Sunday, March 16, 2025


Fifteen arrested over alleged bribery and corruption after North Macedonia nightclub fire kills 59

A woman cries outside a hospital in the town of Kocani, North Macedonia, Sunday, March 16, 2025, following a massive fire in a nightclub early Sunday
Copyright Visar Kryeziu/Copyright 2025 The AP. All rights reserved
By Malek Fouda with AP
Published on 

Messages of support and condolences, as well as offers for assistance poured in as European leaders react to the horrific fire in a Kočani nightclub that claimed the lives of 59 people.

Authorities detained 15 people after a massive fire tore through an overcrowded nightclub in eastern North Macedonia on Sunday, killing 59 people and injuring more than 150.

The blaze broke out around 2:30 am during a concert by a local pop group at the club, Interior Minister Panche Toshkovski told reporters. He said 39 of the dead had so far been identified.

Authorities warn the death toll may rise further, as 20 of those injured remain in critical condition. The government has declared seven days of national mourning to honour the victims of the tragedy.

A man cries outside a hospital in the town of Kocani, North Macedonia, 
Sunday, March 16, 2025, following a massive fire in the nightclub early Sunday                                           Armin Durgut/Copyright 2025 The AP. All rights reserved

The blaze in the eastern town of Kočani left primarily young people dead and injured due to burns, smoke inhalation and a stampede in the desperate effort to reach the building's single exit, officials said. People as young as 16 were among the casualties.

“We even tried to get out through the bathroom, only to find bars (on the windows),” said Marija Taseva, a 19-year-old survivor who suffered an injury to the face.

"I somehow managed to get out. I fell down the stairs and they ran over me, trampled me. ... I barely stayed alive and could hardly breathe," added Taseva.

Maria Taseva, a 19 years-old survivor, who said her sister died in the fire, sits outside a hospital in the town of Kocani, North Macedonia, Sunday, March 16, 2025                       Visar Kryeziu/Copyright 2025 The AP. All rights reserved

The fire caused the roof of the single-story building to partially collapse, revealing the charred remains of wooden beams and debris. Police cordoned off the site and sent in evidence-gathering teams in an operation also involving state prosecutors.

Toshkovski said 15 people were detained for questioning after a preliminary inspection revealed the club was operating without a proper licence. He said the number of people inside the club was at least double its official capacity of 250.

“We have grounds for suspicion that there is bribery and corruption in this case,” he told reporters without elaborating further.

European leaders offer condolences and assistance

The fire is the worst tragedy in recent memory to befall the landlocked nation of around 1.8 million, and the latest in several large-scale deadly nightclub fires around the world in recent years.

Condolences poured in from leaders around Europe as well as from the office of Pope Francis, who has been hospitalised for a month for double pneumonia.

The pontiff expressed his “profound condolences” and assured his remembrance in prayer for those who lost their lives. He also “invoked the lord’s comfort for those suffering”. Pope Francis' words came in a telegram, signed by Secretary of State of the Hole See, Pietro Parolin.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen took to X, formerly Twitter, to express her condolences to the victims and their relatives. “I grieve the tragic loss of life in the fire in Kočani”.

“The EU stands in solidarity with the people of North Macedonia in this difficult time,” she added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also sent messages of support. “I wish those who were injured a speedy recovery. Ukraine mourns alongside our Macedonian friends on this sad day,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X.

Health ministry officials said the government had accepted offers of assistance from several neighbouring countries, including Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Turkey, where preparations were being made to receive patients with life-threatening injuries.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said he’s instructed the government to mobilise support and make available any needed resources to help “make the tragedy smaller”.

In the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, three people with severe burns – two aged 25 and a 19-year-old – were being treated at a hospital, with one undergoing surgery, health authorities said. Their conditions are critical.

‘Hard to believe how this happened’

On Sunday, relatives gathered in front of hospitals and city offices in Kočani – about 115 km east of the capital Skopje – begging authorities for more information. Resident Dragi Stojanov was informed that his 21-year-old son, Tomche, had died in the fire.

“He was my only child. I don’t need my life anymore. 150 families have been devastated," he said. “Children burnt beyond recognition. There are corpses, just corpses inside (the club). And the bosses (of organised crime), are just putting money into their pockets.”

North Macedonia’s President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova visited burn victims at a hospital in Skopje and spoke to parents waiting outside.

