I really want to go all the way back to 1948. I am carrying the story, hopes, and struggles of my ancestors. And 1948 was a disaster year for the Palestinian people and for my family, who resided in a town called Umm Khalid (Netanya now), just a few miles away from the Mediterranean Sea. Zionist militias attacked the town and my family were exiled. They were told that it was going to be a couple of weeks before they could return. It’s seventy-six years later and we are still waiting for that return. In the aftermath of that Nakba, I was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank called Al-Far’a. It’s in the north of the West Bank between Jenin and Nablus.

I am the oldest of eight siblings. Growing up in a refugee camp of about sixty-one acres with ten thousand people roughly on it, you hear your neighbors, you smell the food in the neighborhood. There is no privacy, no place for kids to play. We went to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees schools and received basic services there. But the depth of the suffering is not necessarily only because of the conditions of being in a refugee camp, but also the continuous injustice and oppression that the Israeli army and military were imposing on my family and on my people.

I witnessed the second intifada as a child. I was ten years old when it started, and it was a very traumatic experience for me, for many other children, and for the Palestinian people. I saw my best friend killed in front of my eyes when I was a child. He was shot by an Israeli soldier in his chest and he fell dead. He was fourteen years old, I was twelve. My uncle was killed on my birthday. He was shot twice in the head and once in the shoulder. I was expecting to celebrate with him that day, my eleventh birthday, and unfortunately, instead of celebrating, I went to my uncle’s funeral. I lost two cousins. I saw neighbors being killed. I was shot when I was fifteen years old.

I witnessed the trauma of sensing that you might be killed or the trauma of sensing that somebody who you deeply love and care for might get killed, of waking up in the middle of the night to explosions that shake every atom of your body. We continued witnessing the apartheid system, where Palestinians are not treated as humans. Everyone in my family who was killed was killed without a court order and without any level of evidence, and whoever killed them never faced justice.

The freedom of travel was heavily restricted. For example, I did not see the sea until my twenties, even though the Mediterranean sea is about an hour and a half by car from Al-Far’a. Growing up during the second intifada, the whole West Bank was fractured and checkpoints were everywhere. We were not able to visit our relatives; I was not able to go and visit my mother, who was in a different area, for three years. When I finally saw her, I actually did not recognize her — my own mother.

Since October 7, four of my cousins have been killed. One of them was shot in front of his children in his chest, and his brother was killed in front of him and in front of his nephews and nieces in the refugee camp.

What fueled and motivated me to do the work that I am doing, and what brought me to Columbia, is this passion to end the war, the injustice, and the occupation — and to create a peaceful future for the children so they don’t have to go through a similar pain, a similar level of suffering that I went through.

And it’s not just seeing the sea, right? It’s experiencing it. It’s feeling the breeze of the sea. It’s feeling the atoms of sand between your toes. It’s feeling the saltiness of the water when it touches your skin and burns your eyes. It’s experiencing the sun setting at a horizon that has no limits when you look at it. This is an experience of freedom. It’s a human experience that most Palestinian children do not experience.

Actually, I went into Israel’s 1948 borders twice. The first time was on my twenty-third birthday. I was smuggled into Israel with a woman whom I loved at that time, and we went to my grandfather’s land. That’s when I experienced the sea for the first time.

When I went to the American consulate in 2014 to get my visa, I did not go to the beach because I did not want to risk it. This is how I was able to get to my interview at the American consulate, because the Israeli army denied me the right to go to the consulate. If I didn’t take that risk, I wouldn’t be here today.

Yes, Palestinians generally speaking need a permit, a permission — we call it Tasirh — in order to be able to go to Israel, whether it’s for a medical appointment or a visa appointment. And Palestinians are under the mercy of the Israeli system to receive that permission or not. In my case, I was denied the permit. I said, “I’m going to make it in any way possible.” I could have been shot by a sniper who was in the tower there. Or caught by the army vehicle patrolling the wall separating many areas in the West Bank.

I never met an Israeli as a civilian or interacted with an Israeli on a human-to-human basis, where an Israeli was not holding a gun and forcing me to act in certain ways or watching me, or stopping me at checkpoints, or killing my friend. That is the experience that I had with Israelis.

But America has provided me with the opportunity to meet Jews and Israelis for the first time in my life, to be able to have person-to-person conversations with them where we are able to talk about our experiences, about our hope, about our pain, about our trauma, and about our perception of the other. That was very thought provoking. It has shifted my whole understanding. That’s where my understanding started to shift, and I have seen it shifting also among American Jews and Israelis I have interacted with. That’s what gives me hope.

I started realizing, “Wait a minute, the issue is not necessarily that the Israelis are our enemies. The issue is that the Israelis don’t know Palestinians on a human level and in a human capacity. And there is a lot of misinformation and ignorance about the Palestinian story, the Palestinian history, and the Palestinian wants and needs.”

