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Lyth Shahin is a graduate student studying law. Their father is from Palestine and their mother is from Jordan. Many of their family members live in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, which has been under siege by the Israeli Defense Forces for many months.
"I have multiple family members with medical issues regularly in the hospital," Shahin said. "I have a family member who's an EMT. They're all regularly besieged by IOF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers. … I'm going to class sometimes having lost contact with my family and not knowing whether or not they're okay. But I know if I miss class I'm risking getting kicked out of law school."
Shahin said hospitals are often one of the first points of attack for Israeli troops. IDF — or IOF for some Palestinians — soldiers often surround the hospital in Jenin to prevent paramedics from conducting surgeries. One of Shahin's cousins is paralyzed and gets physical therapy at that hospital. "One day I was facetiming my cousin, and he was sitting in the hospital courtyard right after his appointment waiting to get picked up," Shahin said. "And then you hear the fighting in the background — like the tanks rolling.
"I get off the call, and an hour later I see on social media (at) that exact courtyard where he was, they're lining people up … and placing them all at gunpoint against the wall."
Shahin said these experiences are not uncommon. "I had an extended family member end up in the hospital in critical condition after getting shot by the IOF," they said.
But bombs, tanks and guns aren't the only thing they're concerned about. "Infrastructure in the Jenin area has been completely destroyed, so a lot of my family isn't able to reliably get food or water or power," they said.
For many ASU students, these escalations may seem distant and unimportant in how they go about their daily lives. But for Palestinian students attending the University, the conflict has forced itself into their lives and their families.
Then and now
Nuha Jabbar is a sophomore studying political science. She was born in the United States to a Palestinian father from the West Bank but moved to Palestine in 2016, where she lived until returning to the U.S. for college in 2022.
Growing up, Jabbar was often frustrated when dealing with checkpoints spread across Palestine, where Palestinians looking to come or go must be granted passage by Israeli soldiers.
"I've been interrogated all my life, from the day that I moved there," she said. "From age 13 to age 21, I was constantly asked where am I going, what's your name and where are you coming from. … And if they were not in the mood that day to tell you, 'Yeah, you can go home,' then I would just be stuck at school for four hours."
Now, the situation is even worse. "It's probably the worst it's ever been in the West Bank," Jabbar said. "The checkpoints are completely closed off, you can't even leave the town at times now."
She also mentioned the difficulties brought by illegal Israeli settlements expanding in the area. "My town, we have a new Israeli settlement there, and that didn't exist before," she said. "We didn't have settlements. But they're slowly coming in on the West Bank. … Just the other day, there were settlers that came in and burned a bunch of cars."
Israeli settlers have also made harvesting olives — the primary source of income for Palestinians in Jabbar's town — increasingly difficult.
"(Palestinians) are scared of going around and getting shot at by settlers because settlers are walking around with M16s," Shahin said. "And then beyond that, you have the IOF launching raids, the ministry saying they're going to kick all (Palestinians) off their land."
"I'm just worried if I will have a home to go back to this summer," Jabbar said. She also said she "constantly" worries about her parents, who are still in Palestine.
Her fears have been heightened by the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. "We have no clue what's going to happen to Palestine after Trump was elected," Jabbar said.
She cited the president-elect's calls to let Israel "finish the job," among prominent concerns. Days after the election, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich ordered preparations be taken for the annexation of the West Bank once Trump takes office.
READ MORE: Insight: Palestinian voices highlight the purpose of protests, passion for peace
Family ties
Eighty years ago, Shahin's family lived in Sabbarin, a city near modern-day Haifa in Israel. While under British occupation, they were allowed to live, work and travel wherever they pleased without sacrificing their Palestinian identity or facing severe discrimination. The town had a thriving eastern prickly pear fruit industry.
The Nakba, a term used to describe the displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs, began in 1948 when the newly-created Israeli government displaced 700,000 Palestinians and killed 15,000. Since then, Shahin's family has lived in Jenin.
"My dad was born in the 60s, so he's seen the occupation of Palestinian land begin," Shahin said. "He grew up during the First Intifada, and he has witnessed a lot of revolutionary action in Palestine."
However, this created a generational divide in how Shahin's father has responded to the current climate compared to his children.
"He has become so jaded but also scared, and I think rightfully so because he's seen the backlash and the harm that can befall our family and everything," Shahin said.
"My dad's so scared that he doesn't want (his children) speaking up because sometimes he's scared that it's going to come back to hurt us or that it might affect our family back home. … Me and my siblings are like, 'fuck that.' We don't care what happens to us. We're out here with survivor's guilt being here in America."
