By Pauline Gutierrez, Feb. 11, 2025
During the signing of executive orders in the oval office Feb. 4, President Trump discussed the current lack of options for those displaced by the war in Gaza, calling it a demolition site and suggesting those in the area with the financial means should rebuild for the community and its people.
Given the events unfolding in Gaza, in particular the charges of war crimes and genocide against Israeli heads of state and the atmosphere in the country regarding the conflict, it’s important to know who Palestinians are. For these three Cal Poly Pomona students, their Palestinian identities live in their traditions and cultural celebrations, not in the headlines of war or presidential hot topics.
Basel Zehlif, a 21-year-old business administration student, is a second-generation Palestinian American. His father was born in the Jalazone refugee camp in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governate, located in the West Bank before being displaced to the surrounding Arab countries and eventually moving to the U.S.
According to Zehlif, he has ancestry in the modern-day Israeli city of Or Yehuda, originally a village know as Kafr’Ana, it was captured and destroyed by Jewish militias in 1948, and a neighboring city, Al-‘Abbasiyya, another former Palestinian village in the Jaffa Sub-district that was also depopulated by Jewish militias.
For Zehlif, being Palestinian is about perseverance or “keeping it going,” despite the overwhelming odds as opposed to generational designations.
“We’re all the same, even though we might not have been born there,” Zehlif said. “We’re still the same in terms of (being) Palestinian with the same ongoing conflict of just trying to make it back and living on our own land.”
Mohamad Awad, a 20-year-old civil engineering student, is also a second-generation Palestinian American who was born in California and raised in Palestine. Like Basel, his family is from the West Bank, a village called Turmus Ayya located in Ramallah and al-Bireh Governate in Gaza.
For Awad, despite the ongoing persecution of Palestinians and all that has affected his home in the West Bank, his experience as a Palestinian American has been one of mutual support and understanding. Being one of the founders of the club Students for Justice in Palestine, people wanted to speak with him about Palestine.
“It felt like when people saw me, that’s one thing they saw me as in they felt like they wanted to speak about Palestine just because I was in SJP,” Awad said. “But I still felt great. They were always I’ve always been welcome into their comments and their opinions, but they were so far, they’ve always been positive.”
Some of the ways in which Awad relates to his heritage is through music and religion. He listens to only Palestinian music including the song, “Mayel Ala Baladi,” by Shalby Younis & Ghazal Ghrayeb.
“This song talks about the beauty of Palestine as a whole,” Awad said. “I like hearing it to remember the good in Palestine and what we are standing our ground for.”
Aisha Zaid, a 25-year-old urban and regional planning student, is a first-generation Palestinian American from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She is a descendent from Bedouin tribes in the Negev desert in Israel, the Sahara’al naqab in Arabic. Her grandparents resided in Gaza before being displaced during the 1948 Nakba and settling in Dubai, where her parents were born.
Her family moved to the U.S. seven years ago, so their children could attend school.
For Zaid, her existence is her identity, and that identity is one marked by internal and external turmoil, which pervade her experience as a Palestinian from Gaza. Aside from an intense, unfulfilled desire to see her ancestral land, she must witness the current genocide and ethnic cleansing of her people in Gaza, which has already claimed the lives of some of her cousins.
“Let me set one thing straight, in the core of my being, Palestine runs through my veins, a deep-rooted part of my identity,” Zaid wrote in a statement to the Associated Students Inc. demanding a ceasefire. “It’s a land I’ve never seen, never stepped foot in, and yet, the love I hold for courses through me from the very essence of my being. Since the dawn of my awareness, I’ve carried the weight of Palestine in my heart, a connection that defies geography.”
Being a Palestinian is an experience that is evidently painful as it is motivating. Zaid is very vocal in her opposition to the genocide in Gaza. Aside from a statement she wrote for the ASI during their push for a ceasefire, she has helped CPP’s SJP chapter raise money through networking and tabling on campus.
Feature image courtesy of Aisha Zaid
