Experiences in the diaspora

People say, “The world is a lot safer today than 100 years ago”. While that may be true, they might not take into account that we are still suffering from actions that took place 100 years ago. We have become a globalized society and identity is integral to how we portray ourselves. We have holidays and months that are devoted to celebrating groups of people, their ancestry and the great things that they’ve accomplished in history. We acknowledge the past and how far we’ve come as a collective. But what if you exist feeling like a large part of your identity is missing? What if others resonate with this longing for “identity” and “home”, yet are spread so thinly throughout this world that they don’t truly know “who” they are and how they came to be?

There are millions of people who don’t have access to the knowledge and history of their ancestors because they've been wiped off the map both figuratively and literally; the people that survived were displaced and forced to seek new homes. Diasporas are alive and well in modern society. Paul Gilroy, who has studied diasporas for many years, defines diaspora as “a relational network, characteristically produced by forced dispersal and reluctant scattering. It is not just a word of movement, though purposive, urgent movement is integral to it. Under this sign, push factors are a dominant influence.” One unfortunate consequence is that their history may not have been well documented or lost during these migrations. This in turn, leads to the erasure of a group of people’s past with each generation lost because a bit of that collective memory is also vanishing, which further limits access to that knowledge. Diasporas can affect collective memory by acting as a disconnection to the network that makes up a community resulting in perpetuating a sense of belonging somewhere else. There is no central authority when it comes to gathering that knowledge and history of a people. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens to communities and individuals in a diaspora.

I always knew my family was from al-Jib, Palestine; a tiny village where everyone knew each other and where the weather was always nice. To me, al-Jib was on a completely different planet and the idea of returning to it was impossible. That land and history had left my family with the death of my grandparents. I had lost an even greater chance to access some historical knowledge with the death of my father. I know that my people had been subjected to crimes against humanity and that we weren’t allowed to return. I knew from an early age that Palestinians shared a sense of collective trauma. Paul Gilroy writes that “genocide and other unnamable terrors have all figured in the constitution of diasporas and the reproduction of diaspora-consciousness, in which identity is focused less on common territory and more on memory, or, more accurately, on the social dynamics of remembrance and commemoration.” Memory, specifically firshand memory still plays a key role in the very mentality of the diaspora. I was always told that Palestine was a beautiful place and to never forget that. Peteet adds to the concept of memory and trauma by saying that “Palestinians live the existential conditions of exile and grapple with the perils of statelessness daily. With often firsthand knowledge of their homes, memory is certainly more recent and visceral” (Peteet 633). My parents often spoke about the delicious olives that grew on our land and the olive groves that were the pride of our family. I knew I wanted to write about the plight of the Palestinians.

I knew I wanted to write about Palestine for a human rights research assignment, so I walked to the Institute for Palestine Studies and met an old man at the front desk. It was a tiny office way out in the periphery of Columbia’s main campus. He had his hands clasped together and an inviting smile on his face, it’s as if he was waiting for me. I came to him with brief questions, expecting to be in and out in five minutes - something about a two-state-solution maybe?- He asked me where I was from and I told him al-Jib Palestine right outside of Jerusalem. He told me, “Oh you’re from al-Jib, you must know all about your town’s history, right?” I answered him by saying I didn’t know anything about it, to be honest. I no longer have anyone left alive in my life that knows anything about it. I found out that was “where the sun stood still”, al-Jib was the sight of a great battle between Joshua and the Jibians, where God, determined to help Joshua, made the sun stop to help him win the day. Both the man and I had the same look of sadness in our eyes yet, intergenerational. My town has been inhabited for 5000 years and I barely know anything about it. I began to wonder what else I didn’t know about my homeland and how many of the millions of Palestinians in the diaspora felt the same way. Why don’t I know anything about my village in Palestine, how many others don’t know about their history, and what are the social factors hindering the search for our people’s history?

In 1948, the survivors of the Holocaust and Jews around the world who had begun immigrating to Palestine, declared the birth of the State of Israel. The British Mandate over Palestine had ended and the Palestinians refused the map that was redrawn to include a Jewish state. Many of the surrounding Arab states declared war and began invading. Caught in the cross-fire, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians fled due to fear, psychological warfare, and massacres. Naseer Aruri writes, “by the end of the 1948 war, hundreds of villages had been completely depopulated. Their houses were blown up or bulldozed, with the main objective of preventing the return of the refugees to their homes and villages.” The Jewish diaspora around the world had finally come to end, at the cost of creating an entirely new diaspora, that of the Palestinians. During the 1948 establishment of Israel and subsequent war with its Arab neighbors, Peteet notes, “around 750,000 Palestinians became refugees in neighboring Arab countries. About 100,000 Palestinians remained in their homeland.” Refugee camps constructed in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan were meant to be temporary establishments, but Peteet clarifies that, “even though many camps now resemble small towns or are vibrant extensions of urban centers, there is still an uneasiness over their future.” For the Palestinians in these camps, there is no sign to an end and entire generations have grown up only knowing these camps and rely on their elders for the stories of their homeland. Movement is a hurdle even for those still in historic Palestine. Currently, state policy allows a person holding a Palestinian Authority (administrative government of the West Bank) passport entry into the West Bank only with approval from Israel.

