It's an old habit of mine to sign off my messages in the days preceding the New Year by expressing: "I pray that the coming year will bring peace and justice to our troubled world." Despite disappointing experiences, I persist, as if I purposely refuse to admit that neither peace nor justice will soon be making their long-anticipated arrival.
However, I persist not out of sheer stubbornness or unequalled resolve. But because hope is essential, it is like air and water. It's our ammunition that must not run out, regardless of how tedious our journey or how sorrowful our woes. And indeed, I look around me and see that hope is plentiful, as outlandish as that may sound.
I look at Iraq and cannot help but appreciate the human tenacity. This year was calamitous for the Iraqis. Their death toll hardly subsided despite the promised security; their fate remained chained to an American tank and "administered" by the pronouncements of a cruel American war general, despite the assured freedom. Democracy in their country became a political card employed to justify their enduring servitude.
Yet, amidst the chaos, mass funerals and blown up homes, I cannot help but stumble on a fragment of hope: Fallujah. They can call it what they wish - a nest of terrorists, a city run by militants, controlled by the remnants of the Baath party. They can justify its annihilation as they please - to hunt for a terrorist mastermind, to save its hapless inhabitants from the forces of darkness, to finalise the liberation of Iraq. Nothing can be said or done to re-write the history made by this audacious place, where freedom can be taken not given, where resilience is a destiny not an option, where the ever-expanding graveyard with its humble mud and cement graves is reminiscent of new beginnings, never an end.
I gaze at Fallujah and carry on with my wish that "the coming year will bring peace and justice to our troubled world". At first glance, the happenings in Palestine seem evocative of hopelessness and despair. An Israeli wall continues to swallow the remains of an inferior state, which Palestinians hope to attain.
New records
The livelihood of Palestinian farmers is squandered with every new and mammoth section of wall, which Israel erects on their land. Death among Palestinians, especially children, breaks new records, a record that is updated, once, twice or more each day.
Yet one reads in the American media that strangely enough, it was actually the fault of the victim all along, and that Israel wishes to make peace. With the stroke of a pen the truth can be counterfeited, the occupier with a vile, decades-long legacy of death and destruction becomes the wounded, seeking solace and tranquillity.
It has been so imprudently resolved that the core of these many problems lies in the Palestinian political culture. Only democracy and transparent semi-presidential elections can bring peace and an end to the conflict. Meanwhile, all the harm that has befallen Palestinians - the unremitting Israeli military occupation, the institutionalised oppression, the illegal apartheid wall, the assassinations, the roadblocks, the house demolitions, the deadly raids on civilian areas, the Israeli government's declared intent to never relinquish 58 per cent of the occupied West Bank, the utter disregard for international law as a frame of reference in resolving the incessant conflict, the dishonest role played by the American government which fuels Israel with the needed arrogance to squander away any chance for peace, are all deemed trivial.
They hardly measure up to the "historic" opportunity entrusted to Palestinians, to elect a President for a shadowy political body that neither has the legitimacy nor the territorial sovereignty to carry out the will of the people. Although it defies all logic, we are expected to believe that democracy under military occupation is possible, even more, a splendid opportunity for peace.
But with every uprooted tree, there is a farmer holding tightly to its roots; with every inch of confiscated land, there is an old man kneeling on the ground, sticking his fingers deep into the soil and refusing to part with it; with every fallen child, there is another child colouring a flag.
Just when Ariel Sharon hoped that his policies had forever silenced every call for peace and reconciliation, Arabs, Jews and volunteers from all around the globe like Rachel Corrie flocked to Palestine, shielding schoolchildren with their bare chests, defying curfews and chanting for peace and justice.
Because of this and more, I am hopeful. I am hopeful because the rules of the game are changing. Wars that were designated to ravish and destroy are espousing unity and igniting an awakening among the forces of good all over the world.
The corporate media's attempt to dictate the discourse and delimit awareness is increasingly challenged by our desire to confront the lies of the spin-doctors, the warmongers and the like. With the violations of women's rights, children's rights, and labour rights, there is an equally robust desire, innate and prevailing, to restore them.
Sabotaging democracy
With the globalisation of political, military and economic hegemony, there is an evenly strong desire for global peace and justice. Is it not enough that when Venezuelans restored their elected popular President Hugo Chavez to power after the failed attempt to sabotage the country's democracy, many raised Palestinian flags while celebrating his return?
Is it not enough that during the overwhelming and emotional funeral of the late President Yasser Arafat, flags representing countries all over the world waved in solidarity beside the hundreds of Palestinian flags?
True, there is an abundance of reasons that would justify our sense of anguish and fear as we cast our eyes towards 2005, but there is certainly ample hope to carry us through the turmoil and trial of another year.
And so with confidence I will proclaim it once again: "I pray that the coming year will bring peace and justice to our troubled world."
Ramzy Baroud is a veteran Arab-American journalist and editor in chief of PalestineChronicle.com and head of Research & Studies Department at Aljazeera.net English
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