“I See a Change Coming” - A Gazan’s Perspective

My daughter Sara Yousef is a 20-year-old from Rafah, Gaza, Palestine. She came into our family in 2019 as an exchange student through the YES Program, US State Department program which provides scholarships to high school students from Muslim-majority countries to study in the US. Sara lived with us on Bainbridge Island and attended Central Kitsap High School.

Sara is now studying medicine at Zagazig University in Egypt. Israel’s attacks have killed two of her cousins. Her family members in the north of the Gaza Strip have fled Israel’s bombings to live with her parents and three young siblings in their home in Rafah, which as of this writing is still standing. They are struggling to have enough food and water each day. Sara and I have talked regularly since we lived together and more frequently since Israel began its recent attacks. We held this interview via video call on December 11. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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 Promise Partner: What do you want people who read this to know about Gaza and about Palestine?

Sara Yousef: I want to emphasize that we're humans and we're people who love to live. And we manage to find the little blessings and the little joys of life, even in the darkest days and even in the hardest conditions.

All Palestinians – whether living in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the occupied lands of Palestine from 1948, the diaspora – they all have suffered from oppression, from racism, from a type of separation or feeling unwelcome. Everyone has felt this because of their Palestinian identity and because they were born Palestinian. So for people saying that this has started on the seventh of October is unfair and unjust because it has been going on for so long and Palestinian people have faced all types and tasted various types of oppression and injustice. World governments have not done enough to actually change the injustice facing the Palestinian people.

 Before 1948, before the state of Israel was founded, Palestinians who were Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived in Palestine peacefully together. So saying that Palestinians are against Jews is untrue. The Israeli army is against any Palestinian, no matter what their religion is. Their goal is to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. For so long, we have felt unseen and unheard. Even if no nation helps us or stands with us, we will keep fighting and we will keep resisting and we will keep seeking and fighting for our rights back and we will return. No matter how much time it takes, I believe that we will return. I'll get to see the original land of my great-grandfather. I believe it with all my heart.

PP: I know that this is a hard thing to talk about because your people are under attack by Israel right now. You and I have talked about this many times before, what the right of return means. What about the current people that are on the land, the Israelis? I’ve shared with you about how I’m a settler on the lands where I live, which were stolen from indigenous people, and the parallels with Israel and Palestine.

When you think about the future, and the right of return for Palestinians and a Palestinian state, what does that mean for Jewish Israelis who are living on the land now and have made their home there for generations? How can we imagine the future?

SY: I imagine it as Palestine was before. A country that holds every person no matter what the religion is. There'll be peace and there will be love without hatred and without a supremacy of one religion or one race or one color.

The most important thing for Palestinians right now is self-determination. We want to have our own state. Having Israel decide for us or the United Nations or other countries – this is not right, because no one except the Palestinians have the right to decide their own future for their own lives. We are human and we have that right.

I find it hard to have sympathy or empathy for those who are killing my people right now. At any second my family members might be killed. But for other people who have been brought up to be a Zionist, they haven't been shown the truth and now they may be seeing it. Now they're trying their best to change their mindset and to educate other people around them, which is very beautiful because it's hard for a person who has been brought up with one mindset to change it, or to see that what you've been brought up to believe is actually a lie.

I see a change coming, but I don't really know how it will end.

PP: I know that it's hard to talk about this when your people are facing genocide and when your family’s lives are at risk. I appreciate that you can hold the possibility for the future that includes Palestinians and Israelis living in peace with each other.

Many of us are in solidarity with Palestine and we want to learn and take action and try to make a difference as much as we can so that you have freedom. Do you have any suggestions for us in the international community?

SY: The first thing that comes to my mind is to educate yourself and educate the people around you. That is the most important thing because for some people it's not that they don't want to support the oppressed but they don't know about it. They don't know that their taxes are being used to arm Israel and kill Palestinians. So educating is very important.

The second thing is that some people might feel helpless or get overwhelmed, but you can help by whatever you do best. Like if you're a graphic designer or if you're a painter, if you're a social media person, you can do what you are good at, use your talent, use the gift that you have from God. That's very powerful. Something I believe in is the butterfly effect. If you show up or speak up, if you join a protest, it matters. One important thing that I learned from you and I have seen it working is people calling their representatives and politicians and sending emails – it pushes them to change their mind.

When the people of Gaza and my friends and my family see the videos of the protesters and the large numbers of the people who are supporting them and standing in solidarity with them, they feel heard and seen. Doing that actually helps to break the propaganda of the Israeli army by showing that the world stands with Palestine. Actually it's the US government who stands with Israel, not the people themselves, people who are against oppression or injustice happening.

PP: I love what you said about each person using their gifts and skills together to educate and to take action for a free Palestine. That's beautiful. I will keep working to bring people together to do that.

 I am so grateful you are my daughter and we can learn together. I pray that more and more people will see the truth of this situation and speak up, and that this interview might contribute to the cause of justice, freedom, and rights for Palestinians.

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Promise Partner is a community organizer with Kitsap SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice), Kitsap ERACE Coalition (Equity, Race, and Community Engagement), and KAIRE (Kitsap Advocating for Immigrant Rights and Equality). She lived in Israel and Palestine in 2005-2007.