Researching immigration into the West Bank shows clear obstacles to freedom of movement, the Israeli government has noted, “In accordance with the order regarding closed areas (the West bank area) ..., the Judea and Samaria area is a closed area, where exit and entry requires a permit by the military commander.” Physical access is hindered at all levels. Julie Peteet adds that “Palestinians registered as refugees can risk losing their de jure refugee status if they become naturalized citizens of another.” Even holding Israeli citizenship, Palestinians are still subjected to discrimination, Professor of Law and Legal History, Nir Kadder, states that “the Jewish majority and the state treat them as aliens and not as equal partners in the Israeli demos”. No matter where a Palestinian lives, either Israel or the West Bank, second class status is the norm. The West Bank is under direct Israeli military occupation and only with the approval of an Israeli military commander can a Palestinian move and act within and out of Palestine. Moreover, Israel does not call the West Bank as Palestine but refers to it by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria, another form of erasing Palestinian identity.

The reason Palestinians around the world have a barrier is because Israel does not grant the right of return to Palestinians, as well as adopting numerous laws and bills that hinder Palestinian movement while encouraging Jewish immigration into those very regions, effectively erasing Arab towns and replacing them with Jewish settlements. Israeli settlement building has been a major factor in abolishing of Palestinian identity and subsequent history, whole towns and villages have been wiped out and built over. The concept of Zionism: establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, further exacerbates the situation by working to form an Israeli identity that claims to be stronger and thus more superior to the Palestinian right to sovereignty. While not every variable in accessing historical knowledge can be attributable to the occupation, many diasporas have one thing in common - the inability to return. Peteet states, “With the Israeli policy of closure severely restricting Palestinian access to Jerusalem and Israel (and within and between the West Bank and Gaza), Palestinians outside are increasingly unable to maintain social ties with Palestinians in Israel.” Lack of a right of return means that Palestinians are unable to reconnect with their history, land, and even families. There are millions around the world effectively blocked from visiting, living, and accessing historic Palestine.

According to UNRWA, the Palestinian diaspora numbers around five million today. They are spread around the world, not allowed to return and live in Israel/Palestine due to war, deportation, or migration for better opportunities. Scholars like Dennis Ross agree and include, “it is hard to exaggerate the Palestinian feeling of being ignored, humiliated, and considered a non[-]people.” To a Palestinian living abroad, it might seem as if they are destined to continue this cycle. Along with their inability to access the physical land, their ability to access their cultural history is also obstructed. While the Palestinians have a justified feeling of victimization, the Israelis lean on security before all else, including a possible concession. The Israeli Foreign Ministry says “If Israel were to allow all of them to return to her territory, this would be an act of suicide on her part, and no state can be expected to destroy itself” (Israeli Foreign Ministry). For the Israeli government, preserving a Jewish majority is paramount, and fear of the “what if” are used to keep a population in perpetual diaspora and refugee status. Peteet notes that the Israeli government fails to see “the degree of separation from the homeland, and firsthand knowledge of it, further compounds the matter of spatial depth.” There are still thousands of Palestinians living today that still act as primary sources to the events of the past. While refugee rights and the right of return is outlined in the United Nations and membership of the United Nations requires the signing of this caveat, Israel has worked to find ways that circumvent this obligation by claiming there isn’t enough space and its security would be jeopardized. This has kept the question of repatriation for the Palestinians displaced, in limbo for the past 70 years. The United Nations have been complicit by providing nothing of actionable intent: What the United Nations did instead was,...try to convince the Arab states that had given refuge to accept on a permanent basis those refugees who did not wish the return to their homes. That effort came to little, and each year the General Assembly adopted a resolution in which it reaffirmed its call on Israel to repatriate. Delving into the idea and concept of Diaspora opens a“floodgate” as to how many communities in the world consider themselves diasporas. How many people around the world are in the same boat as Palestinians. William Safran writes to argue for the term of diaspora to be extended, to expatriate minorities that share several characteristics:

1) dispersion from a specific region; 2) retaining a collective memory of

their homeland; 3) they believe they are not fully accepted by their host

society; 4) they regard their ancestral homeland as the place to which they

or their descendants would (or should) eventually return.

