The Freedom of Movement
A group of young Palestinians talk about how movement, or a lack of it, impacts their daily life.
Words and illustrations by Yasmin Ahram
Today, and for the past 73 years, Palestinians have not had the right to freedom of movement, which is defined as freely moving within, leaving and returning to one’s own land. This is because Palestine, the Indigenous land of Palestinians, has been under the military occupation of a genocidal settler-colonial project known as Israel.
This state, which was built on decades of ethnic cleansing, violent dispossession and land theft through an apartheid regime, has increasingly stripped Palestinians of this fundamental right (among many, many others) whether they currently live in colonized Palestine or have been in forced exile around the world.
Over time, the Zionist regime has institutionalized its systemic restriction of movement for Palestinians, one of their colonial practices meant to asphyxiate every aspect of Palestinian life. While Jewish settlers and foreign tourists can move freely through colonized Palestine, every Palestinians’ experience of movement is impeded and varied, albeit entrenched in injustice and dehumanization.
Despite these colonial borders meant to rupture our unity and ongoing resistance efforts, this past May’s wave of uprisings, both locally and globally, was dubbed the Unity Intifada (Uprising.) Even in the face of mass censorship, Palestinians brought our movement for liberation to the world, revealing the murderous lengths the occupation will go to with impunity.
Although the world has been lulled back into the illusion of peace and normalcy, Palestinians continue to resist military occupation and the apartheid regime. To give an insight into the daily realities of Palestinians I spoke to five different people trying to make their way in a land that doesn’t want them to exist.
YM
YM
On any given day, a Palestinian from the West Bank could face hours of delays and multiple military checks on their way to work, to the grocery store, the hospital or a family’s house. In addition to the hundreds of road obstructions that are placed within the West Bank, separating the area into hundreds of monitored neighbourhoods and villages, Palestinians have to go through checkpoints that are both fixed and flying, which can be placed anywhere and change daily, controlled at the whim of occupation soldiers. For context: colonized Palestine is six times smaller than NY state and the West Bank is only 251mi (or 404 km) in length.
If a West Banker like YM a 25-year-old creative director of Nöl based in Ramallah, wants to go outside of the West Bank into ‘48 (‘48 is what people refer to as “Israel” in reference to the year those territories were stolen) they must apply for a permit from the apartheid state, which is not always granted. Many West Bankers have never seen the sea, even though the shoreline is a short twenty-minute car ride away.
Palestinians from ‘48 are Israeli citizens, so they are given a blue ID and a yellow car plate meaning they can enter any territory as they please (those cars don’t get stopped unless soldiers racially profile you as Palestinian.) The apartheid ID system establishes power dynamics in our interpersonal relationships. What happens when you try to celebrate a milestone together but you weren’t granted a permit?
“‘Tahreeb’ is when you don’t have formal permission to go outside the West Bank so you find other ways to get in, this is super common. Since my partner was a ‘48er he had a blue ID and yellow plate so we normally used his car and successfully going through.
On the day of our engagement party which was in Nazareth, we were crossing the checkpoint and we got stopped. It was surreal, there are just a few meters between me and my land and I was forced to turn back while Orthodox Jewish teenage boys from New York were walking across the checkpoint to their illegal settlements and laughing, and no one stopped them.
It’s so enraging that it’s almost inextricably intertwined with exhaustion. You're angry all the time that you need to go through things that are so wildly inhumane but so easy for the rest of the world to be okay with, and you're tired of being angry. The burden of movement was a defining feature of the relationship, I always felt lesser than. I have an American passport, so people might say this is my chosen reality to an extent, but Palestine is my home. I would never, ever give up my ID because this is forever going to be my base.”
SL
SL
For Palestinians in Jerusalem, who are granted temporary residencies (but not citizenship), daily life is a mix of surveillance and aggravation. SL, a Palestinian Jerusalemite and 22-year-old co-founder of Trashy Clothing, is currently studying in Amman, Jordan. He reflects on growing up in a state of surveillance.
“In Jerusalem, there are no checkpoints but it’s the centre of daily confrontations with soldiers always stopping you, asking you where you’re going and new security cameras being built all around the city; it’s controlled freedom. It's not normal for a human to go through on a daily basis, always analyzing each person around you and being paranoid in public places.
As a teenager, I would use my mom’s Armenian identity just to avoid confrontation. Having to cover up where you were born and raised is so toxic. You just feel suffocated. I only noticed that suffocation and the impact of this environment that I grew up in once I left.
I’m a resident, not a citizen so I can't be away from Jerusalem for too long because then my residency will be revoked. A lot of us studying abroad have this anxiety about needing to go back. Even when I’m not there I’m on edge; growing up with constant intimidation, limits, borders and identity checks, it stays with you. For the past four years, Trashy has felt like therapy, channelling that pain into my creative work.”
MA
MA
Due to political geographies and the colonial borders in Palestine, the Gazan is at the very bottom of the apartheid state’s racist hierarchy.
