"So what exactly is going on with Israel and Gaza right now?"
I don't consider myself someone who easily is at loss for words. It usually takes something either really upsetting or really shocking to render me speechless. And yet this question, which seems so simple, so common, so basic to be asked as a Palestinian, left me unable to form the words I was so used to saying.
The last time I had been left unable to express something into words right away was during a game of twenty questions. A friend asked if I could live in any place in the world, where would it be and I said simply and quickly, Jerusalem. If we lived in a world where my Palestinian ID didn't ban me from certain parts of my homeland, if I didn't have to stand at checkpoints that were designed to make me not want to return, I would live in Jerusalem. If we lived in a world where the hundreds of people that go to pray on Fridays weren't left to pray outside, far from the mosque they want to bow to their Lord in, then I would live in Jerusalem. The friend asked why Jerusalem, and that was when I sat there and......
Where do I begin to explain this, I thought. How do I explain how every time I headed through the old city I wanted to count the bricks I walked on, wondering if my great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather ever walked on the same ones? How do I explain the way my fingers tried to reach for the centuries-old brick walls, yet they barely brushed them? How do I explain that that is how I always feel about Jerusalem when I'm in Palestine? It's so close I could see it from the distance and yet it wasn't easy to be there, to touch it, to feel it. How do I tell someone that Jerusalem is where I feel the most Palestinian, with people of all religions surrounding me? That there in the middle of the small, old streets of the city, bumping into people as I try to pass through the crowd is where I feel the most at home, as if every person I passed was a member of my family. Would it be enough to say that the only time I'd cried upon leaving a city in Palestine was when I left Jerusalem for the last time, unsure of when I'd return?
So where do I begin to explain the current conflict without trying to tell that person the history of Palestine and the history of its pain. Would they understand that displacement was passed down from father to son over the 66 years of occupation? Today's generation of refugees have no idea what their hometown looks like other than from the images that their grandfathers' stories painted for them. And despite that, when they are asked where they are from, they don't say Israel; they say their original hometown. Israel is simply where they temporarily reside.
Maybe that is the best way to explain the conflict; it is temporary. Not one single Palestinian will agree to being displaced forever. The people in Gaza do not want to survive, they want to LIVE. They want to be able to travel to the rest of their country and say Palestine is where they are from. Freedom has been explained to them by the words and images of those who are older, those who lived in a time where that once existed. And although they don't really know what it is, they still desire it. They still fight for it. Because this situation-without freedom- is only temporary.
I don't consider myself someone who easily is at loss for words. It usually takes something either really upsetting or really shocking to render me speechless. And yet this question, which seems so simple, so common, so basic to be asked as a Palestinian, left me unable to form the words I was so used to saying.
The last time I had been left unable to express something into words right away was during a game of twenty questions. A friend asked if I could live in any place in the world, where would it be and I said simply and quickly, Jerusalem. If we lived in a world where my Palestinian ID didn't ban me from certain parts of my homeland, if I didn't have to stand at checkpoints that were designed to make me not want to return, I would live in Jerusalem. If we lived in a world where the hundreds of people that go to pray on Fridays weren't left to pray outside, far from the mosque they want to bow to their Lord in, then I would live in Jerusalem. The friend asked why Jerusalem, and that was when I sat there and......
Where do I begin to explain this, I thought. How do I explain how every time I headed through the old city I wanted to count the bricks I walked on, wondering if my great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather ever walked on the same ones? How do I explain the way my fingers tried to reach for the centuries-old brick walls, yet they barely brushed them? How do I explain that that is how I always feel about Jerusalem when I'm in Palestine? It's so close I could see it from the distance and yet it wasn't easy to be there, to touch it, to feel it. How do I tell someone that Jerusalem is where I feel the most Palestinian, with people of all religions surrounding me? That there in the middle of the small, old streets of the city, bumping into people as I try to pass through the crowd is where I feel the most at home, as if every person I passed was a member of my family. Would it be enough to say that the only time I'd cried upon leaving a city in Palestine was when I left Jerusalem for the last time, unsure of when I'd return?
So where do I begin to explain the current conflict without trying to tell that person the history of Palestine and the history of its pain. Would they understand that displacement was passed down from father to son over the 66 years of occupation? Today's generation of refugees have no idea what their hometown looks like other than from the images that their grandfathers' stories painted for them. And despite that, when they are asked where they are from, they don't say Israel; they say their original hometown. Israel is simply where they temporarily reside.
Maybe that is the best way to explain the conflict; it is temporary. Not one single Palestinian will agree to being displaced forever. The people in Gaza do not want to survive, they want to LIVE. They want to be able to travel to the rest of their country and say Palestine is where they are from. Freedom has been explained to them by the words and images of those who are older, those who lived in a time where that once existed. And although they don't really know what it is, they still desire it. They still fight for it. Because this situation-without freedom- is only temporary.
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