even in his Lukid Manifesto that Palestine shouldn't exist.
I’ve been gone since 2004, and the man is still there and has upped the conflict to a genocide. I survived more assassination attempts than a cat has lives, and I managed to stay relevant through seven US presidencies. But Bibi? Bibi is like that one guest at the wedding who refuses to leave even after the lights have been turned off and the janitor is mopping the floor.
Back in the 90s, when we were doing the whole shaking hands on the White House lawn routine, I knew he wasn’t exactly my biggest fan. To be fair, the feeling was mutual. Dealing with him was like trying to negotiate with a particularly stubborn mule that also happened to have a very expensive PR team.
During that period the Israeli government attempted to assassinate me using methods that would make James Bond blush such as shooting down a private plane that I was supposedly on (turns out, I was on a bus) and trying to intercept commercial airliners I might be on so Israel certainly tried to retire me early more times than I can count.
On 11 November 2004, after a massive hemorrhagic stroke I slipped into a coma and later passed away but was it old age, a mysterious blood disorder or, and this is the fan-favorite, did Israel put Polonium-210 in my tea but while I was unable to attend my own funeral (I was too busy being a ghost), the world stayed very busy still debating whether I was a terrorist or a martyr.
If you ask my supporters, they’ll point to my role in the Oslo Accords and my Nobel Peace Prize. If you ask my detractors, they’ll show you archives of me buying weapons but i left a tangled history, I’m featured in school textbooks on both sides and i was a Nobel Peace Prize winner but it’s all about perspective, isn’t it? One person gives you five stars because you gave them a sense of national identity and a seat at the UN while another person gives you one star because, well, for various explosive reasons.
Honestly, I thought once I checked out, things might settle down but it's still a mess but I spent my life making sure the world couldn't look away, even Israel really, really wanted them to.
I might have been a terrorist to some and a hero to others, but you can’t deny I had staying power and was the man who refused to let Israel make Palestine and its people disappear.
No comments:
Post a Comment