Palestinians Past Arab Identification: Who Are the Afro-Palestinians

A typical false impression about Palestine and its individuals is that Palestinians are merely Arabs who migrated in the course of the Muslim conquests, and, subsequently, not the unique inhabitants of the land.

Yet Palestinians usually are not solely Arabs — they embody Afro-Palestinians, Palestinians of Kurdish ancestry, Armenian-Palestinians, Assyrian-Palestinians, and plenty of different ethnic teams. The declare that “the Jewish people were in Palestine before the Muslims/Arabs” ignores the nuances of identification within the area, and the way identification evolves and matures over time.

Some understand identification as a singular, fastened idea; in actuality, a nation can possess a number of identities, which might evolve and adapt in response to completely different historic contexts. The Palestinian persons are the product of an extended historical past of various ethnic, racial, and spiritual teams, not only one non secular group like Muslims.

The evolution of the Palestinian identification 

What is perceived as modern-day Palestinian identification is definitely the fruits of many identities that blended all through historical past. However, there’s usually little distinction made between the core identification acknowledged at this time and the multitude of influences that helped form it over time.

Palestinian identification has evolved and crystallized over time via the affect of varied civilizations and empires that after settled or conquered the area, together with the Egyptians, Aramaeans, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, Crusaders, Kurds, and plenty of others. Each left its mark, shaping the wealthy and sophisticated identification of the Palestinian individuals.

Throughout historical past, wars and invasions never totally displaced the native inhabitants. Instead, they contributed to a mixing of peoples, which reshaped and enriched the native identification. While sure teams might have had a extra distinguished affect on Palestinian identification than others, all of them left a cultural and political mark that helped form its improvement.

The notion that Palestinian identification is merely a response to the Zionist motion and solely an Islamist or an Arab trigger overlooks the broader historical past of Palestinian resistance towards varied teams. For instance, by the late nineteenth century, many Palestinians rose up towards the Ottoman Empire’s efforts to assimilate its topics into Turkish identification.

Similarly, the Palestinian revolt of 1834 marked territorial consciousness by the native inhabitants, as individuals from all social lessons united in riot, resisting Egyptian conscription and taxation insurance policies. These earlier acts of resistance, predating the Zionist motion, show that Palestinian identification had already developed and matured properly earlier than.

The Arabization of Palestinian identification began within the fourth century AD and was additional solidified by the Arab-Islamic conquest within the early seventh century. However, it’s important to acknowledge that the Arab identification of Palestinians grew to become much more pronounced following the 1948 Nakba.

As many Palestinians have been pressured to go away behind the heritage of their ancestors, identification became extra narrowly outlined. Many of the symbols related to Palestinian identification stem from the truth that most Palestinians are refugees, formed by nostalgic recollections carried with them. However, these symbols solely partially seize the richness and variety of Palestinian heritage.

The Afro-Palestinians

The richness of Palestinian identification and historical past is exemplified by the Afro-Palestinian group, a small however distinct ethnic group with its personal distinctive historical past. Situated on the crossroads of African ancestry and Palestinian nationality, this community is primarily concentrated in Old Jerusalem, in an space sometimes called ‘the African Quarter’ or ‘Little Harlem.’

Before October 2023, Gaza City’s Al Jalla’a district additionally held a major focus of the Gaza Strip’s Afro-Palestinian inhabitants, estimated at 11,000, throughout the general 1 % Black inhabitants of the territory.

The origins of Afro-Palestinians are diversified, with accounts tracing again to completely different intervals in historical past. Although a lot of their historical past stays undocumented and lacks intensive cultural reminiscence, some trace their ancestry to African pilgrims from Sudan, Chad, Senegal, and Nigeria who visited Jerusalem after performing the Hajj in Mecca as early because the twelfth century. Others arrived as volunteers with the Egyptian military to battle towards Zionist militias in the course of the 1948 Arab-Israeli warfare, as they sought to stop the takeover of historic Palestine.

Many of those pilgrims chose to settle, marrying Palestinian ladies and forming interracial Afro-Palestinian households, absolutely integrating into Palestinian society. During World War I, Africans have been additionally conscripted by the British to work in Palestine as laborers and safety guards, contributing to additional settlement of Africans in Palestine.

Within the Old City of Jerusalem, Afro-Palestinians found a way of belonging. Shared dwelling areas, a deep religious connection to the holy metropolis, and a typical heritage stemming from African vacationers created a powerful, familial bond. Stories of ancestral African guards defending the Al-Aqsa mosque additional cemented their ties to the land.

Initially, their identification was rooted of their Muslim religion, however subsequent generations more and more embraced a Palestinian nationwide identification. This evolution from Muslim African to Afro-Palestinian enabled them to totally take part within the Palestinian wrestle, solidifying their place throughout the broader Palestinian group. During the conflicts surrounding Jerusalem, Afro-Palestinians actively participated in its protection, with some becoming a member of the Arab Liberation Army.

Ali Jiddah, a distinguished Afro-Palestinian resistance fighter and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, exemplifies this dedication to the Palestinian trigger. For occasion, in 1968, he carried out an assault in Jerusalem, injuring 9 Israelis, as a response to the Israeli occupation. He was subsequently imprisoned, serving 18 years of a 25-year sentence. Fatima Barnawi, a Nigerian-Palestinian, can be believed by some to be the primary Palestinian girl imprisoned for a paramilitary operation towards Israel, following her 1967 arrest for trying to bomb a cinema in West Jerusalem.

The sense of a shared Palestinian identification amongst Afro-Palestinians goes past their connection to the land; it additionally arises from the shared experiences of oppression and the double racism they face from Israeli forces. Afro-Palestinians develop up in a actuality marked by fixed surveillance at checkpoints, each day interrogations, and the ever-present concern of detention.

Double racism manifests in varied methods, generally via being singled out for extra safety checks by Israeli forces, and different occasions in additional refined varieties, like having to repeatedly show themselves of their jobs.

Despite going through quite a few challenges, Afro-Palestinians actively affirm their identification via the dabke, a conventional Palestinian people dance, which serves as a robust type of cultural resistance. The Afro-Palestinian Community Society (ACS), a Palestinian non-governmental non-profit group based by the Afro-Palestinian group in Jerusalem in 1983, reinforces this identification by organizing cultural and inventive occasions that empower youth.

If the identification of Afro-Palestinians might be summed up in a single line that displays the complexity and nuance of Palestinian identification, it might be captured within the phrases of 1 Afro-Palestinian in Jerusalem, Adam Jibril: “The way you are defined is where you are, by the people you live with, and the struggles you face every day.”