Jabbar also pointed out this disparity. "You cannot blame (older generations) for not being as passionate about not wanting to liberate Palestine because they've experienced a lot more than I have," she said.
Lori Francis, a graduate student who researches refugee mental health, said post-traumatic stress disorder is common among refugees. Francis is also a child of refugees from South Sudan.
Francis discussed the impact of generational trauma on those who have most intimately experienced it. "The way (my parents) grew up, it was more so in a fight-or-flight type of environment," she said. "They were in situations where they always had to think of what's next in terms of survival. … They were raising us in fight-or-flight mode, but that's not necessarily what we needed.
"Trauma gets passed upon children or family members in a very interesting way because your parents or your caretakers are doing their best in terms of trying to raise their children, but their best might not be the best for the current environment that they're children are being raised in," Francis said.
Having been relocated to Palestine at 12 years old, Jabbar has firsthand experience being raised in two different environments — that of the Western world and that of the Middle East.
"I went to a school there where everyone there was from America, and they moved to Palestine to learn about their heritage, to learn about their identity,” Jabbar said. “That's normal. My father was born in America, but he was taken to Palestine at age six to learn about his people, to learn about his culture."
Francis said isolation from one's people is a major source of poor mental health among immigrants and immigrant families.
"I found community there in Palestine," Jabbar said. "I found my people."
Francis also said different generations of immigrants cope with feelings of depression and anxiety differently.
"In my parents' generation, mental health just wasn't addressed," Francis said. "They were issues that you prayed over, issues that you hoped that God would fix. I still have my religion, I still use my religion, but I also feel like I have tools outside of that to help me."
Now, 76 years after the Nakba began, Shahin said their family in Jenin has been ordered to leave again — this time to Jordan, a neighboring country.
"My family, who has literally been displaced their whole lives as refugees in Jenin … is being told to displace again," Shahin said. "It's really scary thinking that could happen, and it's like I don't have the capacity to protect them."
Shahin's grandmother died with the key to her home in Sabbarin hanging from her necklace. "When you see shit like that, it just makes you (think), 'Okay, I'm never going to give up the idea that I can return,'" Shahin said. "And as long as I can't return, I need to preserve that culture and history and make sure people understand it because it’s so scary knowing it just can be completely erased."
READ MORE: 'To suppress our voices'
Fighting through complicity
Despite their commitment to help their family in Palestine however they can, Shahin described their tuition money as being "soaked in blood," due to ASU's various financial investments in Israeli entities.
One example they gave was ASU's co-operation with Israeli institutions on a multimillion-dollar research grant managed by the BIRD Foundation. According to its website, the BIRD Foundation "supports industrial (research and development) in all sectors of the hi-tech industry which are of mutual benefit to the U.S. and Israel."
"You look at this BIRD Foundation research grant and it's essentially research for energy and other cyber securities," Shahin said. "And that cybersurveillance research goes directly into oppressing Palestinians in the West Bank."
The University also partnered with weapons manufacturer Raytheon last year for an "engineering design hub" less than three miles north of the Tempe campus. "The new engineering design hub will leverage talent in the metro Phoenix area, housing approximately 150 professional positions — 95% of which will be employees new to Raytheon," an article on ASU's website said.
"I feel like I'm betraying my own country by attending an institution that constantly funds genocide," Jabbar said.
Other than financial investments and partnerships, Jabbar and Shahin feel that the University simply lacks awareness of their community.
"I go to law school," Shahin said. "Our international human rights class doesn't talk about (Palestine). Our prosecuting international crimes class doesn't talk about (Palestine) but will acknowledge Ukraine."
"I think (administration hasn't) directly encountered Palestinian students," Jabbar said. "We're constantly disregarded."
Shahin said they met leadership from the School of Law last year and members questioned how many Palestinian students attend the University.
"They couldn't even comprehend that we even exist," Shahin said.
Despite what Palestinian students would describe as the University's pitfalls, they feel that the pro-Palestine movement has made strides at ASU in the past year. "Part of the Israeli settler colonial project is to completely erase Palestinian identity, Palestinian history and rewrite it and create a national identity around this mythos," Shahin said. "That's started to break down completely because of how aware people are now."
Shahin explained why overcoming the fear of speaking out is so important. "I think part of being Palestinian is just ... you've had so much stolen from you that through generations shit gets lost. ... There's so much history that I don't know. I have to cling onto what is still there."
Edited by Savannah Dagupion, Leah Mesquita and Audrey Eagerton.
This story is part of The Generation Issue, which was released on December 4, 2024. See the entire publication here.
Reach the reporter at evansilverbergrep@gmail.com and follow @evansotherstuff on Instagram.
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