If you haven’t already noticed, I’m extremely passionate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have been researching and studying the history, ethicality, and legality of the conflict for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, people like myself often forget what the Palestinian cause is all about in between all the chaos and frustration that comes with the conflict. To understand what I truly want out of this conflict I asked myself “If I woke up tomorrow and miracle happened where Palestinians are now liberated, how would that look like for me?” unsurprisingly, it was an easy answer. This is what it would look like if a miracle did happen tomorrow: Israel would end the occupation of Palestinian territories, a democratic and secular Palestinian state would form based on the 1967 borders, and Palestinian refugees all over the world would finally be given the right to return to their ancestral land of Palestine. Nowhere in my miracle was the state of Israel gone, nowhere were the European colonists kicked out, and nowhere are Jews disenfranchised. 

I sometimes lose sight of what my goals are between all the mess of fighting the system that caused the conflict. This idea wasn’t exactly clear to me until last spring break. During spring break I traveled all the way to Lebanon to meet my parents and renew my refugee status. I took this as an opportunity to gain more insight as to what it’s like being a refugee. While I am a refugee myself, I have been extremely privileged in life and was never able to relate to the millions of disadvantaged refugees around the world. Thus, I decided to learn more by visiting the same refugee camp my parents grew up in – Burj El-Shemali camp. Before entering the refugee camp, I was truly terrified due to its poor condition and the presence of military personnel and checkpoints. However, that was all gone within the next couple of hours. I was being hugged and kissed by people who recognized my parents years after they’d last seen them. According to my dad, everyone was my either my uncle, aunt, grandpa, grandma, or some other relative I never knew existed. Although I was right, none of these were blood relatives of mine, my dad explained that they were all still family. I spoke to a taxi driver whose mother relied on the UN’s financial assistance for her heart surgery. I conversed with a woman who after surviving physical abuse from her ex-husband, was able to get a college degree and open a philanthropy for senior refugees. Families who had so little invited us over for feasts and practically begged us to come again a half a dozen times after. Needless to say, I was shocked.

What was most interesting is that I had met an extremely old man who was born in what is currently the northern region of Israel – I was actually related to this man who was my dad’s uncle. I asked him about life in former Palestine and I asked him about how the Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together. “We lived together with the Jews like they were our brothers and sisters” my uncle said, “I remember my parents would trade oats and wheat with them for chickens” he later added “They were so kind and the whole conflict had nothing to do with religion.” We usually expect older people to be less tolerant of people who don’t share their beliefs. Yet, my uncle was living the reality and never saw a reason to resort to violence. It made me happy to realize that even the older generation of Palestinians see no religion when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I wish our politicians were the same.