Will the Palestinians leave their land? | policy

Over the past year, Israeli genocidal violence has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Estimates place the real number of victims at more than 180,000. At the same time, Israeli occupation forces repeatedly launched bloody attacks on the West Bank, killing more than 740 Palestinians.

Last month, Israeli forces expanded the violence into Lebanon, where more than 500 people were killed on September 23. In just two weeks, Israel killed more than 2,000 people in Lebanon.

Israeli forces destroyed entire neighborhoods in Gaza, bulldozing roads, bombing infrastructure and public service facilities, and destroying residential buildings. Health and educational facilities were destroyed, as were water stations, power plants and solar panels. In short, Israel tried to eliminate everything that supported life in Gaza.

Israel ordered the Palestinians to evacuate the majority of the Strip, forcing them to congregate in only 16% of its area. The same strategy has been applied in parts of the West Bank, and now in Lebanon.

People are told they can return when Israeli “military operations” end. But we all know that the goal of these massacres is to clear the land for settlement. This happened before, during the Nakba in 1948, and Palestinians were not allowed to return to their homes despite a United Nations resolution demanding this. For this reason, the Palestinians will not leave.

It may seem to some outsiders that the Palestinians’ connection to their land is incomprehensible. It is particularly incomprehensible to the Zionists who expelled many of us, hoping that we would move elsewhere in the Arab world and adapt there. But the Palestinian people have not given up their legal right to their land for more than seven decades.

The question of why Palestinians refuse to leave their homes and lands despite constant bombing and raids, settlement expansion and economic dispossession, is a deep, personal and fundamental question for Palestinian identity. It is not just about geography or property ownership, but rather a deep connection to the land woven into the fabric of Palestinian history, culture and collective memory. Yes, there is stubbornness in this decision, but there is also a deep understanding that leaving the land means severing a connection that has lasted for generations.

For Palestinians, land has a special place in their culture and collective consciousness. The olive tree is a perfect symbol of this. The olive tree is ancient, strong, and deeply rooted, just like the Palestinian people. Families take care of these trees as well as their heritage. The process of harvesting olives, pressing them, turning them into oil, and then sharing them with loved ones is an act of preserving heritage.

For this reason, the Israeli army and settlers love to attack Palestinian olive groves. The destruction of an olive tree is not just an attack on Palestinians’ livelihoods, it is an attack on their identity. Israel’s attempt to erase this identity is reflected in its ongoing war on Palestinian olive trees. From 1967 to 2013, Israel uprooted approximately 800,000 olive trees.

The connection to the homeland exists even among us Palestinians in the diaspora. I was born in Nablus in the occupied West Bank, but grew up outside Palestine. Despite the distance, I never felt separated from the Palestinian land.

My family had to flee during the second intifada. My father saw the Israeli army seize my grandfather’s land and turn it into a military checkpoint, and my mother was shot by settlers while she went to work. Their decision to migrate was not voluntary; It was a business of survival.

Over the past two decades, I have returned to Palestine regularly and watched as settlers steadily encroached on Palestinian land, trying to displace more Palestinians from their homes. What I remember as a child as clusters of illegal homes are now entire cities, surrounding Palestinian towns and villages on all sides.

But as Palestinian olive trees were burned, their water diverted and stolen, and homes demolished, I also saw resistance and resilience. The Palestinians were installing water tanks to withstand periods of water cuts by the Israelis. They would rebuild their homes at night after they had been demolished, and would rush to help communities like Huwwara when settler attacks occurred.

In the past year, Israeli violence has become genocidal, but the “resilience” of Palestinians has not diminished. From Jenin to Gaza, the Palestinians – despite the continuous Israeli attacks and strikes – did not stop resisting through the simple act of life and survival.

Whenever the occupier tried to make life impossible for Palestinians, Palestinians devised temporary solutions to make it possible – whether it was a washing machine powered by a bicycle pedal, a clay oven made of clay and straw for baking bread, or an electricity generator assembled from random pieces of machinery. These are just examples of stubbornness embodied in resilience.

At the same time, in the diaspora, our hearts and minds have never left Palestine. We watched in pain and horror as the genocide unfolded, and the leaders of the countries where we sought refuge looked the other way. Many in the West do not believe that Palestinian life has value. They don’t see us as human beings.

This ongoing inhumanity towards Palestinians has spread despair and frustration among our communities. But we have no right to surrender while the people of Gaza continue to live amid the horrors of genocide. We must awaken the Palestinian steadfastness within us and mobilize it to tell other communities that we are here, we exist, and we will persevere in a world determined to erase us.

The “we are the earth” metaphor is not just a poetic phrase. It is a reality that the Palestinian people live with. When Palestinians are asked, “Why don’t you leave?” They answer, “Why do we leave?” This land is Palestinian, plowed with the blood and tears of generations of Palestinians. Leaving means losing everything. It means allowing our history, our culture, and our collective spirit to be erased. A year after this genocide, the Palestinians remain because they have to.