Before the lines were drawn in sand,
before the maps decided where a man
could place his feet without permission,
there were two people
standing in the same light.
One had always known the olive trees.
The other carried exile in his chest
like a stone he’d inherited,
not chosen.
And for a moment,
just a moment,
they could have shared the shade.
The ones who held the pens
did not live there.
They drew their lines from distant rooms,
from leather chairs and chandelier light,
from boardrooms that smelled of old money
and older ambitions.
They named it conflict.
They named it ancient.
They needed it to look
inevitable.
It was not inevitable.
A Palestinian child
learns the shape of a door
that does not always open.
She learns the weight of waiting.
She learns her name
in two languages,
one official, one erased.
She wanted to be a teacher.
She told her mother on a Tuesday.
An Israeli child
learns that safety
is something you have to earn
again and again.
He carries fear
like a second skin
he was handed at birth.
He wanted to be a musician.
He told his father on a Thursday.
Neither of them
made the rules.
We say civilized world
as if we know what that means.
As if the fence that cannot be seen
is not still a fence.
As if a child born into an open-air prison
chose the coordinates of her first breath.
As if hunger
is a political position.
As if rubble
is a perspective.
There is a prison
built entirely from narrative.
Its walls are made of headlines.
Its guards are made of silence.
The warden never shows his face.
He only shows you the enemy.
He only shows you the side
he needs you to fear.
Fear is the oldest architecture.
We have been living in it
so long
we mistake it for home.
In our own homes
we kneel beside children at bedtime.
We teach them:
share, listen, be kind,
you are no better than anyone else,
everyone deserves to feel safe.
We tuck them in
and then we turn on the news
and forget everything
we just said.
We know.
We have always known.
The knowing is not the problem.
The problem is
what we do
with the knowing.
They did not start as enemies.
That is the part
we are not supposed to say out loud.
They started as people.
One with roots in that specific earth.
One with roots in a grief
so deep it had become identity.
Both with the same ordinary longing:
to wake up without dread,
to feed someone they love,
to matter,
to stay.
And the world
that could have witnessed this,
that could have said
both of you, both of you, both of you
turned instead to its factions
and picked a narrative
like picking a team
as though land was a sport
and people were the score.
There were no sides.
There were people.
Then someone needed sides
and so sides were made.
Made from fear.
Made from money.
Made from the oldest human instinct:
if I can make you look at them
you won’t look at me.
I am asking you
to look at the child
before the side.
Before the flag.
Before the doctrine.
Before the version of history
that was handed to you
by someone who needed you
to believe it.
Look at the child
who just wanted a childhood.
She is on both sides of every wall.
He is in every house that still stands
and every house that doesn’t.
They are the same child.
The world just told them
they weren’t.
Somewhere,
if there had been no interference,
no corridors of power,
no arms deals made over dinner,
a Palestinian and an Israeli
might have sat under the same tree
and argued about music,
or weather,
or which way the wind usually comes from.
And both would have been right.
And both would have laughed.
And the tree would not have cared
who planted it.
It would only have given shade.
That is what trees do.
That is what people do,
when they are allowed to be
just people.
We got it wrong.
Say it.
Not as defeat.
As the first honest thing
we have said
in a very long time.
There were no sides.
There were only people.
And we let the wrong ones
decide what they were worth.
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