“It's terrible. Hard to believe how this happened,” she said, her voice halting with emotion. “We must give these young people courage to continue.”


Gordana Siljanovska Davkova, President of North Macedonia, addresses the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, at U.N. headquarters  
Frank Franklin II/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved.

Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said it had been “the most difficult day of my life,” adding that the country must defeat corruption.

“I entered politics to change something. I encountered a deeply corrupt system that has been created and nurtured for decades, which includes people from all parties, from all profiles. If that system does not collapse, this country will never exist,” he said in a statement.

North Macedonia’s government ordered a sweeping inspection to be carried out at all nightclubs and cabarets across the country over the next three days.

59 dead and more than 150 injured in nightclub fire in North Macedonia

59 dead and more than 150 injured in nightclub fire in North Macedonia

AP , Sunday 16 Mar 2025

A massive fire tore through a nightclub in North Macedonia’s eastern town of Kocani early Sunday, killing 59 people and injuring 155, authorities said.

North Macedonia
A firefighter inspects a nightclub after a massive fire in the town of Kocani, North Macedonia. AP

The blaze broke out around 2:30 a.m. during a concert by a local pop group at Club Pulse, Interior Minister Panche Toshkovski told reporters. He said 39 of the dead had so far been identified.

He said, following an initial assessment, pyrotechnics likely caused the roof to catch fire. Videos showed chaos inside the club, with young people running through the smoke as the musicians urged people to escape as quickly as possible.

As relatives gathered outside hospitals to await news, Kocani resident Dragi Stojanov was informed that his 21-year-old son Tomce had died in the fire.

“He was my only child. I don’t need my life anymore,” he said. “One hundred and fifty families have been devastated.”

Officials said the injured have been taken to hospitals around the country, including the capital, Skopje, many with severe burns. The effort was being assisted by multiple volunteer organizations.

Health Minister Arben Taravari said 118 people have been hospitalized, adding that he had received offers of assistance from neighboring countries, including Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia.

“All our capabilities have been put to use, in a maximum effort to save as many lives as possible of the young people involved in this tragedy,” Taravari told reporters, at times looking visibly shaken.

This is the worst tragedy in recent memory to befall the landlocked nation, whose population is less than 2 million.

President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova visited burn victims at a hospital in Skopje and spoke to parents waiting outside the building.

“It's terrible ... hard to believe how this happened,” she said, her voice halting with emotion. “We must give these young people courage to continue.”

In an online post, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski wrote: "This is a difficult and very sad day for Macedonia. The loss of so many young lives is irreparable, and the pain of the families, loved ones and friends is immeasurable.”

Family members gathered in front of hospitals and city offices in Kocani, some 115 kilometers (72 miles) east of Skopje, begging authorities for more information.

The club was in an old building that was previously a carpet warehouse and has been running for several years, according to local media MKD.

The fire caused the roof of the single-story building to partially collapse, revealing the charred remains of wooden beams and debris. Police cordoned off the site and sent in evidence gathering teams in an operation also involving state prosecutors.

A state prosecutor, Ljubco Kocevski, said several people were being questioned by police but gave no further details and stressed that the cause of the blaze was still being investigated.

Interior ministry officials said authorities would investigate the venue’s licensing and safety provisions, adding that the government had a “moral responsibility” to help prosecute anyone responsible. Police have arrested one man already, but he didn't provide details on the person's involvement.

As they awoke to news of the overnight tragedy, the country’s immediate neighbors and leaders from further afield in Europe sent condolences.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, posted on X that she was “deeply saddened” and said the 27-nation bloc “shares the grief and pain of the people of North Macedonia.” North Macedonia is a candidate for EU membership.

Condolences also poured in from politicians across the region, including Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama, the European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“I wish those who were injured a speedy recovery. Ukraine mourns alongside our (North) Macedonian friends on this sad day,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

Pyrotechnics have often been the cause of deadly fires in nightclubs, including the one at the Colectiv club in Bucharest, Romania, in 2015 in which 64 people died.

UAE, Bahrain boost space and climate monitoring with satellite launches

UAE’s Etihad-SAT and Bahrain’s Al-Munther satellites launched for climate and environmental monitoring.


The New Arab Staff
16 March, 2025


UAE and Bahrain jointly propelled themselves into the space race with their own satellites [Getty]


The UAE and Bahrain successfully launched on Sunday their satellites, Etihad-SAT and Al-Munther, to enhance environmental monitoring and advance scientific research.

