“200 Meters” shows the daily struggle of Palestinian families living on opposite sides of the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank. As a Palestinian raised in Nazareth, how do you relate to this kind of experience?
I grew up in “48” [references the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948], in the city of my father. He’s 83, which means he was born in Nazareth before the establishment of the state of Israel. My mother is from Nablus in the West Bank. When they got married in the 1970s, she was able to move with him, which wouldn’t be possible anymore. Since 2003 Israeli citizens are no longer able to extend citizenship or even residency to their Palestinian spouses from the occupied West Bank and Gaza. This law tore apart families: some people have been in court for years trying to be reunited.
How was it like growing up as a Palestinian-Israeli citizen in the 1990s?
In the heights of Nazareth, overlooking our city, there’s another city that used to be named “Nazareth Illit”, literally, it was the ‘better’, the ‘elite’ Nazareth [today renamed Nof Hagalif]. It was built in the 1950s on land they confiscated from Palestinians for new Jews from the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. They had the better leafy parks, the nice playgrounds, the swimming pools, a lot of space and great urbanism. The difference in life conditions with our Nazareth was just striking. Being a “48 Palestinian” [a reference to the borders of the state founded in 1948] informs your entire life, every day, about everything, all the time. It ranged from finding a job or housing to land ownership, anything. I grew up in a very racist society. Every aspect you look at in life, the Palestinian are discriminated against.
Have you personally experienced it?
As everyone I was raised knowing what we can or cannot do, what is permissible, or not. Racism would also be expressed on the streets through comments like: “Oh, you’re an Arab? You don’t look like it.” They meant I don’t look like a “Palestinian”, but in “48”, they like to use the word “Arab”, which is a terminology that negates our identity and any sense of collective belonging.
“Apartheid” has been used a lot to describe the situation. To what extent do you think it’s adequate?
Three terms are used a lot these days: “settler colonial state”, “occupation” and “apartheid”, and I’d say they’re all accurate. It’s clearly “settler colonialism”, because they expelled indigenous people and took their land. In 1948, they destroyed 530 cities and villages and about 750,000 Palestianians were made refugees – some internally displaced. “Occupation” is a clear fact in the “67” [the areas occupied by Israel after the 1967 war], such as the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem., where military forces occupy the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. As for “Apartheid”, it definitely applies to the segregation and the racial supremacy of the Jewish Israeli over the land “from the river to the sea”. After 75 years some villages in the Negev area for instance are still unrecognised and people live there without basic services like: water, electricity. educational system, health facilities. There is a huge gap in education and in the economy between Palestinian citizens and Jewish Israelis. Inside the “48”, we’re second class citizens in the best scenario.
Apartheid also implies legal segregation…
There are some 65 laws discriminating against Arab Israelis! I mentioned the marriage law. Another good example is how every Jew is legally entitled to immigrate to Israel and become a citizen. But Palestinians who were expelled from their land and found refuge abroad – they can’t go back. They are not even allowed to visit their homeland. Someone like Edward Said was never allowed back. Mahmoud Darwish [the great Palestinian poet] couldn’t be buried in his native village as he wished because it’s now located in the “48” [Al-Birwa barely exists anymore, outside Darwish’ poetry]. They buried him in Ramallah in the West Bank instead.
How aware were you as a kid? Did you have a feeling of unfairness already?
I was born in 1982, so I grew up during the first intifada [1987–1993]. My mum being from Nablus in the West Bank we used to travel back and forth to see my family and I would witness what we all witness today and that Palestinians have been experiencing for decades: checkpoints, humiliations, shootings. There also were what we used to call “the days of curfews”, when we were forced to stay in our homes, sometimes for several days at a time. I remember, the small time windows we could run outside to buy some sweets – once or twice a week. Also, I remember the fear for people demonstrating in the streets – that they get killed or jailed, or beaten.
Was your family politically active?
Not directly. But one aunt was volunteering with the Red Cross in Nablus, so she was on top of what was going on. One vivid memory is when she took me to [West Bank town of] Ramallah to welcome Arafat in 1994. The square was packed, and I could feel this elation we all shared – the elation of his return and the return of the PLO to occupied Palestine [following the Oslo agreements]. This feeling of “finally the possibility for freedom, peace, a State.” Itwas an opening, a moment of hope.
At which point did you decide to get politically involved?
In high school I was already involved. As a teenager I started reading Arab feminists like Nawal El Saadawi, and also taking notice of women’s burden in my community: how much my mum, aunts and teachers worked, and yet how little they were not listened to, the authority were the men. Feminism questions the power dynamics that we take for granted in our daily lives, and once you put on those glasses you cannot look away, and fail to see those injustices any longer. The denial of someone’s existence is feminist and there’s a way to describe the Palestinian struggle for me, it’s exactly it.
Then when you finished high school the second intifada broke, right?
Yes, the Israeli police killed 13 Arab citizens of Israel during peaceful street demonstrations, some in Nazareth where I was at the time. So I saw with my own eyes the violence, the beatings and the viciousness of the repression against demonstrators – when they were Arabs.
Were Jewish activists treated differently?
Absolutely. I’d joined many demonstrations as a student in Tel Aviv and I knew that the Israeli Police would never shoot at Jewish demonstrators – even when physically attacked.
In 2010 you moved to Montreal for your studies. What kind of awareness and support did you find there as a Palestinian?
Montreal was really sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Students, unions, professors would come together and help build the movement. In 2014 during the big assault on Gaza – the protest was massive, some 50,000 people took to the streets in Montreal. So when I arrived in Berlin it was a huge shock!
