The Fragmentation of Homelands

Remove the Letter R from the Arabic Word for War and Let Love Prevail

A single letter separates the Arabic words for war and love and separates two destinies as well In love we build a home and in war we dig a grave In love we await the return of those who are absent and in war we fear finding their names among the casualties Between the two stand peoples exhausted by waiting and weary of paying the price for conflicts they never chose
From the Gulf to Sudan and from Libya to Syria and from Lebanon to Iran and the enduring tragedy of Gaza the scenes differ and the causes and parties multiply Yet the grief of a mother is the same and the cry of a child is the same When a home collapses it does not ask its inhabitants about their sects or allegiances The rubble levels everyone while the losses remain etched into the bodies and memories of survivors
What victory is this when a person returns to their city and can no longer find their own address What glory rises above a school that has closed its doors and a hospital unable to save its patients What future awaits us when children learn the names of weapons before the names of flowers and know the way to the shelter before the way to school
The fragmentation of homelands begins before their maps are divided It begins when compatriots become enemies and identity becomes an accusation and difference becomes a justification for exclusion When loyalty to weapons takes precedence over belonging to the land countries begin to fracture from within and every round of fighting tears another hole in the foundations of the shared home
The cruellest thing about wars is that they continue to kill after the guns fall silent Their violence lives on in an amputated limb and an abandoned field and a lost education and a family scattered across places of exile It lives on in borders a mother cannot cross to embrace her children A wall may be rebuilt but who can give children back their lost years Who can return a son to his father Who can erase from the memories of survivors the sounds of the night they lost everything
We reject aggression and the targeting of civilians We reject turning the sovereignty of nations and the lives of their peoples into bargaining chips in struggles for influence We also reject the use of human suffering by warring parties as fuel to prolong the fighting No dignity is protected by devaluing human life and no homeland is preserved by destroying the foundations of its survival
Peace requires courage that confronts incitement and justice that protects rights and determination that stops the bloodshed It requires a sense of responsibility that recognises the duty to turn away from destruction and understands that saving one life is more honourable than a thousand speeches celebrating death
Remove the Letter R from the Arabic Word for War and Let Love Prevail
Remove it first from your decisions and your platforms of incitement Open the way for people to return to their homes Give the peoples of the region a chance to disagree without fighting and to live as neighbours without fear Let them spend on life what they have squandered on destruction
The earth has grown weary of receiving its children as the dead Mothers have grown weary of photographs hanging on walls We want homelands with room for all their people and children who grow up in the embrace of their families We want a morning when the news tells of a school opening rather than its pupils being pulled from beneath the rubble