The Etihad-SAT, developed by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), was deployed from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.

The radar-equipped satellite can capture high-precision images in all weather conditions and monitor various environmental factors, including detecting oil leaks, tracking maritime traffic, and supporting agricultural initiatives.

This satellite launch is part of UAE’s expanding space program, which began with the formation of the UAE Space Agency in 2014 and includes the Hope Probe mission to Mars.

Bahrain also successfully launched their own version, Al-Munther, the first domestically designed and developed satellite, also aboard the same Falcon 9 rocket.

This 3U CubeSat features artificial intelligence (AI) for onboard processing of satellite images, was designed to analyse data by reducing the need for transmission to Earth.

Al-Munther, which means "herald" or "messenger", focuses on environmental issues such as desertification, urban planning, and food security. The satellite is expected to operate in a sun-synchronous orbit at 550 kilometres of altitude for over two years.

"One of the most significant achievements of the Al-Munther mission is the development of a Bahraini-operated software system to manage the satellite and its payloads," said Reem Abdulla Senan, head of satellite communication operations.

"This not only advances the nationalisation of space technologies but also strengthens Bahrain’s autonomy in satellite operations. The software enables the satellite to efficiently carry out its designated tasks, including data collection, processing and transmission to Earth."

Beyond technological ambitions, Al-Munther will broadcast the national anthem and a message from King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa.

The satellite’s operations will also be managed through a newly established ground station in Bahrain, which will support ongoing satellite monitoring and future space missions.

Mohammed Ibrahim Al-Aseeri, CEO of the National Space Science Agency, told Arab News: "The successful launch of Bahrain’s Al-Munther satellite into orbit marks a major milestone in the kingdom’s space journey.

"I take immense pride in the achievements of the National Space Science Agency team, who have successfully placed Al-Munther in orbit, paving the way for initial operations and in-orbit system testing."

 

South Korea’s opposition says delay of Yoon impeachment ruling is irresponsible

South Korea’s opposition says delay of Yoon impeachment ruling is irresponsible
People attend a rally in central Seoul calling for immediate expulsion of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on March 15, 2025. (Reuters)
  • The eight-member Constitutional Court continued deliberations well into the third week
  • Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached by the Democratic Party-controlled parliament in December

SEOUL: South Korea’s opposition Democratic Party on Monday urged the country’s Constitutional Court to swiftly rule on President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment, saying keeping the country waiting is “irresponsible” and deepening social division.
As the eight-member court continued deliberations well into the third week, political tensions have surged between those who demand Yoon’s ouster for declaring a short-lived martial law in December and supporters who want him reinstated.
The court had wrapped up arguments on February 25, where Yoon said his martial law declaration was needed to root out “anti-state” elements but he never intended to fully impose emergency military rule.
“The country and the people have come to the breaking point,” a Democratic Party leadership member Kim Min-seok said. “We wait for the court’s responsible decision. Further delay is not normal and irresponsible,” he told a party meeting.
In 2017, former president Park Geun-hye was removed from office 11 days after the final arguments in the Constitutional Court in her impeachment trial.
South Koreans have gathered in huge numbers in the capital Seoul supporting and backing the conservative leader’s removal, saying the delay has been frustrating and made confusion worse.
Yoon was impeached by the Democratic Party-controlled parliament in December for violating his constitutional duty. He committed acts that are a grave threat to rule of law and more than disqualify him from office, the impeachment motion said.
Yoon is on a separate criminal trial on charges of leading insurrection, which is punishable by death or life in prison.
The fallout of Yoon’s martial law declaration has widened the rifts between the conservatives and liberals and those in the public, adding stress on institutions and putting much of the government policy making in limbo.
Some of the country’s top military commanders have been taken off duty and face criminal trials for their roles in the martial law decree. Arguments in the trial of former defense minister Kim Yong-hyun on insurrection charges begin on Monday.
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who was briefly acting president after Yoon was impeached and suspended from power on December 14, has also been impeached and the country is now led by the Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok.

