8  Beneath the Olive Tree

Palestine

I have never lived in Palestine, but I will always identify as Palestinian, because to me, you’re not from the place you live or have lived; you’re from the place you feel most at home. For me, that place is Palestine. I have only had the opportunity to visit my family in Gaza about five times in over twenty years, and there’s no better transition than a lack of opportunity to begin to talk about the occupation of Palestine by the illegal state of Israel. Before I go on, it is important to clarify that this is not a fight against Jewish people; it is a fight against the Zionists, those in support of the state of Israel, and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Said states that “there is no getting past the fact that for all Palestinians the processes of Zionism have dispossessed them” (Said 1986, 31). Said also states that “the Zionist movement is unique in the history of such pioneering settlement movements from Europe in that it not only took over territory, but it excluded—as opposed to simply exploiting—the natives” (32).

The physical occupation of Palestine began in 1948, and ever since then, Palestine has become a giant prison for the Palestinian people who managed to remain in Palestine, avoiding being killed, and/or forced out of their homes by the Israelis. Prisons also rarely allow visitors, which is why I’ve only been there five times in over twenty years. When I go to Palestine, I go to Gaza, the only city in Palestine with no Israeli settlements, as they were kicked out in 2005. In 2007, Israel placed a siege on Gaza, restricting access to essential resources for human survival and restricting movement of resources and people in and out of Gaza while continuing to wage wars against Gaza. It is an ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

Palestine is an apartheid state ruled by an apartheid system: the state of Israel. We tend to think of institutionalized racial segregation when we hear the word apartheid because of apartheid South Africa. However, apartheid Palestine takes on the form of institutionalized ethnic apartheid. It cannot be racial because this apartheid oppresses the whitest-passing Palestinian and the Black Palestinian just the same. It is a fight against our shared culture, traditions, and language. Palestinians survive under an oppressive system that serves and benefits Zionists while simultaneously oppressing and erasing Palestinians.

So there are different forms of apartheid, and Palestinians are living one of those forms: ethnic apartheid. This ethnic apartheid can be felt by every one of our senses. It is one that travels through time and generations. It is one that segregates and isolates on the physical level and the societal one and one that kills on the physical level and the emotional one. It’s a system that threw my father into a cell because he fought for his and his family’s right to exist. It is a system that took millions of trees from the hands that planted them, millions of children from the hands that fed them. It is the system that moved our Kufiya from our shoulders to our eyes. It is a system that sees education for Palestinians as one of the biggest threats to its terrorism, so it restricts it. It is a system that claims the land’s trees, the air’s birds, and the sea’s fish. Seven hundred and eight kilometres of apartheid wall, checkpoints, and borders segregate me from the rest of my Palestine.

Racialized

I moved to Lethbridge in 2015 from Dubai, one of the most diverse cities in the entire world. Saying that I experienced culture shock when I first moved would be an understatement. The moment I landed in Canada, I was racialized. Living in Dubai, I had the privilege of not feeling racialized within that community as an Arab. Unfortunately, just as there is white privilege everywhere in the world, even in the Middle East, there is Arab privilege within countries like the United Arab Emirates because of a very apparent societal caste system. Migrants from South and Southeast Asia, several countries in Africa, and so on are always assumed to be members of the labour force, even if they aren’t, and if they are, they are treated as lesser than. As an Arab, I could climb the social ladder much more easily than a member of other cultural groups. However, even within the Arab community, there is a caste. Locals of the country were higher on the social ladder than expat Arabs and so on, but this did not lead to feelings of racialization, because in all actuality, the colour of my skin alone did not distinguish me from other Arabs. There was no indication that I was Palestinian unless I was asked, but even then, I was not treated poorly. So when I say I was not racialized in Dubai, I am not saying that racism does not exist among members of the community there; I am just saying that I was not a victim of that racism. Therefore, I consider Canada to be the first place I have ever felt racialized.

