Poetry + A Summary of What Happened This Week in Palestine

 

PALESTINE POEMS:

I’m starting this week with poetry. It feels like the only way to speak honestly before moving into what has unfolded on the ground.

THREADBARE IN RAFAH

In Rafah lies a girl
And for this girl, a brother
And for this brother, a kite made of cloth scraps
And for the cloth, a seam stitched by their mother
And for the stitch, a spool of red thread—
still rolling across the broken tiles
In the sky, not a kite,
but something heavier cuts through the clouds
One, then three, then eight fall
The thread snaps in midair
But a wind—
gentle as her grandfather’s sigh—
pulls the girl beneath a cart
She calls out: Akhoyy!
Brother, come, the flag still stands—
But her brother doesn’t answer,
his hand still clutching the wooden spool
Thread in the rebar
Thread in the olive pit she finds in her pocket
Her voice climbs like a ladder with no rungs
She shouts into the night sky
stitched with sirens
No echo for the echo
And she becomes the fraying thread in the headlines
Looping each hour
until they bomb the house again—
the one with the kite,
the one with the door half-sewn shut by her mother’s last thread

—

WHEN THE SUN BECOMES SHRAPNEL

I want to be like those
Who worship the sacred sun
Our children catch its rays through rifle sights
Seconds before becoming light

So beautiful, the morning
So divine, they say
But daybreak bleeds through bullet holes

Each morning paints our graves gold
Nature’s brutal tenderness
Children chase warmth through bombed hospitals
Seconds before joining stars

They capture our burning horizon
Call it breathtaking art
Not knowing each sunset
Is colored by children’s blood

The sun sets like a promise
While poets pen their gentle verses
One day I’ll write about daylight
When it stops illuminating the grave

—

I Have No Problem With Peace

I have no problem with peace.
It comes in envelopes
in press conferences
in blueprints drawn in offices far from here.

I have no problem with peace —
a gift
wrapped in wire
dropped from planes
planted over the city that became “Tel Aviv”

They say:
Peace is stability
Peace is the quiet hum after a funeral

I have no problem with peace
They give us bread with their left hand
bullets with their right
They draw borders across our ribs
write treaties in the language of warplanes

I have no problem with peace —
except for the bombs that fall mid-sentence
except for the body counts whispered between handshakes
except for the conversations between sword and neck —
the sharp ones Kanafani warned us about

I have no problem with peace —
except for the Ayah that reminds me:
“they call themselves peacemakers
as they sow corruption on the land.”

But I have no problem with peace.
They give it to us daily —
neatly televised

And I am learning to carry it
quietly
like the rest of the dead

A WEEK IN REVIEW:

This week did not bring relief. So far, the fiction of the “ceasefire” has not halted Palestinian death, displacement, or dispossession. It reorganized it so that it could happen without the distraction of propagandized media sharing whatever it might bringing a fraction of the violence to western screens.

What unfolded over the past seven days was continuity: violence slowed just enough to be administratively manageable, suffering spread just thinly enough to be ignored.

Death by Cold, Exposure, and Design

• Severe winter storms flooded displacement camps across Gaza this week. Families living in tents were left without insulation, electricity, or dry ground.
• Multiple infants and children died from hypothermia and exposure, including babies under one year old.
• These deaths were not caused by weather alone. They were the foreseeable outcome of mass displacement, blockade, and the systematic destruction of civilian shelter.
• Israel is still preventing aid, including tents.

Gaza: Death Under a Ceasefire

• At least 19 Palestinians were killed in Gaza this week, with dozens more injured. Several bodies were recovered from beneath rubble left by earlier bombardments.
• Since the ceasefire began in October, approximately 380 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to figures reported through the UN based on Gaza Ministry of Health data.

The Yellow Line: Land Taken While the World Looks Away

• This week, Israeli forces expanded the so-called “Yellow Line” deeper into Gaza, effectively seizing additional land beyond prior military buffer zones.
• The Yellow Line operates as a de facto annexation boundary, enforced through gunfire, displacement, and the denial of return to areas Palestinians once lived on, sought refuge in, or attempted to farm.
• There is no negotiation over this line, no legal process, and no endpoint. Land is taken first, then justified retroactively as “security.”

Ceasefire Violations

• Palestinian report hundreds of ceasefire violations since October, with the cumulative total rising again this week.
• Violations include airstrikes, live fire, drone surveillance, incursions, and obstruction of humanitarian access.

The West Bank: No Ceasefire, No Illusion

• Five Palestinians were killed in the West Bank this week, including a child.
• Nearly 30 settler attacks were recorded in a single week, involving arson, assaults, and property destruction, often carried out with impunity or under military protection.

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