Finally, finally, the suits shuffle forward,
Starmer's careful words cutting through decades
of diplomatic cowardice,
while Balfour's ghost rattles chains
in Westminster's haunted corridors.
One hundred and seven years
listen to that number roll off the tongue,
taste the bitter mathematics of empire
since Britain carved up someone else's land
like Sunday roast,
promised Palestine to the Zionists
with ink still wet from Ottoman blood,
with pens that never asked permission.
Now the recognition comes,
slow as justice,
grudging as empire's apology,
Western leaders reading from scripts
they should have memorised generations ago
while Palestinian flags flutter
like prayers finally answered,
like ghosts given bodies,
like children learning their names.
Beating war drum rhythms pulse
ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum
through diplomatic chambers,
A Ginsberg howl echoing off marble walls:
"I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by colonial madness,
by the machinery of occupation."
But this isn't beat poetry,
this is blood poetry,
this is the rhythm of bodies falling,
of mothers keening,
of bulldozers at dawn
uprooting olive trees older than Christ
for the grand project of forgetting.
Britain built this nightmare
brick by bureaucratic brick
the Peel Commission,
the White Paper of '39,
the Partition Plan nobody asked for
carved up the Middle East
like a Christmas turkey
while the locals watched
their futures decided
in rooms they'd never see.
The Mandate System:
pretty name for pretty theft,
League of Nations rubber stamp
on old-fashioned conquest,
"civilising mission" dressed up
in twentieth-century language
but tasting like the same old boot
on the same old throat.
Ba-dum ba-dum ba-CRASH
the rhythm breaks,
reforms,
becomes something else:
ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM
(another settlement)
ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM
(another checkpoint)
ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM
(another child's funeral)
until the beat becomes a scream.
Starmer's signature shakes
good, it should shake,
history's weight pressing down
on his careful politician's hand,
while somewhere in Gaza
a child learns their homeland
finally has a name again,
finally exists on paper
like it always existed
in their grandmother's stories.
The Balfour Declaration
sixty-seven words
that changed everything:
"His Majesty's Government view with favour
the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people"
view with favour,
like it was a planning application,
like Palestine was empty land
waiting for development,
like the people already there
were just part of the scenery.
This recognition comes now
because the streets won't stay quiet,
because TikTok won't stop showing
what CNN won't broadcast,
because young voices refuse
the careful language
that calls ethnic cleansing
"population transfer,"
that calls theft "settlement,"
that calls resistance "terrorism."
The beat evolves
ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum
faster now,
urgent,
like footsteps running,
like hearts racing,
like the rhythm of change
that powerful men
can't control anymore.
One hundred and seven years
of British guilt finally speaking,
of Western complicity cracking open
like an egg against concrete,
spilling out decades of denial,
oceans of Palestinian tears,
rivers of crocodile sympathy,
floods of we-didn't-know-better.
But they knew.
They always knew.
Powerful men in comfortable rooms
deciding other people's fates
over tea and biscuits,
over handshakes and signatures,
over the careful mathematics
of who matters
and who doesn't.
The recognition changes nothing
and everything
a piece of paper that says
what the world always knew:
that you can't erase a people
no matter how hard you try,
no matter how many committees
you convene,
no matter how many times
you look the other way.
This is visceral now,
gut-punch real,
bone-deep necessary,
because every day of delay
was another day of erasure,
another day of pretending
that occupation was security,
that apartheid was democracy,
that genocide was self-defence.
The pressure cooker explodes
one hundred and seven years
of building through the Nakba,
through the wars,
through the intifadas,
through peace processes
that processed everything except peace,
through the careful language
of diplomatic murder.
Somewhere in the rubble
a flag waves like hope
in the Mediterranean wind,
and a child holds a key
to a house that no longer stands,
to a place called home
that finally, finally
has the dignity
of existing on paper
like it always existed
in the hearts of its people.
The suits shuffle again,
uncomfortable in their recognition,
wondering what this will cost,
but the cost has already been paid
in Palestinian blood,
in British shame,
in Western complicity,
in one hundred and seven years
of looking the other way.
Palestine.
Palestine.
Palestine.
Say it like a prayer,
say it like a promise,
say it like the truth
it always was
ba-dum.
The beat stops.
The recognition echoes.
The child learns their homeland
has a name that matters.
Finally.
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