I am not only an Arab but a Muslim female wearing hijab. So it was never an option to fall under the radar. I started my first semester at the University of Lethbridge less than a month after moving. At the time, I was one of two women wearing the hijab. I stuck out like a sore thumb. I remember walking into one of my first classes and sitting by someone in the third row. Immediately after sitting down, the guy stood up and changed his spot. That is something I will never forget. I constantly felt unwanted, secluded, and judged. Whenever people asked me where I am from, they never accepted Canada as an answer, because I was never “white” enough. When I would say Palestine, they would have no idea where that was. They’d ask me where it is on the map, and when I’d point, they would ask me why I don’t just say I’m Israeli, because that’s what it clearly says on the map. So I was constantly having to have political, religious, and racial conversations with people I barely knew. Constant self-advocacy is exhausting.

During my first two years in Lethbridge, while I was at school, I worked retail at the mall. That is where I experienced the most discrimination, and where I felt most racialized. Some customers would ignore me when I greeted them, and others would make unnecessary hateful comments. Staring was also very popular. After the Paris attacks in 2015, for example, I stopped wanting to go to work. People automatically assumed I somehow had something to do with it, despite the fact that I lived across an ocean from Paris and had never even been there. That’s what hurt and continues to hurt me the most: people assume they know everything about me before ever meeting me. Before I have the chance to even say hello, I am a non-English-speaking terrorist with no business being in the West.

Very few people have had the courage to say these things to my face; instead, they flip me off from behind their car windows, or tell me to f*** off when I’m crossing the street. In none of these examples am I anyone but a human being, with eyes that see, ears that hear, hands that touch, a tongue that tastes, a nose that smells, and a heart that feels and beats like everyone else’s. Many people here in Lethbridge are unable to strip me down to my humanity, but they are also unable to accept and love the parts of my identity I wear with pride. I can never be Canadian enough because of the absence of white in my skin and blue in my eyes.

Racism

I have never experienced as much racism as I have living in Lethbridge. Yes, Palestinians are living under an apartheid system, but not one rooted in institutionalized racial segregation. The Palestinian struggle is often described not as one of the racialization of the Palestinian people but as a problem of displacement, of betrayal, and of stolen land. So when I am in Palestine, racialization is the last thing I think about. I am a victim of racial discrimination, and if I wanted to, I could easily resent being born into a Palestinian family, because it gave me my olive skin. I could resent my faith, because it requires me to outwardly express my religious identity through wearing the hijab. However, I pride myself on my identity. My olive skin is proof that my parents survived the oppressive occupation of the state of Israel and raised me to speak on and fight against the injustices committed against my people. The hijab I wear on my head is a constant reminder that there is something beyond this world that I can count on for justice. I am one of millions of displaced Palestinian people around the world, and at times I think that if we were never displaced, we would have never been victims of racial discrimination. However, that is not the case.

What It Means to Be Palestinian

Most of my father’s side of the family lives in Gaza, a small city in Palestine on the shore of the Mediterranean. The first time I visited was in 1998, when I was only three years old. When I talk to people about this visit, they always ask me how I remember, given how young I was. And my answer is that a human being, no matter how young, is incapable of forgetting injustice. It is also important to note that one must recognize injustice first in order to be incapable of forgetting it. Every year we would visit, we were greeted at the Egyptian-Palestinian border with guns and hate; funny how well those two words complement each other. While on the Egyptian side of the border, you see cardboard boxes flattened and used as something to sleep on; cardboard flooded the floors. Some sleep on the border for weeks, not allowed to cross the border to Gaza or return to Egypt. There is no reason for this other than a want to torture the innocent, the powerless, the voiceless. Some slept long enough to have the border be the last place they were unfortunate enough to sleep. Children, mothers, fathers, the elderly, the ill—it doesn’t matter who you are; there is no hierarchy among the powerless.

