Duke Engage Jordan 2023

We are roughly two weeks into our Duke Engage experience and I can already say this trip has been life altering. Prior to this trip, I have never left America before. I felt frustrated by my lack of community in the states and never felt “at home.” Since being in Amaan, I have met more Palestinians in a two-week span than I have my entire life. I’ve always felt like everything I was learning about my culture was from word of mouth, or by watching videos. People always say that experiencing something is a lot different than viewing it from a distance, and this could not be more accurate. Last week, we visited Peace Wadi and a man named Abu Farris. He told us how he could view his home in Jericho from his front porch but cannot visit due to Israeli occupation. I asked him what it was like growing up in Palestine for the first 10 years of his life and his eyes lit up at the question. He immediately explained how beautiful it was and how much he still longs to go home. He went on to show us the approved construction plans for his father’s home in Jerusalem, which was stolen by Israeli settlers.

Growing up, my parents always tried to keep us educated on our culture and what is happening to our people overseas. I remember being told stories about my grandfather’s mansion that was stolen and transformed into a sugar factory by the Israeli government. I remember my mom telling me about how my uncles were kidnapped and their homes were burned down by Israeli soldiers. I remember feeling so frustrated at the cruelty that Palestinians faced daily. Since being in Jordan, I’d say my biggest struggle is coping with the constant reminder of Israeli occupation. As amazing as it is to meet so many Palestinians, it also feels like a constant reminder of the fact that most of them are here against their will and would not be here if it weren’t for the cruelties of Zionism.

Yet, since being in Jordan, I’ve realized how much joy Palestinians maintain, even in the hardest of times. Despite Abu Farris not being able to return home, he has created a beautiful home and family of his own in Jordan. He has a date farm and a beautiful project being built on his land. We explored his property and were shown an underground “cave” that Abu Farris and his friend built and a building that Abu Farris hopes will eventually become a place to host celebrations and events. I’ve sincerely enjoyed meeting other Palestinians from similar areas as me. In fact, Abu Farris’s wife is actually from my village, Beit Hanina, in Palestine. Everyone that I have spoken to is so excited to tell me about Palestine and pray that I will be able to visit sometime. Despite the fact that they may never be able to return home again, they still hope and pray that I will be able visit and see my country with my own eyes. I’d say the biggest perspective I’ve gained thus far is the perspective of hope and resilience that Palestinians constantly exhibit, and I am so incredibly grateful to all the people I have met thus far that have been kind enough to share their stories with me.

Each time I met a new person during the first week my world view and view specifically on Jordanian identity and the Palestinian plight shifted. From orientation with iLearn staff to meeting Daoud Kuttab to our day trip to the PeaceWadi NGO and even our group discussions while Love Island plays in the background, I felt as though the pieces of understanding the maze through different identities, values, cultures, religions and more were coming together.

Starting during orientation week when we listened to iLearn’s core projects and why they are committed to educating young people in Jordan, I learned so much about the different sectors of Jordanian education (public, UNRWA, and private schools. We learned that in Jordan, the laws for home schooling or leaving school before graduating to take trade jobs or join trade school is very taboo. Kenda (iLearn rep) was even interested in hearing about the differences in public vs. private education in the U.S. Throughout the week we exchanged different ideas and perspectives that challenged my own opinions on education.

For me, meeting Daoud Kuttab, world-renowned Palestinian journalist, was very impactful on my understanding of the fight for Palestinian justice. While we had already begun having insightful conversations on how to approach the conflict in different ways, he opened my eyes to a very different perspective that I haven’t heard very often. He was calm and had a very unapologetic way of speaking and writing. He spoke about using writing as an outlet for the pain and emotion of the situation, but also made it very clear that becoming numb or paralyzed because of the heartbreak that comes with the Palestine-Israel situation is not productive. He said, and it has stuck with me ever since, “the justice of our [palestinians] cause is beautiful, but that does not translate to the land.” He had a very realistic, logical ideology and voice that was very refreshing, in that it felt like an end to the conflict was more tangible.

We had many other experiences this week that led to the diversity in thought and perspective surrounding what it means to be Jordanian and how identity and experience tie into people’s different sentiments around the fight for Palestinian justice. I am really looking forward to learning from others and being able to engage in productive conversations that are more pieces to a fuller picture of Jordan’s history and culture.

