Palestinian struggles in UK: Stories of lives not lost in the “Arab Land”
The United Kingdom is seeing a wave of support for the Palestinian cause. But, for thousands of Palestinians here, the struggle is not just geo-political. What does it mean to be away from homes and families, in a country that’s partially responsible for their plight?
As shooting stars mark the night sky, two little girls run alongside their mother. There is but one wish — to avoid them at all costs. They look for a shelter and the sound becomes deafening. These are missiles. As one hits a child, the mother awakens in a cold sweat.
Razan Madhoon, a 33-year-old mum, has had the nightmare each time she slept in the eleven days of Israel’s attack on Gaza in May 2021. It has been a stressful time for her as memories of 2014’s Israeli military operation flooded in. Back then, she was in Gaza, directing all her efforts at keeping her daughters safe.
“You never recover from such trauma. People tell you when there is ceasefire that it’s all over. Finished. But it’s never finished. You deal with these traumas for the rest of your life,” she said.
While her daughters are physically far from the conflict now, Madhoon said it had left an indelible mark on their psyche. She recalled a recent drawing her 13-year-old daughter made that showed her running away from a bomb. There have been more visceral impacts of the war as well.
“Back in 2014, when we were in Gaza, our neighbour’s house was flattened to the ground and our house got rattled,” Madhoon said. “We were checking out the damage. And there she was amongst us, watching with open eyes. It was the first time I saw shock on her face.”
In the last three and a half decades, the Israel-Palestine conflict has led to the deaths of at least fourteen thousand people. While Madhoon is thankful that her daughters are unharmed, she worried about her parents back home in Gaza. I spoke to her soon after the escalation of the conflict in May 2021. “I just wanted to know that they’re alive. This is all I wanted,” she said. “Sometimes, I worried what if, this time, they don’t make it?”
Madhoon said she last met her parents six years ago. She claimed asylum in the United Kingdom as a refugee after that. “You’re not allowed to visit home,” she said. “Otherwise, you lose your status here.”
Meanwhile, her parents have been unable to visit the United Kingdom because of a challenging visa process for Palestinians. “I know a friend who has been living in London for 12 years,” she said. “He’s got a British passport. Whenever he has applied for his mother to come and visit, the UK declined saying that we can’t guarantee that she will go back home after the visit.”
Madhoon is one of many Palestinian refugees in the United Kingdom. Their stories echo her struggles. While they try to build a better life here, that life comes with strings attached.
Madhoon said her parents do not even wish to move to the United Kingdom. “They’ve grown old. They are used to Gaza,” she said. “It’s a different language in a different culture. I only wish they would be allowed to visit me.”
During the May 2021 conflict, Madhoon said, she prepared herself each day for the worst. “I was grieving. I was in pain. I had nightmares,” she said. “But they’re living it and there’s nothing I could do.”
For many Palestinian refugees, the decision to leave their homeland is a tough one to make and comes with its own internal conflicts. “There’s no opportunity for growth,” Madhoon said, referring to life in Gaza.
“I know people in Gaza who wouldn’t leave no matter what because that’s their home. But I look at my kids and they are doing activities here that are helping them develop. These are things I know Palestinian children can’t do. I’m a mom. I want the best for my kids and can’t just decide to go back there and let them live the actual attack.
She said that back in 2014, at some point she left her house and went to her parents’ because they were closer to the centre and it was safer: “It wasn’t much different though. But we were with family and it felt better.”
For her, like so many other immigrants in the U.K., the conflict goes beyond Palestine and within herself.
She said: “I would like to go to Palestine, but Palestine doesn’t exist. There’s no opportunity for growth.”
Raheem Laban, another 33-year-old Palestinian refugee, hopes to go home to Palestine someday. His grandparents fled Palestine in 1948. He was born in Saudi Arabia and moved to Syria as a teenager. He came to the United Kingdom as an international student in 2012, then claimed asylum the next year. He became a British citizen in 2021.
Laban explained why he sought citizenship in the United Kingdom. “Israel bans refugees and their descendants from returning, and a British passport is a way to move back home since that would mean fewer checks and less harassment,” he said. British passport holders do not require a visa to travel to Palestine or Israel.
But, Laban said, the United Kingdom is pro-Israel — which leads to peculiar internal dilemmas. “I am pleased that the country gave me refuge and an education,” he said. “While it is saddening because Britain is pro-Israel, it’s not the end of the world. A passport is a passport. But I am more than that.” After a long pause, he added, “You can be living in a home for years and not feel safe. I’m always for escape if escape is good. I don’t feel guilty. I am not an idealist.”
In May 2021, Zarah Sultana, a British MP, said in parliament that the call for “Palestinian freedom has never been louder” yet the present British government is “complicit in its denial.” She said that the government had approved £400 million in arms sales to Israel since 2015.
According to a report in The Independent, “British-made military components and hardware were used by Israeli forces carrying out airstrikes on Gaza” in May 2021.
An Israeli military spokesperson confirmed that F-35 jets were used in the bombardment. The report added that Lockheed Martin, the jets’ manufacturer, has claimed that the “fingerprints of British ingenuity can be found on dozens of the aircraft’s key components.”
After Israel’s 2021 offensive, the United Kingdom saw mass protests in solidarity with Palestinians. These occurred not just in capitals such as London and Cardiff, but also in cities that have not traditionally been hotspots of activism, such as Swansea and Newport in Wales. In London alone, around a hundred and fifty thousand people were estimated to be at the protests. The demonstrations continued even after the announcement of a ceasefire.
According to Amnesty International, more than seven hundred thousand Palestinians have been displaced since the creation of Israel, in 1948. “More than 70 years after the conflict that followed Israel’s creation, the Palestinian refugees who were forced out of their homes and were dispossessed of their land as a result continue to face the devastating consequences,” Philip Luther, the advocacy director for Amnesty, said in an organisational release.
Human Rights Watch has said that Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return to their homes — both the ones who initially fled as well as their descendants. If the borders open for Palestinian refugees to return, Laban said, “My dad says he would be the first one to return.” He added, “He hates moving, you know. But he will return.”
Originally published in May 2021. Published in Caravan India magazine.
