‘Palestinian is an Ethnicity, Not a Political Statement’: Coming-of-age as a Palestinian in Diaspora

By Petra Alayasa

As any immigrant may tell you, being aware of the struggles your family faces back home can make you feel guilty. While you are eternally grateful for all that you have, you are also cripplingly aware that you cannot take anything for granted; after all, your life is so much easier than some of your other family members.

Being appreciative of what you have is always a good thing, but guilt can be a hard burden to bear. How can you be sympathetic towards yourself in tough times when in the back of your mind, you know that in the grand scheme of things that your ‘tough times’ are nothing? It has taken years for me to navigate these feelings. To understand that experiencing moments of unhappiness is inevitable, no matter how easy your life is.

I have come to learn that there is a way to be appreciative of your life and self-aware without being scared to feel sad. What I needed to overcome was the feeling that growing up in a more privileged environment than those in my homeland somehow separated me from the Palestinian identity.

When people think about Palestinians, they think of the bombings, shootings, and the loss of loved ones and homes. These are undeniably some of the most significant issues that Palestinians face in the West Bank and Gaza. But for the second-generation immigrant Palestinians, being born and raised separated from these prevalent issues can lead to feelings of confusion around identity. Not feeling like we are a part of the struggle can be confusing and makes it difficult to understand our place as Palestinians.

There comes a sense of separation from our physical environment. Through our blood, we inherit love and care for our country, but we are born into a space where people hardly know what Palestine is. To care so passionately for a struggle that we cannot interact with while being surrounded by people who know nothing about it is frustrating and isolating. From this stems feelings of guilt. Being submerged in a world that cares little about the Palestinian struggle can feel like an act of betrayal.

Suddenly, every difficulty feels worse. Doing badly in an exam feels like I’ve wasted all the chances that my parents sacrificed for. It feels like I am throwing away the opportunities that my cousins back home were never blessed with. I have betrayed my country and family and become over-privileged and lazy. While this mindset can help to put your problems into perspective, it can also make you miserable. All because, on some level, reaping the privileges of the place we live makes us feel separated from our homeland.

There is an inherited sense of duty to the Palestinian struggle. Constantly being surrounded by people that are uninformed about the occupation and look to you as a source of education means that it is our responsibility to be as knowledgeable as possible on the subject. We must always be ready to swiftly and defiantly obliterate any argument thrown our way that sympathises with Israel’s transgressions – being unable to do so means we have failed at our duty.

Of course, this duty is not real. It cannot possibly be expected of every Palestinian person to have all of the political and historical information of a seventy-five-year occupation or to able to debate all arguments like a fully qualified lawyer. While I do believe that Palestinians should stay as educated as they can on the occupation, I believe that it would be beneficial for those in diaspora (as well as all other people outside of Palestine) to reconsider how they may view the Palestinian struggle.

It wasn’t until I started reading the works of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish that I began seeing things a little differently. Darwish was known for his writing in support of the anti-occupation movement. However, a lot of his work was also just about the Palestinian identity. He wrote about a range of Palestinian experiences not limited to being directly about the political struggle. He wrote about the culture, love, food, etc. because he wanted to make clear that being Palestinian is an ethnicity, not a political statement.

This is a perspective that I believe should be made more prevalent when talking and thinking about Palestine. Instead of the occupation being at the forefront of how we perceive the country, we should think back to what we are fighting to preserve: our culture and our identity. The occupation impacts all Palestinians in different ways, and those in diaspora are included in that. However, what joins us in our Palestinian identity expands beyond the struggle; it is our culture, our language, our music, our hand gestures, all that encompasses the way we live and communicate. Our identity extends further than the political unrest. It is all the ways that we experience the world, regardless of where we are.

This does not mean that the Palestinian fight against occupation should be put on the back burner. Rather, it should be seen as an influence on our identity – not a definer. I have come to realise that our very existence as Palestinians in diaspora is a result of our political history, and so we are all impacted by it regardless of where we are. Like every other culture, we have changed and adapted to the world around us but that does not take away the legitimacy of our identity.

Those in diaspora are a part of a new formation of the Palestinian identity. When we find ways to keep our traditional culture alive in our food and home décor or when we teach our friends about the occupation and go to protests in our cities, we help to shape the Palestinian identity. So, we should not feel guilty or isolated: in our new ways, we are still Palestinian.