Ahmad Ibsais in Time Magazine:
“Where is Ahmad?” The soldier called my name while we were stopped at the last Israeli checkpoint on the way from Ramallah to Jerusalem. I am a Palestinian American. But once I’m in my ancestral homeland, I’m not an American in the eyes of Israeli authorities. I am simply Palestinian, denied the basic right to movement and pilgrimage to the Holy Land. For too long, Palestinians in the diaspora, like myself, became travelers on our soil. We tried to forget the realities of occupation in the West Bank, and that a few hours south in Gaza our brothers and sisters suffered under even more inhumane conditions.
Now, a reawakening has occurred. It has been six months since Oct. 7, and I’m closer to understanding the catastrophe that my people endured in 1948: children, no older than six or seven, sleeping huddled on muddied floors, under tents in which their lives as refugees began. Children who are slowly freezing to death as bombs rain down upon them. Children who have endured more than I ever have. In that continuous grief of watching my people from afar in my home in Michigan, I have rediscovered what it means to be Palestinian, and, like millions of us, reimagined what a Palestinian future looks like.
More here.