“No one is purely one thing: Our Resistance is Our Identity!” -Final Draft

“No one is purely one thing: Our Resistance is Our Identity!”

“The unresolved plight of the Palestinians speaks directly of undomesticated cause and rebellious people paying a very heavy price for their resistance,” says Edward Said in Movements and Migrations (P 327)
What is this heavy price Said is talking about? Is it “paying for wars”? Or is it the “detachment of someone whose homeland is sweet, but where actual condition makes it impossible to recapture that sweetness”? Why should people pay these prices? What is the right price? Or the real question is their a right price people should pay for their resistance? What should people pay for their resistance?
This is the case in all of Palestine we are always paying a high price, mostly, for just being Palestinians and living in this land. But two special cases that I want to focus on are, Battir along with Turmousayya and their inhabitants’ identities.
From wandering around in Battir, the urbanized identity of its land and people is depending on irrigation and farming. It is obvious that the inhabitants of Battir are not rich. Their homes are simple. Most of them are probably built before 1948, but nonetheless there are new houses with the character of the new urbanized houses; the houses with characteristic of latest designs and materials.
As for the people, they are farmers and villagers. The old people still wear our traditional clothes and the new generations wear “the new ‘widespread’ clothes”; which are not part of the Palestinian culture, the clothes of the standardized and globalized world.
Yet, the most important character that actually defines people living in Battir is their resistance and adapting to the awfully unfair Israeli actions. They still go and farm their lands that Israel claims they belong to them. They went to courts and got special orders so they can farm the land.
The question that follows, is “living in an atmosphere of permanent crises” worth paying one’s life or one’s “real bond with one’s native place” to have a new atmosphere of uncertainty that is independence or even freedom? Would this new atmosphere be better than the old one? And insofar as it would what will happen to the people who will soon “exist between the old and the new”
People who exist between the old and the new, who has to exist between a culture that is thousands of years old and a culture which is 200 years old, those are the people of Turmousayya, who live between Palestine and United States of America. Turmousayyans (people for Turmousayya) have to travel back and forth between Palestine and the United States. They are constantly moving between the two places. They would spend the whole year in America and in the summer they come back to the other half of their homeland. For I cannot call Palestine neither America their homeland; rather it is the combination of both. In Identity Blues, Ien Ang writes, “People fear that they might become ‘strangers in their own land- which is another way of saying that they fear that ‘others’ will ‘take over’ the country.” (P10) The matter of ‘others taking over the country’ is not the only issue but rather it is losing their identity, not belonging, and “being caught between the structures.” The fear of becoming an “infinite strangers”. After all, what is worse than not knowing who you are, not belonging to a place, and being caught in a “between place”?
There is a special bound between Palestinians and their land. They fear that the lost of land will mean the loss of their own existence. Palestinians’ struggle was always, and still is, bound up with the land. “There is a need to face up- to rather than simply deny- people’s need for attachment of some sort, whether through place or anything else.” Belonging to a place or a nationality can be one of the simplest identities people defined themselves by. “An adequately progressive sense of place, one which would fit in with the current global-local times and the feelings and relations they give rise to.”
The identity of Turmousayya is simply people living in two countries and sacrificing the loss of both cultures, but at the same time enjoying the advantages of having multicultural minds. Resistance is constant and determined efforts that sweep all obstacles which we face daily and for the people of Turmousayya, it can be best defined by their multinational citizenships and their adjustment for two different, opposite, ways of living.
As for their nationality, perhaps it can be best explained by Ang, “it is not to be defined in terms of ‘identity’ at all, but as a problematic process: the national is to be defined not in terms of the formulation of a positive ‘common culture’ or ‘cohesive community’ but as the unending, day-to-day hard work of managing and negotiation differences, the practical working out of shared procedures and codes of coexistence, conciliation and mutual recognition.” (9)
Identity will always be mystical for all of us. ‘No one is purely one thing!” as Said says it. And we will never be able to define ourselves justly. The only thing we can do is to concern ourselves with ‘what we might become’ rather than ‘who we are’, and ‘what we can do’ rather than ‘what is done for us’. “Identity- that is the way we represent and narrativize ourselves to ourselves and to others- to be a resource of hope, to be the site of agency and attachment that energizes us to participate in the making of our own ongoing history.”
I consider what is going on in Palestine as a search of identity with respect to becoming not being. People of both towns, Battir and Turmosayya, choose to attach themselves to our land and choose to make our own ongoing history. I think this is what Said meant when he talked about ‘resistance’. Resistance is how we choose to see ourselves and what we choose to attach ourselves to. And even though the people of Battir and Turmosayya chose to represent themselves differently, they are both considered natives and are both resisting.
I never considered asking myself, 'who am I and what is my identity?' I only thought of this question when I wrote this paper. Who am I? I am a Palestinian. What on earth is this suppose to mean? What is a Palestinian? And why do we put a great deal of meaning into being Palestinian? What is so great about being Palestinian? Is it the fact that you get killed for just being called Palestinian? Or is the fact that you have to stand on a checkpoint for 5 hours? Or that you have to be separated from your family by a wall? Or that your dad, mom, sister, brother, you name it, is a martyr? Or that you live in a contained camp? Or being randomly selected for inspection? Or that you have to be strong all the time? Or that you can never ever be normal? You tell me reader, what is so special about Palestinians?
I might be speaking out of anger, out of pressure and despair, and out of challenge. But I know deep down, and on the surface of my soul, I know that I am blessed by being Palestinian. I mean after all I know I would not be who I am now without the “fact” that I am Palestinian. If I was not Palestinian, I would not be strong, I would not be “me” and I would not be normal! Yes, I said it, to be “normal”. Normal in the sense that we are not exposed to any other ways of living, we simply take it for granted and continue with what we have. And after all what is normal and what is not? And I have always asked myself and thought about the fact, which if I never existed in such a situation; if I was never born Palestinian and had to suffer the way we do, would my life even be worth living? I do not think so.
As Mahmoud Darwish said:
“We have on this earth what makes life worth living:
On this earth, the lady of Earth
Mother of all beginnings and ends
She was called Palestine
Her name later became Palestine
My lady, because you are my lady
I deserve life!”
I lived in the United States and I saw what people of the world call, “normal life”. I felt that it was pointless and I felt that it was even ‘up normal’, unusual. Again our concept of what is normal and what is not is related to what we are used to live and see. It is probably because I am used to actions, I got caught up in the system of fighting; that I cannot imagine my life without it. I also thought about what will happen if Palestine was freed. What will happen then? Are we ready for “freedom”? I do not know who I am! Do I want to know who I am? No. Do I need to know who I am? Again no.
The question of who I am has no answer, how do I define myself? I do not care how others define me and besides I am not one thing and I guess that I have the idea that if I try to define who I am I will lose a lot and I will always forget and leave something out.
Walking around in Battir and Tourmousayya I discovered that we are all connected. We all share in one way or another; the same fears and pleasures, the sadness and happiness, the suspicions and assurances and most importantly just as King Albert II said it, “One single vision fills all our minds: that of our independence endangered. One single duty imposes itself upon our wills: the duty of stubborn resistance.” Our identity is our resistance. We all have different ways of resisting and our identity is complex yet we are all Palestinians.