In that regard, one can look at numerous peoples around the world that consider themselves part of a diaspora, Cubans, Armenians, and Maghrebis. The Cubans that fled the revolution can’t go back to communist Cuba; the Armenians are dispersed all around the world and while they have a country called Armenia, their government has nothing to do with their displaced demographic. And finally, the Maghrebis, the North African people who fled to France are constantly told they are immigrants and second class citizens even though many of them have been in France for generations and no longer speak Arabic. All together, diasporas have a severing of land, culture, and tradition and many don’t have access to knowledge about their people. The right of return, lack of a centrally located ethnic center, and the treatment of these diasporas all add to the collective struggle these peoples advocate for.

While the situation of a future Palestinian state and the ability to return look more and more distant by the day, many activists around the world are working to create an avenue of knowledge for those displaced Palestinians. What is positive, however, are the numerous organizations that are working hard to document that collective memory. An Israeli company named Zochrot has built an app called ‘iNakba’ that shows pictures and locations of Palestinian villages. Many of these areas have been wiped out and built over but the app helps to show Palestinians that their history is documented and that their identity is real, “iNakba features an interactive map and photos of buildings and houses that Palestinians fled during the fighting that erupted after Israel declared itself independent.” The app allows the diaspora around the world easy access to their homeland and makes the journey of discovery a bit easier. Shockingly, there are literally hundreds of “pins” signifying an old Palestinian village and each one of them represents the loss of memory and identity of innumerable people. With each death inside historic Palestine or in the diaspora, a small piece of memory is lost forever, iNakba seeks to mend that by constructing a digital archive of those areas. Technology is being used to allow people all around the world to cross over that gap in their knowledge and attempts to reconstruct a lost history. Another group called “Grassroots Jerusalem”, is trying to reconcile the lack of knowledge on Palestine and its history by working to educate people about the current situation in each village under occupation. Efforts include guided tours of the occupied territories, detailing settler expansion around Palestinian villages and a web page that provides a brief snip-it about numerous Palestinian towns and their history. The organization says, “our mapping project aims at the preservation of the Palestinian identity of Jerusalem, as well as support grassroots mobilization.” These apps and websites actively work to educate, remind, and give Palestinians a sense of validation. These organizations allow an individual access to some of that collective memory.

Working together, people around the world can help mitigate the loss of identities by organizing and sharing collective knowledge with younger generations. It is, however, crucial not to state the right of return as a sole remedy to this dilemma. The access to their history and traditions are hindered by numerous variables. It’s not black and white. The solution is recuperation of that historical/collective memory to make up for the losses that the diaspora has suffered. The oral history of their elders and ancestors can now be saved on the internet and used to educate instead of being forgotten. Furthermore, to even exist is itself to remain part of the diaspora but working to retain cultural aspects is paramount. If not continued, forgetting and becoming fully assimilated and integrated in the host culture can lead to a disappearance of a part of that individual’s identity. With that, the drive to access the knowledge of a people is lessened.

There are those, however, that actively try to climb those hurdles. Many diasporas have centers in which they can congregate and share their culture with others. Food, culture nights, and even places of worship can help extend the identity that is under threat in their respective regions. Reconnecting is crucial to maintain a certain semblance of the people in diaspora, sharing ideas, starting non-profits, and working with other diasporas around the globe can help to give all the communities a sense of hope and one day, perhaps actual change by advocating for rights and pressing legislatures to act.

Diasporas are all over the world and all share a collective memory of their ancestral homeland. It’s an unfixable problem even if a group is granted the right of return, it can’t completely regain that collective memory and each generation lost is a loss of a part of that collective history and memory. It's more important in diasporas because the connections through collective memory are the only connections they have and the only way they can connect to that history is through oral history. While returning and living in their original communities might not be possible, we can make sure further diasporas aren’t created by helping to understand why diasporas happen in the first place. Why these people aren’t living and thriving where they want to. State policy, UN complacency, lack of an ethnically central authority, and the loss of the physical land are all factors in the continuation of diasporas. However, a new digital world for archiving and communicating now exists to help mitigate extenuating circumstances and the people affected by those circumstances are making sure younger generations know where they come from and know who they are. These communities are part of a group of people dispersed far and wide but still yearning for their homes. The concept of identity and history of one’s people can still be reached by ensuring these strategies continue. I’m going to go back to the Institute for Palestine Studies here at Columbia and talk to that professor, I will tell him about all the things I learned about my people and the efforts to keep our identity and memory alive for many generations to come. There is still hope for Palestine.