The Deterioration of Being

Foreigners are a validation point for Palestinians. While their presence and support is completely welcomed, and has helped strengthen the cause of humanity, there is something within me that shivers with discomfort. I am not a nationalist, nor one for isolation. I do not parade the Palestinian flag on my back, because to me, the Levant was home to a shared culture. Celebrating the scarring borders imperialists placed around us, and celebrating this as my identity, is self defeating to me. While I accept the label of "Palestinian," I find more in common with those foreigners who defend Palestinian rights because of their language and ideals. Yet at the same time, in an odd phenomenon that I continue to experience, I find it just as isolating from what Palestinian identity means and constitutes.

As I scan Twitter or Facebook, individuals have established themselves as experts. Individuals who, with their privilege of electronics and English language, continue to champion Palestine. Their recognition of their own privilege is humbling, in that they are contributing their time and energy and resources to something that may not directly impact them. Their presence at various locations within the territories, their swiftness to move from Haifa within historical Palestine, to Gaza is something most Palestinians dream about. And in a way, as these individuals describe their pursuits and begin to tweet about what they are seeing and where they are, they may not realize that this is alienating to Palestinians and are subconsciously flaunting their capacity to make things happen.

It is indeed odd to feel this way--to know that deportation awaits me and thus, I have minimized myself to an obscure individual whom no one really knows. And in the shadows I witness the great achievements of foreigners here, from the new churches they build to the programs they "endow" Palestinians with. And if it is not the foreigners who have furthered the Palestinian cause, it is Palestinians in foreign lands who try to do so, Palestinians like me. So what about the boy who grew up his entire life in Dheisheh refugee camp and never can really relate to the SJP kids who run around Ramallah. Or the girl whose father is in prison, does she let the ajnabi come to her home, capture her story, and relate it in his own terminology and language, because the world cannot recognize her own, unadulterated voice?

The feeling of being stuck, and watching this all go by, and having these individuals establish themselves as experts is an unnoticed product of foreign presence here in Palestine. And Palestinians have made the mistake of catering themselves to foreign presence instead of directing it according to their own terms.

Hence the carnage of NGOs that have caused an epidemic of corruption, as they take photos of refugees and pose with them to publish on their websites as proof of their humanitarian cause. For humanity today is merely to numerically describe people, without their voices and personalities shining through statistics because it cannot be quantified for money.

As a diaspora, our identity as Palestinians is unified by simply being an oppressed people, but the vehicles of language and culture and experience are changing quickly. And the gap between an older generation, that, for the most part was born as this colonial presence was still being born, is widening with the younger generation born into something more established. Most will not be able to tell you the road to Jaffa as our parents tell us. Today's youth will instead take their children on some clear days from their highest village hilltop to show their children the coast. 

That will be their beach experience.

And without noticing these phenomena as foreigners and Palestinians alike rush to rallies just made for the sake of having them, while secret service lurks between the intentions of good people regardless of their origin, you begin to feel yourself deteriorating. 

Foreign governments begin to fund festivals for olive harvesting, and people from afar come and talk about olive harvesting, and witnessing a demolition, and being at the front line or on a ship reaching the coast of Gaza. Without noticing it, those with privilege have contributed to a feeling here that, Palestinians are truly helpless or in better terms, incapable. We often say, "We we wish we could do that."

It is not without appreciation that I write about this, but a realization of watching things unfold while Palestinians themselves scoff at the politically active in their own communities, especially under a divided governance that truly only constitutes its own source of privilege, leaders who are not capable of organizing our society into something sustainable. 

Once the foreigners do leave, with their money and presence, where will the Palestinians be left?

What infrastructure or resources have we established besides being beggars and victims? How does it make us feel that someone with a passport will not be shot, and so we ask them to attend our events so we can be protected? While help is attempting to humanize us, it is also dehumanizing us. 

We need someone who speaks English to be able to communicate to soldiers as they arrest us. Because Arabic and being who we are is not enough. We need the shield of the international community because without it we are naked.  But in using this shield we are vulnerable. As Palestinians this holiday fill the streets of their major cities to prepare for sacrificing lambs, we continue to be sacrificed by our own government, foreign institutions, activists with manipulating egos, and of course NGOs that pay little but earn millions for their programs.

Who am I? A Bir Zeit education is not enough to land a job, as organizations continue to hire either diaspora Palestinians or foreigners.  And even so, most jobs in the West Bank address the weak, incapable, uncivilized, poor, in need, desperate, sad Palestinians. 

Where did these words come from? When did the word "peaceful" have to become a disclaimer to everything? What happened to our true resistance, and was it ever true?

The longer Palestinians continue to operate in fragments, as geopolitical barriers have caused to our cultural thread, the longer Palestinians continue to depend on foreign assistance, the longer we lose touch.

Palestine would be different if the diaspora dared to send its own flotilla to Gaza, to practice its right of return and share its privilege. The fact that there is only 1 Palestinian on those ships shows exactly where the Palestinian diaspora community is, as those within Palestinian can only organize support rallies and feel somehow invested by bombarding Twitter and their own blogs.

And still how do those internationals feel when they truly have good intentions and feel that they are being too depended on and abused as a resource? For example some villages have become so accustomed to international presence during olive harvest season, that they no longer began to view international presence as a strategic shield to prevent settler and Israeli military violence, and have instead began using international volunteers as a voluntary labor source for picking olives.

It seems as though, those truly doing the right thing, whether international or Palestinian, are losing their voice to those who abuse these relationships or do not understand the responsibility of their actions on an international and domestic basis. And thus, as a Palestinian and an international, I experience both sides to this, the feeling of being used, and the feeling of being too dependent and helpless. The split personality of identity as an expat is something, like many returning Palestinians, something we cope with for a very, very long time.