Maram, Mai and I were talking last night after dinner. They were asking me about my experience with people here; if people were nice to me etc. I said, so far, everyone's been really nice to me, especially Arabs when they find out that I'm half Palestinian. Mai then asked me what I felt, in terms of my identity. As she was asking me if I felt Palestinian, or Arab, or American, or Spanish, she stopped for a second to reflect on the question she was asking me. She turned to Maram and asked "what does being Palestinian mean exactly?".
Maram responded Palestinians are the Arabs who were born in the country. Mai then asked, "what country? there is no country! The only country that really exists is Israel. We are Israeli, then, right?". They both have Israeli citizenship, but say they're not treated like their Jewish counterparts, so they both agreed they wouldn't identify as Israeli- at least not without characterizing what type of Israeli citizens they are: Arab-Israeli.
Then the discussion went back to analyzing what the term Palestinian means. Mai was saying she didn't really understand what it means to be Palestinian, since it seems to be a term that defines nationality. She was struggling trying to figure out if there's ever really been a Palestinian nation. She said, maybe just the people born before 48, or the people born in the West Bank and Gaza are Palestinians. Maram quickly responded, "we are all Palestinians, Mai!". Maram added "If a state was created tomorrow, wouldn't you feel that you should be a part of it?" Mai responded affirmatively, but the conversation still carried on with no real resolution.
It's very interesting that this topic came up last night, because when talking to people in Arabic, sometimes they refer to themselves as Palestinian sometimes as Arab; sometimes they talk about Israel, sometimes they talk about Palestine. The nature of identity is so complicated...what are we, really? who are we?
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