I am working on the assumption that in the future there will be

Host: The wind carried dust and salt across the barren plain, the kind of air that remembered both prayer and gunfire. The sun was falling — a slow, bleeding disc over the horizon. In the distance, the sea shimmered, calm and cruel, swallowing light the way history swallows names.

A line of barbed wire ran along the edge of the road, half-buried in sand, trembling in the evening breeze. Jack sat on a broken concrete block, the remains of a checkpoint perhaps, his grey eyes following the line of wire toward the fading coast.

Jeeny stood nearby, her scarf whipping against the wind, her hands folded, her eyes heavy with the kind of sorrow that has no clear direction — neither entirely political nor entirely personal.

Host: Around them, the world was quiet, but beneath that quiet ran the low, endless hum of something ancient — the sound of land remembering pain.

Jeeny: (softly) “Ariel Sharon once said, ‘I am working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza.’”

Jack: (without looking up) “A brutal sentence. Even when he said it, it sounded like both a strategy and a prophecy.”

Jeeny: “And both came true. But tell me — was it liberation, or abandonment?”

Host: The light flickered across their faces — gold against ash. The wind smelled of smoke, distant and fading, as if the land itself had exhaled after holding its breath for too long.

Jack: “Depends on who you ask. To some, it was moral clarity — pulling settlers out to stop an occupation. To others, it was retreat — an admission that even control has limits.”

Jeeny: “And to you?”

Jack: (pausing) “To me, it was inevitability. You can’t hold a place by force forever. Not when the soil itself refuses to forget.”

Host: Jeeny turned, her eyes narrowing, the wind catching strands of her hair, framing her face in the dusk.

Jeeny: “You sound like the land is a person, Jack.”

Jack: “It is. Every land is. It absorbs the blood, the footsteps, the shouting. It remembers who built and who burned.”

Jeeny: “Then tell me — what does this land remember?”

Jack: (after a silence) “It remembers that everyone came here thinking they were home — and everyone left feeling exiled.”

Host: A flock of birds lifted from the ruins nearby, their wings cutting through the last rays of light. The sound was sharp, startling, like history suddenly waking up.

Jeeny: “You talk about exile like it’s destiny. But exile is a wound, Jack. Not a way of life.”

Jack: “And yet the Jewish story, the Palestinian story — both are built on it. Different maps, same ache. Maybe Sharon understood that better than anyone. His sentence wasn’t just political — it was biblical. A man saying, we must go, or be consumed by what we’ve built.”

Jeeny: (shaking her head) “You make it sound poetic. But it wasn’t poetry, Jack. It was bulldozers, crying families, soldiers dragging their own people from their homes.”

Jack: “Sometimes mercy looks like cruelty. Maybe Sharon knew he couldn’t keep the promise of a safe home in a place that would never stop being contested.”

Jeeny: “So he decided for everyone? That’s not mercy — that’s power dressed as foresight.”

Host: The sun dipped lower, the sky shifting from orange to gray, the earth between them cooling fast. Jack lit a cigarette, the tiny flame flickering in the wind before surrendering to it.

Jack: “Every leader pretends they’re making history. But all they really do is rearrange the rubble.”

Jeeny: “Rubble that still bleeds. Gaza didn’t become peace after the withdrawal — it became a prison without guards.”

Jack: “No — it became a wound no one wants to own. Sharon left to save his conscience, but he left a vacuum. And vacuums don’t stay empty.”

Jeeny: “You think he had a conscience?”

Jack: “I think even monsters believe they’re surgeons.”

Host: The sea wind picked up, sharp with salt. It carried voices — distant, perhaps imagined — children shouting, a muezzin calling, waves colliding with stone.

Jeeny: “So you think Sharon was right?”

Jack: “I think he was trapped by the same paradox as every empire — stay and destroy, or leave and collapse. There was no right answer, Jeeny. Just the least unbearable one.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “Tell that to the families still buried under the decision.”

Jack: “You think I don’t see them? I do. But tell me this — how long can two peoples claim the same inch of ground as holy before it becomes hell?”

Host: The wind carried his words out into the open, across the ruins, over the fence, to where the sea kept no memory of borders.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the mistake. Treating it like ownership. The land was never ours to claim — not theirs, not ours. It belongs to whoever tends it, whoever prays on it without hate.”

Jack: (bitterly) “And who’s left like that? Every generation here learns how to hold a gun before they learn how to plant an olive tree.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe that’s the real exile — being forced to forget how to plant.”

Host: A long silence followed. The light was almost gone now, leaving only shapes — two silhouettes against the gray horizon, like history repeating its favorite argument.

Jack: “Sharon wanted a future without Jews in Gaza. But he forgot — you can leave a place physically and still live there forever. The memory becomes a kind of occupation too.”

Jeeny: “And for the people who stayed — the ones trapped inside — memory became their only freedom.”

Host: The wind softened. Somewhere far away, the call to prayer began — low, steady, human. It sounded less like faith and more like survival.

Jack: “You know, it’s strange. For all his strength, Sharon’s legacy wasn’t dominance. It was absence.”

Jeeny: “Absence is still power, Jack. When you remove something — a people, a nation, an idea — the void you leave becomes a god.”

Jack: “Then maybe the only thing left to worship here is the silence.”

Jeeny: (turning toward the sea) “Or the hope that silence won’t last forever.”

Host: The sky finally let go of the last light, leaving the world silver and dim. The barbed wire hummed faintly, vibrating in the evening wind, like a low, unfinished prayer.

Jack stood, brushing the dust from his hands, and looked at Jeeny.

Jack: “So what now?”

Jeeny: “Now we wait. And we remember. And we keep asking — how many futures can a land survive before it breaks?”

Host: The camera of dusk pulled back, revealing the vast emptiness — the sea, the sand, the faint glow of distant cities. No flags, no borders. Just land that had known too much of both.

And somewhere between memory and policy, between absence and faith, the earth remained — wounded, patient, waiting for someone brave enough not to claim it, but to heal it.