"I experienced hunger, I experienced bombing and shelling, and I have experienced exile and loss because I am Palestinian, because I am from Gaza, all I did was I was born in Gaza. Gaza is a small place that is very beautiful, it has a lovely sea, and lovely weather, not like the weather here. There is sun, and no wind. I am here today to tell you how Gaza is beautiful and how people there are very nice, and all the children love to play and they love to go to school and they love to be children like other children. I am here to tell you about Palestine, our culture, our traditions, and that we love life, we don’t like destruction and that we don’t deserve what we have lived through and continue to live through.”" Renad from Gaza

renadfromgaza  2025 

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https://www.instagram.com/p/DRpVMTGDNxz/?img_index=1

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During my participation in the International Day of Solidarity with Palestine at the Palestinian embassy in The Hague, I shared with the world part of my story and how I became not a child anymore.

This is part of my speech:

“Today, I am here without my family, without my mum, not in my home country. The only thing I have is my voice and this is the only reason why my mother allowed e to leave, when we got the opportunity to leave Gaza, she let me leave because she knew my voice will be the voice of people living in Gaza who are without food, without water, without shelter, and who are now living in tents in the piercing cold.

I experienced hunger, I experienced bombing and shelling, and I have experienced exile and loss because I am Palestinian, because I am from Gaza, all I did was I was born in Gaza.

Gaza is a small place that is very beautiful, it has a lovely sea, and lovely weather, not like the weather here. There is sun, and no wind. I am here today to tell you how Gaza is beautiful and how people there are very nice, and all the children love to play and they love to go to school and they love to be children like other children. I am here to tell you about Palestine, our culture, our traditions, and that we love life, we don’t like destruction and that we don’t deserve what we have lived through and continue to live through.”

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES & QUOTES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies] 

Renad Attallah

 https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search?q=Renad+Attallah

Prairie Schooner Fusion #12 Archives: Palestinian poets and poets from the back issues of the Schooner collaborate on a special portfolio of poetry exploring the theme of “Archive”...

 

https://prairieschooner.unl.edu/fusion-archives/fusion-12-archive/

“… I offer you this Palestinian archive of poems, a record of repeated exiles, of ongoing Nakba, a collection of poems that scrutinize the language rife with hierarchies aimed at undoing us.”    Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, from the Introduction

 

Four Illustrations   ^{Nidal El-Khairy}

_{Palestinian Suite}

Poetry

Inheritance

By leena aboutaleb

When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America

By George Abraham

Before Gaza, a Fall

By Ahmad Al-Mallah

Immortal Sea, Your Sea

By Zeina Azzam

“It Was Not Yesterday But Today”

By Olivia Elias

THE FIGS ARE MOLDING

By Summer Farah

Dear […]

By Fady Joudah

POEM WITH GENOCIDE IN THE TITLE

By Emily Khilfeh

Untitled with a line from Etel Adnan

By A.D. Lauren-Abunassar

Let The Naïve Know How We Envy Them

By Sara Abou Rashed

Sun Theater Sonnets

By Deema K. Shehabi

Abjadarian* in Autumn

By Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

SEA LEGS

By Priscilla Wathington

A Certain Resilience

By Issam Zineh

 

 “Archives and archiving can offer poetic material and process for articulating presences and histories and trajectories tethered to truth.”   Siwar Masannat

© 2024 Prairie Schooner

 https://prairieschooner.unl.edu/fusion-archives/fusion-12-archive/

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"I sit in preventive detention... The reason, sir, is that I am an Arab." Fouzi al-Asmar (1937-2013)

I sit in preventive detention
The reason, sir, is that I am an Arab.
An Arab who has refused to sell his soul
Who has always striven, sir, for freedom.
An Arab who has protested the suffering
   of his people
Who has spoken out against death
   in every corner
Who has called for - has lived -
a fraternal life.
That is why I sit in preventive detention
Because I carried on the struggle
And because I am an Arab.

                                Fouzi al-Asmar
                    "Because I am an Arab"

Exiled from his homeland in 1972, Fouzi al-Asmar is the author of numerous works in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, including

Poems from an Israeli Prison

Palestine: A Photographic Journey... Published 1991

Palestine: A Photographic Journey - Page 125 - Google Books Result

books.google.com/books?isbn=0520075447

George Baramki Azar - 1991 - ‎History

Farah Chamma- I Am No Palestinian

You can also watch her video of the poem “How Must I believe” here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVodbIi798w

19yr old Farah Chamma gets political with power of spoken word and kicks off the season debut of the new poetry show, Word Play! Poem entitled: How must I Believe. Word Play airs every 2nd Monday! (Arabic Poem w/Subtitles) - Translated by: Laith Aqel

***

Farah Chamma evolving through poetry arab news interview

Turning to the Past for Future Peace by Randa Farah

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randa-farah/turning-to-the-past-for-f_b_1500095.html

"... Poignantly, most of the refugees live within 100 km of their homes of origin: tantalizingly proximate, but politically inaccessible. And the number of refugees and exiles has grown. At the end of 2011 the total Palestinian population was estimated at 11.2 million, almost 70 percent of which is displaced, both within and outside historical Palestine.

Under the law, we have a right of return, and this requires us to consider the nature of the future polity in what was Palestine until 1948 and is now Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Regardless of its shape and form, the future polity must be a model of inclusion and diversity that incorporates Muslims, Christians, Jews, Druze, atheists and people of diverse backgrounds. Palestinian rights do not and should not generate another calamity and a counter-process of Jewish displacement.

A growing number of studies show that a Palestinian right of return is not only just but viable, even though at this historical juncture it seems far-fetched. Only the recognition and fulfillment of this right -- all the more important as the 64th anniversary of the Nakba approaches -- will lead to justice and secure a lasting peace."

Randa Farah is a policy advisor of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, and an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario who has written widely on Palestinian, Sahrawi, and other refugee communities. 

Turning to the Past for Future Peace

Palestine's exiles find family bonds thru Facebook

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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/06/palestine-exiles-find-family-bonds-thru-facebook/

Published May 06, 2012

SIDON, Lebanon –  As Jewish forces advanced on their village during the war that surrounded Israel's creation in 1948, the Palestinian Faour family piled children and belongings into donkey carts and fled, hoping to return home when the fighting stopped.

Only some of them got back, and the family is still divided. Some are in the Lebanese city of Sidon as stateless refugees. Others are 80 kilometers (50 miles) away as Israeli citizens in their village of Shaab, across a fenced and hostile border.

Granddaughter Mona Maarouf, 26, still considers Shaab home, even though she has spent her life in Sidon, has never visited her ancestral village and maybe never will. She knew she had relatives there but knew nothing about them.

Then she joined Facebook.

Now she tracks who has died in the village, and her cousins in Israel weigh in on her marriage prospects. "I didn't think anyone knew anything about me," she says. "Then I saw that they knew everything."

Social media have produced a boom in communications between Palestinians in Israel and the Arab world, once connected only through rare letters carried by intermediaries or the International Red Cross. Younger exiles like Maarouf are tracking down and getting to know relatives separated for decades.

Many Palestinians say they now know more about their extended families than at any time since the birth of Israel, an event Palestinians mourn every May 15 as the "Nakba," or catastrophe.

Mostly they stick to swapping family photos and news, worrying that political talk could draw attention from intelligence agencies. Some, however, say stronger ties will bolster the Palestinian demand that some 5 million Palestinian refugees registered with the U.N. return to their villages...READ MORE