Home Sweet Home.
Immigration is always a part of life. No matter where you live there is someone who is bound to leave his or her homes in the search of something better. No matter how well life is going on for a particular person, they choose to leave it because they are greedy and they want more. Some feel that it is a betrayal to leave their home country. Is it? Not everyone is leaving for simply the sake of leaving. Some leave it because they have no choice and are forced out. Take Palestinians for example: Why is it that some choose to leave this country. Is it for the sake of that they would have better luck somewhere else? Like America, is it easier to make a living over there? Why would you leave their homes when they have all they need in front of them? A good example of someone who thought like that was Raja Shehadeh grandfather’s cousin Abu Ameen: “His cousins were all useless. They wanted to study and after finishing school they left to pursue their education in the United States.” (Palestinian Walks, 21). Abu Ameen didn’t care about his education, he cared about his land. Focusing on making a living in Palestine and to make it more beautiful.
My classmates and I were to visit a place called Battier. Battier is a village that is near to Bethlehem. Battier is an area C village. That means Battier is under the occupation of Israelis. You can see that with all the checkpoints that we passed through during our ride towards it. I felt a little intimated with all these checkpoints and felt like going home but I’m glad I did not, because Battier was a beautiful place. It was a wonderful day. I will always remember the trip to Battier. We were hiking the beautiful mountains and see nature at its best. But you can also see that Israelis influenced it. The first thing you would see is the wall that surrounds this village. It is covering up the view outside it. As we walked further in we saw houses that have been destroyed. There is of course still people that live there, farming. It was a couple of hours until we were done with that and then we went to lunch where we talked to someone about Battier and it’s history. After we were done with lunch, we went hiking on the beautiful mountains after lunch in order to plant olive trees. Everyone was in a group and we had shovels to dig up the dirt to make room for us to plant the trees. After we were done with planting our trees, we put on it a white cardboard box and we signed our names on it. It was a great feeling knowing we were helping make our country more beautiful.
This feeling was intensified after we had made our way down in order to go home. I saw a fellow student talking to an old man. The old man was wondering whom we were and what were we doing there. The student told him about what we have done. The old man thanked us and praised us for what we have done. It was a wonderful feeling to know that I was a part of something special. It made me think about the fact that some chooses to immigrate to another state. Why is that? Why can’t we just live and make life better? We should always remember that others have it much worse than us.
We all want to make our country more beautiful and to never leave it but some of us simply have no choice in the matter. I read in an article called Spaces of Suspension about a man named Salim Shawamre who first lived in Om Alshagaf but was forced to leave to Anata after Israelis soldiers destroyed Om Alshagaf. Salim tried to acquire a permit in order to build a house on the land that Salim owns. Salim built his house three times but it was destroyed because they said he did not have a permit. Salim went again to acquire a permit but they proclaimed to have lost his file, so Salim built his house again without a permit and the Israelis destroyed it once again.
If anyone in Battier wanted to build a house, they might have to worry about being in the same situation as Shawamre faced. Battier is an area that is occupied by Israelis. Would Israelis want Arabs living here? They would any excuse in the book to kick them out from Battier. They would never give them a permit in order for them to build it. They would keep making excuses just like Mr. Shawamre and his family had to deal with.
I have also been with my fellow classmates to a place called Tormosayya. Tormosayya is a Palestinian village. It is located in Ramallah near Birzeit. There we talked to a man who said that eighty percent of its inhabitants have left Tormosayya to live in the United States. That was a really surprising number once I visited Tormosayya. It was so beautiful. Everything there was just a really beautiful sight to behold: the villas there that are surrounded by the huge mountains and the lovely green grass. It was such a beautiful scene to behold. It seems hard to believe that anyone would want to live anywhere other than Tormosayya.
I have been to America myself and I have always preferred Palestine to America. The reason my parents decided to move was because they had a problem with the passports. My dad was born here in Palestine but they took the hawyia from him, which causes him to leave Palestine every month to Amman in order to renew his visa. My parents decided it would be easier to leave Palestine and live in America. They did not want to leave Palestine, and it was a huge decision that was really agreeable to them but they applied. It took them a while for them to give us the passports but finally after many years, my father was able to get his hiwaya and we were able to live in Palestine without any trouble.
I think these are the mostly the reasons why Palestinians choose to leave their beloved country. It isn’t really their desire to do it but more of being forced to. It’s either leave, or have Israelis kick you out for good and no one wants to be kicked out permanently, so they do what they have to do. I wish, and I’m sure many Palestinians wish, that we could live here without all these problems that they face every single day. Until then, many feel that immigration is the answer to their problems.