 

US meat exports at risk as China lets registrations lapse

US meat exports at risk as China lets registrations lapse
The expiration of roughly two-thirds of the total registered facilities could restrict US market access and incur significant losses to a roughly $5 billion trade. (Reuters)

  • Expiration of roughly two-thirds of the total registered facilities could restrict US market access
  • In 2024, the US was China’s third-largest meat supplier by volume, trailing Brazil and Argentina

BEIJING: Export registrations for more than 1,000 US meat plants granted by China under the 2020 “Phase 1” trade deal lapsed on Sunday, China’s customs website showed, threatening US exports to the world’s largest buyer amid an ongoing tariff standoff.
The registration status for pork, beef and poultry plants across the US, including major producers Tyson Foods, Smithfield Packaged Meats and Cargill Meat Solutions was changed from “effective” to “expired,” according to the website of China’s General Administration of Customs.
The expiration of roughly two-thirds of the total registered facilities could restrict US market access and incur significant losses to a roughly $5 billion trade, a fresh affront to American farmers after Beijing earlier this month imposed retaliatory tariffs on some $21 billion worth of American farm goods.
Beijing requires food exporters to register with customs to sell in China.
The US Department of Agriculture has said China did not respond to repeated requests to renew plant registrations, potentially violating the Phase 1 trade agreement.
Under the Phase 1 trade deal, China is obligated to update its approved plant list within 20 days of receiving updates from the USDA.
Registrations for some 84 US plants lapsed in February and while shipments from these affected plants continue to clear customs, the industry doesn’t know for how long China will allow imports.
China’s customs department did not immediately respond to faxed questions.
In 2024, the US was China’s third-largest meat supplier by volume, trailing Brazil and Argentina, accounting for 590,000 tonnes or nine percent of China’s total meat imports.


VOA staff put on leave after Trump orders cuts

AMERIKA LOSES ITS GLOBAL VOICE

Reuters Published March 16, 2025 


WASHINGTON: Several employees at Voice of America were placed on paid leave on Saturday, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order gutting the US government-funded media outlet’s parent and six other federal agencies.

Multiple workers at VOA, an international media broadcaster that operates in more than 40 languages, shared with Reuters an email that placed them on administrative leave with full pay and benefits “until otherwise notified”. The emails, sent by a human resources executive at the US Agency for Global Media, the VOA’s parent agency, instructed them not to enter their work premises or access internal systems.

The move follows Trump signing an executive order instructing USAGM and six other agencies — Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the US Inter-agency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, and the Minority Business Development Agency — to reduce their operations to the bare minimum, saying it was necessary to shrink bureaucracy.

Last month, Musk posted on X that VOA should be shut down.




Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2025












Trump adviser seeks to cut AFP, other news agency contracts

Trump has made the federal-funded agencies overseen by the USAGM a particular target of his media reforms. (AFP/File)
Trump has made the federal-funded agencies overseen by the USAGM a particular target of his media reforms. (AFP/File)

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  • “We should not be paying outside news companies to tell us what the news is,” Kari Lake said on X

WASHINGTON: A senior adviser to President Donald Trump said Thursday she was moving to cancel long-established contracts between three international news agencies and the federal body that oversees US government-funded news organizations.
In a post on X announcing the move to cut the contracts with Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters and The Associated Press, former journalist-turned-politician and staunch Trump loyalist Kari Lake said: “We should not be paying outside news companies to tell us what the news is.”

Lake joined the US Agency for Global Media as a special adviser last month. The agency oversees a handful of media entities dedicated to reporting news and combatting censorship abroad, such as the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia.
“I moved today to cancel expensive and unnecessary newswire contracts for US Agency for Global Media, including tens of millions of dollars in contracts with The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse,” Lake said
“We should be producing news ourselves. And if that’s not possible, the American taxpayer should know why,” she added.
AFP has a number of long-running contracts to provide text, photo and video services to USAGM outlets.
Trump has made the federal-funded agencies overseen by the USAGM a particular target of his media reforms, and close adviser Elon Musk has called for VOA and Radio Free Europe to be shut down entirely for “torching” taxpayer money.
He tapped Lake in December to become the head of VOA, but she has yet to be confirmed.

NO CONFIRMATION NEEDED SINCE TRUMP SHUT DOWN THE VOA

 

OPINION

Making the bloom a desert

Israel's founding myth of "making the desert bloom" could only work if it eliminated all traces of the society that came before it. That's why Zionism has always sought to erase the Palestinian people, from the Nakba to the genocide in Gaza.
 March 9, 2025 
Rubble of destroyed buildings in the al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, January 30, 2025. 
(Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)


In 1969, 21 years after Western powers redrew the borders of the Levant and created the settler colony of Israel, former Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol declared in a speech: “What are the Palestinians? When I came here there were 250,000 non-Jews, mainly Arabs and Bedouins. It was desert. More than underdeveloped. Nothing. It was only after we made the desert bloom that they became interested in taking it from us.” This was the first recorded usage of “making the desert bloom,” a phrase that has since taken root and, like an invasive weed, proliferated throughout popular conceptions of Israel both domestically and abroad.