On the Palestinian side of the border, there are no Palestinians. You walk into a room full of Israeli soldiers, armed and ready. Ready for what, I could not tell you. Guns were lifted higher on this side. The soldiers would always threaten to send us back to Egypt. Sometimes they would say it is because my mother is a Terrorist: Zeina—beautiful and radiant. Other times they would put our bags in the bus and send them back to Egypt without us, forcing us to go back. These actions and threats were always met with tears. My father, a man who had dealt with the Israeli Defense Forces soldiers before, did not like seeing our tears. He always told us that this is what they wanted to see and insisted that we, his children, never give them what they wanted. So we would wipe our tears . . . This is not just my family’s story. This is the story of anyone who has ever tried entering or leaving Gaza.

Edward Said (1986) summarizes the Palestinian situation:

The first dispossession bred a whole series of sustained exclusions, by which not only were Palestinians denied their primordial rights in fact: they were also denied those rights in history, in rhetoric, in information, and in institutions. So, we have the case today, unique in history, by which the state of Israel maintains a population of over two million Palestinians in inferior status, and another two-plus million as exiles, while at the same time it says that it does not do so, and wars against the Palestinians on every conceivable level. It brands Palestinian organizations as terrorist, it claims that its own actions are just and democratic, it congratulates itself constantly on its soul and its anguish, even after it is manifestly responsible for massacres, wars, deportations, torture, collective punishment, and expropriations against the Palestinians. (32)

I will never forget walking into the guest room on the top floor of my grandfather’s house, opening the closet door, and seeing a hole. I immediately asked my cousins about it, and they said it was a bullet hole. I was outside one day, my eyes tracing the outline of our home. My eyes stopped at a missing chunk of cement. Again, I asked my cousins, and they said it happened during the civil war. My point is, everywhere you look, you are reminded of war. And I was only visiting.

My family and I were fortunate enough to enter Gaza more times than we were sent back. The reason why I am mentioning my experience is because it adds validity to what I am about to state next. I have never lived there. But as I said, I have visited. I have had guns pointed at my head. I have had a tank cannon pointed at my family and me. I have experienced rockets, surveillance by land, sky, and sea. And I was only a visitor . . . So no matter how much I tell you about their situation there, I can never paint you a full picture of what the Palestinians go through on a daily basis. But I am privileged, because I have a voice, and I have been fortunate enough to encounter people in my life who are willing to make my voice heard.

My voice is mine, and it is based on my experiences as a Palestinian who has visited Palestine and who has family there until this day. Palestinians are human, which means they have rights. Humans have rights. Period. They also live on this earth with us. They know winter and summer, they know night and day, they live twenty-four-hour days, and minutes are sixty seconds. Palestinians are humans living on this earth. This may seem like common sense, but take a moment to think about how many times you have heard about the struggle of the Palestinian people in your life. Not many.

If I was a Palestinian living in Gaza, this would be my situation; remember, I am human. Just like everyone else in the world, I would require light to attend to the activities of my life; I have eight to twelve hours of electricity a day; remember, just like you I experience day, night, summer, and winter; my days are twenty-four hours long, and my minutes are sixty seconds. Just as I need electricity, I also need water—to survive. I have access to ground water wells, the same wells almost two million other people also rely on for survival. Ninety-five percent of the water I do have access to, for a maximum of six hours a day, is not drinkable. I have / am supposed to have a right to an education, inside or outside of the city. However, because of the siege and the occupation of Gaza by the terrorist state of Israel, educational opportunities available to people in other parts of the world are not available to me. They invite me to a conference, but I can never make it. I am offered a scholarship, but I am unable to obtain it. I and/or my father, my mother, my grandfather/mother, my sister or brother have cancer; my medication and treatment are restricted. Lucky enough to not have cancer, my disease cannot be cured because the machine that could possibly cure me relies on electricity. I lost my home to war. Materials I would need to rebuild my home are not allowed in by those who destroyed it. There goes my right to shelter.

I am now sitting alone beneath an olive tree. Hot and thirsty. In dirty clothes. I have lost members of my family to disease and others to war and I am homeless, dreaming of the education to which I know I have no access. And just like that, I am stripped of my right to live. It seems the world has forgotten that I am also human . . .

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