Phalapoem editor, 29/11/25
People often ask me what it feels like to live under Israeli occupation.
They ask whether it’s possible to feel anything other than hatred toward those who punish us collectively, humiliate us at checkpoints on daily basis, shoot indiscriminately our children, steal our land, demolish our houses, control our movement, even our breath.
I never know how to give a simple answer, because nothing about this life is simple.
But I can tell you what I feel.
Imagine waking up each morning with the quiet relief that you survived the night, that you were not arrested, injured, tortured, raped or shot while you slept.
For many Palestinians, this is not an abstract fear but a daily reality shaped by brutal military occupation, constant raids, thousands of checkpoints, and systemic restrictions on movement and safety.
What does it mean to begin a day under this weight?
And how do you end it, knowing that tomorrow may bring the same uncertainty , the same struggle, the same need to simply endure?
When you wake up every morning not knowing if your home, your family, or your dignity will survive the day, emotions don’t behave the way they do in peaceful places.
I have known fear, fear that crawls under your skin and stays there forever.
I have known humiliation, quiet, sharp, unforgettable.
I have known grief that does not end, because every day brings a new funeral, a new loss, a new hole in someone’s life.
And yes, I have known hatred.
Not because I was taught it.
Not because my people are “born with it,” as the occupiers like to say.
But because when someone takes your land, dehumanises your existence, and decides your rights for you, hatred is not a decision or a plan, it’s a natural reaction and wound.
A wound that bleeds every time you try to live a normal life.
This might surprise people, but hatred is not the only companion of an occupied heart.
Sometimes I feel sorrow, deep, crushing sorrow for what we’ve lost and witnessed.
Sometimes I feel angry for the constant military support our occupiers receive from those who pretend to care about human rights.
Sometimes I feel confused about the future of humanity in the face of selective treatment.
Sometimes I feel sad for the endless suffering of Palestinians.
Sometimes I feel hopeless for for the world’s inability to put an end to the illegal occupation of my people.
Sometimes I feel numb, as if emotions have tired themselves out.
Sometimes I feel hope, fragile and trembling, for a future I’ve never seen but cannot stop imagining.
Sometimes I even feel compassion for individuals who are caught in the same system, even if they stand on the oppressive side.
Sometimes I feel nobody cares but
sometimes I feel that millions of people around the world support our cause.
The truth is: the human heart is capable of many feelings, even under a boot.
But they are never simple.
They are never pure.
They are tangled in pain, layered with memories, shaped by survival.
Imagine waking up every morning with the feeling that you are still not imprisoned or shot or tortured? This is the feeling of every Palestinian being oppressed by Israelis. How to begin the day and how to end it?
If there is one feeling that defines life under occupation, it is not hatred.
It is desperation.
Desperation is what grows in you when you realise your freedom will not come through negotiation.
When every path to dignity is blocked.
When every door closes no matter how peacefully you knock.
People like to debate the actions of the oppressed.
They judge the symptoms while ignoring the sickness.
But what happens when a person, or a nation, reaches the point where fear is no longer heavier than despair?
Desperation does not justify everything.
But it explains everything.
And explanations matter, especially to those who prefer to look at consequences rather than causes.
I am responsible for my actions, this is true.
But the world forgets that someone else is responsible for the conditions that shaped those actions.
Occupation is not just the presence of soldiers.
It is an apartheid system, a brutal structure that controls your body, your choices, your future.
When the entire population of Palestine is humiliated, enclosed, impoverished, displaced, and denied justice for more than seven decades…
When people are made to feel invisible…
When people are locked in enclaves and separated by walls..
When people are treated like animals…
When people are disrespected and abused…
When the perpetrators are perceived as victims and the victims as perpetrators…
When the world allows your suffering to become normal…
Then the occupying power cannot wash its hands of the consequences.
The chain of responsibility begins long before the desperate moment.
Occupation plants the seed.
Oppression waters it.
Desperation is the fruit.
Judge the fruit if you must,
but do not ignore the tree that grew it.
Can We Ever Feel Something Other Than Pain?
Yes.
But not like this, not while the injustice continues.
I have seen glimmers of what peace could look like.
Children still laugh.
Old people still dream.
Families still sit together, imagining a life where we do not need permission for basic human existence.
I believe that someday we could feel hope without pain attached to it.
We could feel trust.
We could feel forgiveness , not forced, not demanded, but genuine.
But this can only happen when the Israeli occupation ends.
When we are given not charity, not pity, but dignity.
When we are allowed to stand equal, not tolerated as lesser beings.
Only then will the heart have space for emotions other than anger, survival, or grief.
I do not wake up choosing hatred.
I wake up choosing to survive.
If the world wants to understand us, it must understand our pain, not dismiss it, not sanitize it, not demonise it , not ban it, not blame it.
Because until justice arrives, until freedom is real, an occupied heart will continue to feel what any human heart would feel under such conditions.
Not because we are a people of hatred,
but because we are a people of Israeli-made wounds,
and wounds demand to be felt before they can ever hope to heal.