Being able to leave home and expect to come back is an ordinary freedom, so ordinary that many of us scarcely notice it. We make arrangements for next week. Leave something unfinished. Assume that the place where our lives are taking shape will still be available to us tomorrow. Much of what we call independence rests on that expectation.
UN News reports that a crackdown in Hebron, in the West Bank, has displaced thousands of people, and that Türk has warned of ethnic cleansing. The supplied report does not establish the circumstances of each displacement or what will happen next. Its warning is grave, and should remain attributed rather than treated as an independently established conclusion.
Even within those limits, there is something here that deserves more than a moment’s concern: how easily the language of resilience can become an unreasonable demand upon people whose ordinary lives have been disrupted.
Resilience matters. People do find ways to care for one another under appalling pressure. But admiration can become a comfortable place for the observer to stop. Once we have praised someone’s strength, we may feel we have responded, while leaving untouched the circumstances that require so much of it.
There is a complication. Describing displaced people only through what has happened to them can also diminish them. They retain judgement, resourcefulness and ambitions beyond survival. We should be able to recognise that without making their ability to endure an argument for accepting their displacement.
This matters beyond how we read one report. Whenever we ask people to adapt, we ought to ask who has the power to make adaptation less necessary. Otherwise, responsibility quietly travels towards the person with the least room to manoeuvre.
For those following events from a distance, concern cannot settle every disputed fact or supply an immediate remedy. It can, however, make us more exacting about what we accept as an adequate response. Finding shelter matters urgently. So does the longer question of whether people can recover a settled life.
Someone may cope remarkably well with losing the conditions in which they made their plans. That gives us no reason to stop asking why they lost them.