For Palestinians like MA, who live in the besieged city of Gaza–known as the largest open-air prison in the world–movement in and out of the strip is near impossible. Gazans like Meera have experienced four wars and a 14-year blockade, constantly trying to recover from Israel’s brutal bombings, with no access to other parts of colonized Palestine. Limited permits are granted to residents of Gaza for travel, which can take up to three months. The journey, which should only be a matter of six hours, takes multiple days; Palestinians sleep in their cars with no access to water or bathrooms. Although Albaba, a 28-year-old designer who also shares her perspective through her clothing brand, has a Saudi passport and has been able to study and live abroad through scholarships and support from her parents, she will always choose Gaza as home.
“Since we were young, we have always been very connected to the land. My grandparents were farmers from Lydd.
Living in Gaza, you grow up much quicker, you have this hunger for knowledge because there’s little you can do. We’re very cultured about and aware of the geography and politics of the world without having to go anywhere, then you go abroad and have to explain basic shit. They live in a bubble although I’m the one living under siege.
In Gaza, we’re very loud and political, and the sense of community is something I know I won’t find anywhere else in the world. My relationship with Gaza is complex; it’s challenging to your individuality, it’s traumatizing and you’re terrified to your very core, but this is the only place I want to die.
During the last attack, my brother and his wife’s names came up for travel, along with mine, and I was like, “there’s no way in hell I’m traveling, I’m gonna stay here. If we’re going to die we’re going to die together.” When I think of heaven I think of me sitting here eating all homegrown and local everything, and there’s nothing better, because there’s this connection to land and soil and that’s what matters.”
SR
SR
In stark contrast to Gaza residents, Palestinians in ‘48 like SR are granted the most freedoms with regards to movement and other rights. However, the 24-year-old based in Haifa does not fall for the colonizer’s tactic of proximity to the oppressor. Although Rose uses her privileges to challenge the occupation, she is reminded that as a Palestinian, no amount of privilege will protect her from the violent settler-colonial state or its emboldened citizens.
“I have the highest status that you can have as a Palestinian but I’m still part of a hierarchy.
Usually, I’m not profiled as a Palestinian so going through security they don’t make it hard for me. It’s my personal choice to make it hard on them. That's my privilege, I get to choose and sometimes I choose to be a problem for them. I see that they're confused and uncomfortable to the point where they're more scared of me than I am of them.
When the settlers came into Haifa escorted by the police and they were chanting “Death to Arabs,” that's when I knew I'm not witnessing apartheid, but I'm a part of it and I'm not exempt from it. They always try to talk about Haifa as the model of coexistence, but it’s actually a model of demographic segregation. You might live a considerably normal life, but your life could be invaluable when they choose to make it. This is the fundamental fear that most Palestinians live in at the end of the day.”
OB
OB
As for the rest of the Palestinians in forced exile, some of us only know our homeland through our grandparents’ memories, our friends’ stories, our poetry, our food, our music, our art, our culture, every which way but our land. There are an estimated 6 million of us, if not more, and we do not have the right of return, which is reaffirmed multiple times in international law.* OB is a Palestinian refugee, who was born and raised in Amman, Jordan. At 26 years old, he is a documentarist and the creative director of Trashy Clothing.
“I’m not allowed to go to Palestine [as a Palesetinian] and the process of getting a visa from the occupying state’s embassy feels wrong. I have to ask them to go back to my country and it’s just for a visit. Every time I visit a new country, I’m reminded that I can go everywhere in the world, except for my own country.
My grandparents are from a village near Ramleh, called Al-Muzayri'a. They were farmers and [in 1948] they lost everything, all their land, their homes, their money, everything. When they came to Jordan they lived in a cave, my grandpa started selling falafel on a cart and eventually was able to buy a house and grow our family. The fact that we are talking about this doesn’t make sense to me. Our dispossession happened 73 years ago yet it has been so normalized as if this is it for Palestinians. This is why it’s vital to let it be known that you are Palestinian everywhere you go, remind people that we have always existed and still exist, and deserve the right of return. We need to continue being loud about our right of return and we need to support those in Palestine fighting against the theft of their homes.”
Our rights and livelihoods shouldn’t be in relation to the occupation and its violence. Palestinians shouldn’t be happy to just live and survive, we deserve to be alive. Although our resistance and resilience must be recognized and celebrated, Palestinians deserve normalcy, and this will only be achieved through our liberation, our return and our land back.
So protest, boycott and pressure corporations to divest and your governments to apply sanctions, because wherever you are in the world, we need you to take an unwavering stance against Israeli impunity and resist with us.
Names appear as initials at request to those interviewed because of an increase of violence and threats to their safety.
*All Palestinian refugees right to return to their homes is established and reaffirmed twice in international law (see U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) Of December 1948, paragraph 11 as well as UNSC Res. 242 and 338.)