On being Palestinian in Valencia today

I’m familiar with this energy; with this deep compassion that becomes fuel to push us forward. I’m familiar with this unity; with this defiance; with this beautiful rage that brings people together. I’m familiar with this self-organization, with this absence of state, with this negligence of leadership. Was it May 2021? When the Sheikh Jarrah protests erupted and later the bombardment of Gaza? I remember that day vividly when we gathered in Haifa to organize ambulatory clinics and to provide free legal help to those arrested or those who lost their jobs because they committed to the general strike that the Palestinian community declared, across all of historical Palestine. It’s similar, but it’s not the same. I don’t want to go through the differences between that moment in Haifa and this moment here in Valencia. I want to focus on the similar thing: the feeling of invincible unity.  

What I witnessed today is a functioning society. A society that is brought together as a reaction to disaster and shock, especially when the ruling government fails to do its job. Numerous news outlets are reporting the delay on part of the Valencian generalitat in alerting the public of the imminent disaster, and later in delaying the arrival of rescue troops from other autonomous communities. The fact that private companies forced their employees to go to work despite the meteorological notices and alerts is another element that forces people to only trust each other. El pueblo unido jamás será vencido. 

Not to be self-centered, but as I experienced the aftermath of the disaster here, I thought about Palestine. My community has been experiencing shock every day for the past 400 days, so much so that it can no longer react “normally”. In other words, when I was home this summer I noticed how members of my community are desperately trying their best to maintain a “normal” facade by attending wedding parties and congratulating each other on new jobs, while a war is taking place. This is not a metaphor, you could hear the sound of rockets getting intercepted by the iron dome in the Northern distance. This is the doctrine of shock. To explain it in a simpler manner: if you drink coffee excessively, it no longer has an effect on you. You might as well drink coffee and go to sleep. I want my community to be sensibilized again. I want to help my community just like I helped the Valencian community today. Both are Mediterranean; both beautiful and both warm at their core. 

I wonder how it would be to volunteer in Gaza and clean its streets; how would it feel to go with my friends and sweep the streets as a group of volunteers hands out water and manaqish for breakfast? I recall a poem by Polish poet Wisława Szymborska that opens with these lines: “After every war/someone has to clean up./Things won’t/straighten themselves up, after all.” So we have to clean up and build everything.

As I write these words, Aljazeera news channel announces more deaths in Lebanon and Gaza. Reality crushes my dreams of cleaning the streets of Gaza: how can you imagine such a thing when the immediate reality demands a ceasefire? I recognize the immediate reality and I fight for it to happen in every possible way. And at the same time, I rebel against it with a superpower that I have developed over the last couple of months: unquenchable faith that we will be free; there’s no going back from genocide. We are either going to be dead or free. And it will be the latter. For now, I don’t know how we will get there; how will we force a ceasefire? But I refuse to be tamed by what the immediate reality asks of us, and instead would like to draw you a picture that I see very vividly: taking the bus from Nazareth all the way to Gaza, Nablus and Hebron to help with cleaning out the debris, painting the walls and handing out manaqish and a piece of my heart in the shape of yellow butterflies that will fill the horizon as we plant more jasmin trees.

Coming back to where I start: I’m reaching the end of San Vicent Martir street in Valencia, passing la Cruz Cubierta all the way to the souther towns that have been affected by the DANA. I walk along thousands of volunteers like myself, who are moved by something that capitalism and the empire abhor: love of the people. Unity of the People. I walk in Valencia and I think of Palestine.

One day ojala. ان شاء الله