Fifty-six years later, in January 2025, renowned Palestinian journalist and hakawati (storyteller) Bisan Owda visited Rafah. Speaking to her millions of followers on social media, she told us, “I went to Rafah today, for the first time since May 2024. It was not there.”

A few weeks earlier, an image had made the rounds on Zionist social media: a box of Lego with “GAZA” printed in large letters, containing nothing but a pile of grey Lego bricks. The joke was a huge hit in Israel, prompting laughter, but also enthusiastic preaching about how they would redevelop the land now that it had been turned to ashes.


Israel is an entity with an obsessively manicured mythology of self; a fanatical fixation with presenting its own cruel and bloody genesis as wholesome, pure, and fruitful. This preoccupation is far from unique among colonial projects, which have always sought to portray their violence as a civilizing mission carried out by noble settlers in a barren, hostile territory that must be transformed to align with Western notions of civilization and productivity.

What is notable in the Israeli case is the hyperbole; an exaggeration to the point of caricature which is indisputably obvious for anyone with eyes to see. At times, these catchphrases of nation-building feel like a deliberate mockery; the “most moral army in the world” gleefully documenting savage war crimes while playing with the toys of their child victims; “surgical strikes” that incinerate entire tent cities in hospital courtyards. The juxtaposition of this extreme barbarity with Israel’s serene and almost kitschy cultural marketing is gaslighting on an industrial scale; reality shimmers and squirms on the horizon like a mirage, buckling in the heat of your own rage and grief as you read CNN articles labeling 6-year old Palestinian girls as “women” alongside obituaries for 19-year old Israeli soldiers described as teenage victims.

Creating absence

Lately, I have been haunted by “making the desert bloom.” It plays in my head on a loop as I watch videos of Palestinian and Lebanese towns turned to dust, of children wandering lost through the skeletal remains of cities, of babies who have barely learned to walk and speak asking their uncles if their blown-off legs will grow back.

A few months ago, I saw one of the worst things I have ever seen (I’ve said this at least every week for the last 16 months): The remains of a man, burst under the weight of an Israeli tank, the inside of his body a bright show of color against the unending grey all around him. Witnesses affirmed he had been run over alive, the blood still flowing in his veins as it was squeezed out onto the rubble beneath him. His name was Jamal Ashour; Jamal means “beauty” in Arabic. The next day, an artist reimagined the scene, drawing flowers where his trampled organs lay. Strange and bloodied flowers, reminiscent of the strange fruit of the American South; blood on the leaves and blood at the root.

A few weeks later, another image went viral: an artist had sketched one of the most horrifying scenes of this genocide — a father holding up his headless child, pleading with a heartless world for the bombs to stop — and drawn it with a red flower growing out of the child’s severed neck. All around this gruesome bloom, a hellish desert of grey dust and orange fire. How to undo the horror, go back to when the child’s head was attached to his body, and the flowers were growing out of the green ground? Susan Sontag, in her seminal work, Regarding the Pain of Others, warns us that witnessing a hell does not tell us how to overcome it. Compassion, like flowers, will wither if untended, and tending to compassion requires action.

More recently, when Israel turned its bloodthirsty sights on Lebanon, I watched in renewed horror as the unchecked tide of this grey devastation spilled over into my homeland. The destruction looked identical, something so clearly Israeli about its totality. They’re gonna do it here too. Everywhere, that same dusty grey swallowed life whole and atomized it. Videos shared on Israeli social media showed us the destruction in real time, clouds of debris swelling like floodwater around cratered buildings as occupation soldiers laughed in the background.

Shortly after Israel bombed the cemetery where my father is buried, I visited his grave and found it intact but covered in a coarse, sandy dust. My family had been lucky, but all around me were cracked tombs and broken headstones. Everything shrouded in that dull grey sand. I thought again of Eshkol’s vision of blooms in the desert. He was not alone in his ideas: Zionists have long been obsessed with sand and conquering it, rendering it productive.