I did not understand much about why the Israelis are continuing to oppress us this way. It’s the chicken and the egg. But I can understand that if you don’t know somebody, you would develop a much larger fear from them, and you would develop a certain level of biases and even consider them inhuman. I came to this realization where I said, “Actually, if there is an enemy, it would be fear, it would be segregation, and it would be ignorance.”

Yes. So when I arrived in the United States, my wife was here. She’s the one who convinced me to stay here, so I got my green card.

I had two appointments in Vermont, one for the green card and another later to renew it. So it wasn’t a new thing for me. What was new is the detention or abduction that took place during my citizenship interview, where I was hoping to become an American citizen and enjoy full rights and an ability to travel without worrying. The outcome was disastrous. I was denied my citizenship after my detention, and I spent sixteen days in a prison.

It was not an ICE prison. It was actually a Vermont state prison where ICE is renting a section. Most of the people who were there were not immigrants, but people who were convicted of crimes. The section where immigrants were held was a mixture of immigrants and prisoners convicted of different crimes.

The cell itself is seven feet by fourteen feet, and you share it with another inmate. The mattresses in the bunk beds that you sleep in are super thin, to the point that you start feeling pain in your back and in your body. There is a guard who comes by and flashes the light several times during the night through the glass window in the door. You have to abide by the instructions of the prison. You only have one hour to go outside. Sunlight, sleep, and food are all limited. Each meal is only twenty minutes, and if you’re five minutes late you do not get a meal. And there is the lack of medical care.

Many people who you meet there, people who committed crimes, you listen to their stories, and they are stories of trauma and stories of loss and pain. For example, one inmate I spoke to saw his mother being raped in front of his eyes when he was four years old. You speak to these people and you know that they need mental health support. And the mental health care in the prison is not really care. They are not provided with care in a way that people will be able to benefit from or in a way that provides dignity.

Then you look at the migrants, the undocumented workers who would be brought into the section. They were not provided with legal counsel or a translator.

But I felt an unbelievable level of love when I was in that prison in my cell because of all of the support, love, and care that I received from my community and from my legal team. I am really blessed. So it was not as severe on me as one might think. But it was difficult. And it’s not easy for anybody to be in prison.

And what’s the reason that it happened to me? Because of my activism, because I have been advocating and working to stop the war in Gaza, advocating for peace and justice based on my free speech. It’s outrageous.

I was the last student activist to be detained and the first to be released. I was detained for sixteen days while everybody else spent at least double that time.

What led to my release? Some people have said I am the perfect victim. Because I believe in peace and nonviolent activism. And the Jewish community showed up big-time for me. I am very grateful for the American Jewish community and the Israeli Jewish community that saw injustice and stood up against it.

It actually affected the decision of the judge. I was accused of interfering in foreign policy and for antisemitic activism. So to see all of this support from the Jewish community was significant to the point that the judge, Judge Geoffrey Crawford, said that I was characterized as peaceful by a large number of American Jewish people. So for sure it was significant.

The system of justice, which is part of the checks and balances in the democratic system, is still functioning. Trump’s administration is trying to overload it and to flood it, but it has not succeeded yet. I’m not saying that justice is perfect, but it’s working. It’s a long path to restore justice. I just received the relief of the restrictions on my travel. I was restrained within Vermont and New York City. On July 17, Judge Crawford granted me full freedom to travel within the United States. The process for justice is a marathon.

Yes, I am determined to go through the process and to get my American citizenship. I’ve been in this country for eleven years. I have roots here in Vermont, which I consider a home. I have many communities that I am connected with. This is where I experienced freedom for the first time in my life, and I felt safe until ICE kidnapped me. I’ve worked here. I’ve paid taxes. I have attended the best educational institutions and I am determined to go through the process for American citizenship.

My struggle is not only my struggle as a Palestinian refugee. It’s also tied to the American struggle for equality and for justice and for democracy. Peace is achievable, and it comes through justice. Peace will be possible when Israelis are able to see through their trauma and pain, the trauma and pain that came from antisemitism in Europe, the Holocaust, and the continuous injustice that Jewish people faced in Europe and in other parts of the world, and when Palestinians heal through their trauma that Israelis have imposed on them, on my people, for over seventy years.

So I see a path moving forward where a future of equality and freedom between the river and the sea is very achievable. And I see this path being achieved through peaceful means. I believe that it can be done through restoring and reforming international law and human rights. We have the laws that allow us to stop the injustice and to start the process for creating a future that is safe for all children, Palestinians and Israelis. I’ll continue to amplify the rights for Palestinians. I will continue to fight for Palestinians’ rights and freedom and liberation.

I don’t see this as only a Palestinian struggle. I see this as the path forward for humanity. And the work that I will continue doing is not much different than what I was already doing. It is work fueled by love, empathy, and compassion. It’s a work of imagination and vision. I believe that peace is possible. And I believe that it’s going to be achieved in a matter of a few years.