
For more than 75 years, millions of Palestinians have lived in exile — displaced, uprooted, scattered across the world. What began as a tragedy for hundreds of thousands has grown into one of the longest displacements in modern history, transforming lives, identities, and generations. This is my legacy. I am a third-generation exile from Palestine.
Born in exile
I was born in Lebanon, a country where my identity is caught between my heritage as a Palestinian and my life as a refugee in Lebanon. My grandfather escaped certain death in Palestine when Israel forcibly expelled 750,000 people in 1948. My father is a Palestinian born in Lebanon and my mother is Lebanese. Under Lebanese law, I am considered 100% Palestinian, despite my mother’s nationality. At 22, I struggle to understand who I am and where I belong: Do I have two identities, do I need to choose one, or in the worst-case scenario, will my identity as a Palestinian be destroyed, and I’ll be forced to accept the other?
I grew up and live in the city of Sidon, outside the largest refugee camp in Lebanon, Ein El-Hilweh, with 120,000 people. I’m a recent graduate of the American University of Science and Technology in Beirut and now work as a consultant with a firm that focuses on community development and supporting NGOs in their work to help vulnerable people. Having lived as a refugee, my ultimate goal is to work on behalf of refugees across the world.
In Lebanon, Palestinian refugees are free to move about the country without permits, but we cannot become citizens and do not have many of the civil, social, political, and economic rights of citizenship. Yet, my status as a “refugee” isn’t an adequate description of my life here. Sidon welcomes Palestinians, and I feel accepted here. The displacement that began with tents on roads and alleys over the years has turned into a place with Palestinian landmarks and a rich culture and living heritage.
The city and camp are filled with reminders and emblems of our homeland. Schools are named after Palestinian cities and towns, such as Nablus and Beisan. Every day we hear talk of Palestine and the streets are filled with the Palestinian dialect. Every year, we commemorate the Nakba, the 1948 Israeli expulsion of Palestinians from our homeland. We draw the map of Palestine on our blackboards and display it on our school walls. Our streets and homes are filled with the aroma of Palestinian cooking. These simple, everyday things — not grand events or gestures — evoke our longing for Palestine.

I never mastered the Palestinian dialect. My grandfather forgot to teach it to me and my father and mother do not speak it. As a result, for a long time I felt like I wasn’t an authentic or “good” Palestinian. I still remember walking into a school for Palestinian refugees and being nicknamed “the Lebanese” because of my accent. Nevertheless, I have always known that I am Palestinian. I carry the longing for a homeland I’ve never seen, the stories of my grandfather’s village, and the unshakable belief that Palestine lives in my heart, even in exile.
For Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, the government doesn’t provide education and healthcare but the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) does, as long as it remains funded by other countries — a reminder that meeting our most basic needs is dependent on others’ generosity. We are limited in the types of work we can do here, as the priority for jobs such as medicine, law, and engineering is reserved for the Lebanese.
Palestinians in Lebanon have a dual existence. While we have the freedom to live and move around in Lebanon, we don’t fully belong here. In the camps, we talk about Palestine like it is just on the other side of a window, so close we can almost touch it. But in reality, it is always out of reach. We cannot return. I often wonder whether I could ever feel at home in a land I’ve never known. I ask myself whether my home is the one that my grandfather was forced to leave or the place that has offered us shelter, security, peace, and freedom from oppression. Our bodies live in one place while our hearts cling to another. This is the paradox of being a Palestinian in exile.
As a third-generation refugee in Lebanon, I have asked myself, over the years, whether it is possible to belong in two places or does “belonging” demand that we have a greater loyalty to one? Is my identity as a Palestinian tied to a place that I may never be allowed or want to live? If I choose Lebanon, am I disloyal to my Palestinian roots and my grandfather’s stolen dreams? I’ve come to believe that the only way to preserve my identity as a Palestinian is to choose Palestine as my homeland. A homeland is core to a national identity.

Living under an existential threat
For many years, our legitimacy as a people with a homeland has resided under a cloud of doubt and suspicion, a subject for journalists, analysts, and commentators around the world. The Israeli government wants to eliminate us from our land. The rest of the world, at best, sees us as a political problem to be solved by other nations or, at worst, does not care about us at all.
I am preoccupied with the politics of other nations. How could I not be? Their politics plays a significant role in our survival as individuals and as a people with a homeland. We carefully watch whether other countries choose to supply the weapons that kill us as well as whether they will fund UNRWA in providing Palestinians on the land and in exile with vital resources to meet our basic needs such as food and water, healthcare, education, and social services.
I am haunted by the notion that there are conspiracies to wipe out Palestinians everywhere. While Israel is killing our people and destroying our homes in Palestine, the world watches. The world is pushing Palestinians, and Palestinians alone, to find new identities — as if ours is illegitimate. One day I fear that countries like the ones who granted Israel the right to take our land and chase us to scattered nations will demand that we give up our refugee identification cards (blue cards) and travel documents and tell us: “Here is your new home. Here is your new name.”
What have we done to the world to make it think of wiping us out while we are still alive? To erase our history, our roots, our identity? Will Palestinian-ness become something intangible — a philosophy, an ideology, a symbol — instead of a country, a home, and a real and living identity like any other?
These questions are weighing more heavily on me as the battle in Gaza and the assaults in the West Bank persist. When our people are being killed, our towns destroyed, and our voices suppressed, how can we betray our Palestinian identity? Our survival as a people with a homeland, I fear, is in danger. We must protect the lives and narratives of those who are in Palestine to preserve the Palestinian identity for those of us living in exile. To do this, exiles, like me, must choose Palestine as our homeland, despite the security and safety we have found in other countries. We are called to pass on our Palestinian identity for future generations — our connection to the homeland, our precious culture, our language, and our history. It’s our personal and collective responsibility.