This extractive relationship to the land is a well-studied feature of colonialism the world over, and Israel is no exception. They knew nothing of the complex ecosystems they invaded and hardly acknowledged the people inhabiting them, except as a nuisance to be eliminated. As the Zionist colonization project advanced, it weaponized nature to cover up its crime scenes; planting forests over the ruins of ethnically cleansed villages, and encircling Palestinian neighborhoods with national parks, cutting them off and limiting their development. These efforts are presented as combating desertification and restoring natural landscapes, when in reality they rely heavily on non-native pine trees which damage local ecosystems and increase the risk of forest fires.

This compulsion to control the land extends to controlling the natives’ relationship with it, evidenced by the 1977 Israeli ban on foraging wild za’atar. This law, which punishes the picking of za’atar — a centuries-old staple in the Palestinian diet — with up to 3 years imprisonment, is presented as a conservation effort. In practice, it is used to further subjugate Palestinians and attempt to sever them from the traditional food practices that connect them to their land. Early Zionists needed special cookbooks to learn how to cook with local ingredients, yet decades later, spite remains the overwhelming flavor of their society. One wonders, did Israelis look at the beautiful universities of Gaza, at its thriving orange orchards, and feel jealousy? Did they look at Lebanon’s gorgeous mosques and churches, at its abundant olive groves, and feel a resentful tide of venom welling inside them? Why won’t they act like the animals we want them to be.

It certainly seems so. There is something intimate about the way they choose to destroy, about the burning acrimony with which they long to control.

Control over food and farming is a significant aspect of Zionism’s desert-blooming national mythology, and has been an important contributor to its genocidal efforts against the Palestinian people. At the inception of the Gaza genocide, one of the first things Israel did was to cut off water supplies. In the last few weeks, they replaced bags of sugar with bags of sand in a food aid shipment. Videos of hungry Gazans receiving the shipment showed them opening bag after bag, pouring them out onto the ground below. Homes to sand, food to sand, hopes to sand. The horror of this violence lies in the absolute commitment to enforcing despair by any means necessary, to creating nothing out of something so they can then be seen to create something out of nothing.

Everywhere Israel goes, it creates absence. Absence of schools where children were once busy blossoming into adults, absence of hospitals where people sought healing and refuge, absence of trees that nourished the bodies that tended them. All the doors that invited strangers in as honoured friends are gone, the windows that spied on lovers and kept their secrets are gone, devoured by the unrelenting colonial urge to turn what is living, breathing, and beautiful into a blank and silent canvas. The barren desert they so desperately want to cultivate never existed, so they must make it, for in unmaking it they will redeem themselves. Or so they think.
Palestine will bloom with its people

In bombing their way to the desolate wasteland of their dreams, the occupiers of this world want us to forget that Palestine ever existed, but I believe my grandmother, who before her recent death could clearly recall a free and flourishing Palestine. I believe Palestinians, and my comrades all over the globe in the Palestinian liberation movement, who know that this free Palestine will exist again long after the fall of Zionism. In one of Bisan’s recent videos, she takes us to the ruins of Taiba mosque in Rafah. In the midst of the endless, dusty grey debris, she stumbles upon a piece of rubble shaped strikingly like the map of Palestine, remarking that it’s not the first time this has happened; she sees her homeland in everything, resurrected even from the ashes of its attempted destruction.

In the last few weeks, we have witnessed the triumphant return of Palestinians to north Gaza and Lebanese to south Lebanon, swiftly followed by Israel stating its intent to remain in parts of Lebanon, and talks between Israel and the U.S. articulating plans to fully ethnically cleanse Gaza. Donald Trump framed this proposed crime against humanity as a charitable undertaking since Gaza is “completely destroyed” and “uninhabitable” while his Israeli counterpart grinned beside him, an old Zionist colonial fantasy flashing behind his eyes. He finally made the desert.

Yet the people of the land have been clear: they will not move. A recurring theme among the returnees to both north Gaza and south Lebanon has been finding flowers growing among the wreckage of their homes, with many people posting pictures online of the blooms among rubble and dust. Talking about flowers may seem trivial, but we must allow these images to sustain our revolutionary optimism, without romanticizing them.

Palestine was never a desert, at least not in the way Zionists fantasize, but it will indeed bloom again. The flowers growing from the graves of our martyrs are nourished by their blood, while the flowers growing in the heads of our murderers feed on their hate for us. Only one of those can truly bloom; flowers cannot grow from hate.