We are all Palestinians,’ I hear crowds chant at protests. I ask myself what it means, what is the common thread making all of them Palestinians? We may live in a Palestinian state of mind if we miss trust in the world as something never had but existentially needed, disoriented until we recognize: this deprivation, this state is universally human.
In German we call the metaphorical place of trust Heimat, insufficiently translated into homeland. I sometimes also call it Hemayat in Arabic due to the word’s comforting safety. It is something that comes naturally, a feeling that is deeply rooted, understood by itself, it is selbstverständlich. Heimat can be physical, and that is how most of us learn to internalize the selbstverständliche as places and people you know, move and breathe in and with, without preconditions.
Such Heimat can be seen as a kind of nostalgic longing for childhood basic trust. As soon as we outgrow it, we are thrown into a world we need to find Heimat in again using our templates of basic trust. For some of us these templates do not exist, do not fit, or are rejected from those who decide them. Pushed to its edges again and again the world becomes a non-place for some of us. A Palestinian place.
Even if we have not experienced Heimat by and in ourselves, we do not come from the void we are pushed into. There must have been something, a place for us to ’return’ to. As pessoptimists we never give up our search for the ‘right’ place. Until then we are kept in a state of unrest. It may be the only possible state outside of a Heimat‘s shelter. A Palestinian state of mind.
We are out of place but we are not wrong, only because those who decide on who fits keep telling us that we are an unwanted problem. We know what is right for us and remain steadfast, samidoun. In the end, we know why we are ignored: Not because we are wrong, but because our loss of Heimat is mirroring wrongs others will not admit to themselves. What cannot be true for them cannot be possible for us. What cannot be ignored must be suppressed. An oppression of the Palestinian in us.
These external structures of oppression aim to bury the loss of Heimat inside us. Our most important resistance is fighting this internalization, keeping the externally forced exile out of our inner state. We do not let fear and anger terrorize us and others. Even with our felt powerlessness in the external world, our inner world remains sovereign. We can trust our inner Heimat, not to be occupied by external hegemonic structures that we have to shake off. A Palestinian shaking off (Intifada).
Only then are we able to see that those internalized structures kept us divided. We start seeing Palestinian states all over the world. Not having to prove our existence anymore, we see the world on our terms; it is not we who are wrong, but the templates forced on us. We do not need prerequisites to find Heimat as the individuals we are—from private rivers to communal seas. The Palestinian state becomes a universal, self-determined one.
This is an extract from the book Gaza, lebendig halten which will be published in Germany in March 2025