What was it that shocked you in Berlin?
The whole atmosphere was very weird, very new and very shocking. It’s a place that doesn’t tolerate giving a platform to Palestinians. The media don’t, and they don’t criticise Israel, not even on the Left. This is absolutely special. Nothing I ever encountered elsewhere.
I remember drawing posters for a demonstration, and someone told me “You cannot write that!”, that the Police wouldn’t let us carry the signs, that they could arrest us for it, etc. He meant the word “Apartheid”! I was in total shock. This was totally new to me.
Carrying a sign calling Israel an “Apartheid state” was less problematic in Tel Aviv than in Berlin?
As a Palestinian you’re never safe – you can be a victim of Police or army violence any time, no matter how peacefully you protest, just for who you are. But being arrested for these words, specifically, no. A jewish Israeli demonstrator would never get into trouble for that. Israel used to tolerate a certain dissent from Jewish Israelis. But Berlin is a special case.
It’s surprising considering Berlin is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian diaspora. Few realise that, they’re almost invisible.
That’s true. But you need to realise that a vast majority of the Palestinian diaspora in Berlin arrived in Germany from the refugee camps in Lebanon. These are a vulnerable, traumatised and disenfranchised people, and Germany did everything they could to prevent them from existing as a community and contributing to the wider Palestinian cause: no space to meet, no right to speak publicly as Palestinians, a continuous intimidation and criminalisation which we’ve seen this for many years.
Berlin banned pro-Palestine demonstrations for three weeks after the 7th of October. What’s changed since October 7?
Palestinians were not allowed to demonstrate and the Police was very violent at the beginning. But, it’s been going on for years. In 2022, the Berlin Police had already cancelled the yearly commemoration of the Nakba. Why would you cancel a peaceful demonstration?
So, why?
One interpretation is that the same commemoration the year before was too successful: some 15,000 people joined, something this city hadn’t seen for years! In recent years the pro-Palestinian support had been growing, especially in Berlin. The State has responded by doing what it could to undermine and repress the movement. The BDS resolution is a good example of that. [In May 2019 the Bundestag passed a resolution condemning the BDS movement as anti-Semitic]. It was implemented by German cultural institutions as a tool to shut any peaceful criticism of Israel.
Are you at all sympathetic to the idea that Antisemitismn is a national trauma and a legit obsession for the Germans? That they feel it their duty to be especially alert?
It’s a very cynical way to use Antisemitism, it’s instrumentalising a very serious concern to shut down any criticism of the State of Israel and its policies. It’s also a very cynical projection of one’s historical guilt onto the newcomers, the immigrants: a projection of all their past wrongs onto the most vulnerable precarious groups, refugees and immigrants.
The so-called “imported Antisemitism”?
Yes, that’s what they call it despite the fact that their own stats show that Antisemitic acts are committed by white Germans in their vast majority. This instrumentalisation of antisemitism is alo a way to silence public debate over the actual scale of Germany’s complicity in this genocide – through the weapons they sent, their business deals…
What about Germany’s famous memory politics, and the notion of collective guilt? Don’t you think the Germans may sincerely feel it their duty to side with and help Israel?
I understand that some people may feel it that way, but, then, we need to question this “memory politics” business. Why do we learn history? What are we supposed to learn from it? If it’s only about projecting one’s self image into the present – about validating yourself as a nation and assuaging past crimes, then maybe the Germans haven’t learned from their past after all.
Could the current tragedy be a wake-up call? Despite efforts to silence the issue, Palestine is back on the agenda…
It is a wake-up call, but not only for Germany. The stakes are so high because we’re talking about the killing of over 24,000 civilians – so a genocide in the making, taking place before our eyes, in stark violation of every moral we’ve grown up to value, every International rule the UN is supposed to guarantee. What’s happening in Gaza is the compass that’s helping all of us put the dots together. Any, yes, the Germans can’t swipe the issue under the carpet as they used to.
Culture Senator Joe Chialo’s “Antidiskriminierungsklausel” created quite a stir among culture-makers earlier this month. In the name of the fight against antisemitism, the Berlin state seems intent to crack down on basic artistic freedoms. What do you make of it?
It was the BDS resolution before, and now this. Both are symptomatic of the way cultural institutions in Germany are dealing with the Palestinian issue. So what does it mean, concretely, if you want artists to sign a new “clause” that says “I accept the IHRA definition of antisemitism”, considering that seven of the 11 criteria have to do with the State of Israel? Is it really about protecting Jews from antisemitism, or Israel from criticism?
Following months of state-sponsored conformism, it seems that the wider Berlin arts/culture world is opposing some resistance: an open letter and rallies against the “anti-discrimination clause” – some artists called for a boycott of Germany. Too much is too much?
That now the wider German artworld realises what’s going on and fight it because they get affected – great. I agree, too much is too much – but not because of what Berlin artists may have to pay.
I guess I want to put proportionality in this equation. Because it’s been the Palestinians, the Palestinian in Gaza and the community here that have been paying the dearest price, and for a long time. We should see history in light of the price certain people pay until change can happen.
What’s your hope at this point?
My hope lies with my people who despite decades of suffering and collective punishment have remained so resilient, courageous and always find a way to revive their spirits. I am also very much in awe of the solidarity that is growing everywhere, including here, in Germany, despite the harsh repression. People from every corner of the globe find themselves and their own respective struggles represented in the Palestinian cause. I also have faith in the Jewish comrades who share with us a vision of the future by which our two people live in justice and freedom.
