I’m disappointed that the U.S. pulled out of the racism conference in an effort to shield Israel from scrutiny. But mostly, as a Palestinian-American, I’m disappointed that the Palestinian narrative seems to be missing in the U.S. discourse over the current conflict.
Since the creation of the State of Israel, we have been a nation of stateless people. Nearly one-third of us, more than 3.2 million, are forced to teeter on the brink of humanity in squalid refugee camps while our homes are either empty or housing Jewish immigrants.
We are denied citizenship in nearly every Middle Eastern country. In Lebanon, we are not allowed to earn a living in most professional fields, including medical doctors and lawyers. That country recently passed a law that forbids Palestinians from owning property there. The law is retroactive.
Things are just as grim in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other nations. Jordan, perhaps the poorest country in the Middle East, was the only nation in that region to give us full citizenship rights.
In the West, particularly the U.S., the melody of our surnames invokes suspicion and distrust, notably in airports.
Every aspect of Israeli rule in practice works to oppress and dehumanize us. The water is diverted beneath our feet to supply Jewish pools next door while we must ration cooking water. We cannot travel freely from one Palestinian town to another. We are checked constantly and slapped around at random.
When we confront armed soldiers with rocks, we are seen as the aggressors rather than brave defenders of our race.
We have a country and we’re only asking for a small part of it back where we can come together again as a people. We do not want to keep being forced to make concessions that translate into eternal apartheid where we are not much more than a cheap labor force living in ghettos or dealt with as a “demographic threat.” We want Israel to get out of what little remains of Palestine, namely all the occupied territories (22 percent of historic Palestine) and leave us alone.