Throughout these past weeks, I’ve contemplated on the different perspectives and voices we’ve interacted with, bringing forth the question of Palestinian justice and the various means of achieving such justice. Some offer a rational, political answer of one-state or two-state–a justice that demands compromise. Others turn to immediate mitigation through nonprofit work, while maybe waiting for a justice that means fairness and rightful entitlement. Hearing these diverging stances on Palestinian justice, I began to attempt mentally classifying our own work here with ILearn. Would our work be long lasting? Is grassroots civic engagement trivial against deep seated, political action? From my own deliberation, I believe the virtue of our nonprofit work to be one that forgoes the institutional, bureaucratic, and partisan barriers that often come with political action. At the fundamental level, anyone can help improve another person’s life despite their ideologies. In a way, the marriage of groundwork and political action is so imperative, and both are equally valuable.

I think back to before I started learning about the Israel/Palestine dilemma and how intimidating and daunting this geopolitical issue was to me. Words like “complex,” “polarized,” and “controversial” turn many people away from denaturing it and building their own understanding. When both the messengers of information and the audience are unwilling to piece together the problem, there’s no progress. My education on Israel/Palestine has consisted of readings from think tanks, academic journals, and Israeli

and Palestinian documentary films, but coming to Jordan and listening to different Palestinian stories has added a different dimension to my understanding. From Palestinian activists to regular Palestinian-Jordanians, these people tell a story of something larger than land. Abu Faras sits outside and stare at his childhood home in Jericho across the Jordan-Palestine border everyday. These stories remind me of Kanafani’s Land of the Sad Orange that conveys a message of spiritual and material dispossession that the Palestinian people have endured through the figurative decaying of an orange. Before, I had such a technical grasp of the land and numbers involved with Palestinian justice, but learning with both my head and heart about Palestinian loss and displacement at the policy and community level is something so incredibly meaningful. Beyond the loss of land, there is loss of culture and community, and despite the conflicting approaches to justice, even just learning about Israel/Palestine and listening to stories of the people involved is a step towards finding justice.

“I do not want to stay in Jordan. There is no future for me here.”

Hamza was adamant that Jordan was only temporary for him on our walk to retrieve bread in downtown Amman. Hamza isn’t originally from Jordan but got his degree here and is now a software engineer. 

I met Hamza outside a restaurant run by volunteers. He was playing chess with a sign that challenged anyone to a match. He would buy you a drink if you lasted more than 10 minutes; if you won, he would cover a meal. If he won, it was simply a good game. As an adamant Chess.com lover myself, I was intrigued. Soon enough, he was teaching me each piece’s name in Arabic as we laughed at the discrepancy between our languages. It was a lovely evening, and I felt as though I could stay here forever. On the walk after, he explained why he felt completely differently. 

Hamza talked about how he could not feel settled in Jordan because of how difficult it was to find a secure job. He felt as though, “everyone was a software engineer, but there is only so much software to engineer”. Hamza is not the only one that does not feel that Jordan is the end goal. From our coworkers at ILearn to a man working on his small farm near the Palestinian border, seemingly everyone we met has multiple national identities. At PeaceWadi, we met a man named Abu Faraz who was Palestinian but had to move to Jordan when he was a teenager. Every day, Abu sits on his porch and stares in the distance where he can see Jericho, his birthplace. Abu has built an NGO to catalyze exchange between cultures through ecotourism in Jordan. But it is obvious that his heart still belongs to Palestine. Abu isn’t the only one, more than half of Jordanians are of Palestinian origin. To speak about Jordanian identity inherently means to speak about Palestinian justice. 

In a weird way, it reminds me of America. The hyper-focus on identity in America is like no other. Everyone is not ~just~ American and our media highlights how we are all different from each other. Although the Jordanian culture is not as rooted in non-nationality identities, talking about national identity in Jordan requires political expression. Although a lot about Jordan is foreign to me, the politicization of identities is very domestic. I empathize with how an individual’s relationship with their identity can dictate how they express themselves and what they decide to pursue. Daoud Kuttab devoting his entire life to journalism as a way to fight for Palestinian justice while simultaneously living in Jordan for many years is an example of this. How the government positions itself versus the stories I have heard from residents is particularly interesting to me. 

Transit state is a common term found in refugee policy literature used to describe states that have policies that incentivize refugees to only temporarily stay in that state. Jordanian refugee policies in many ways encourage temporary settlement. It is difficult for a refugee that does not already have citizenship to establish job security, health care is dependent on certain identity cards, etc. But, Jordan is not really a transit state. Jordan has a unique history with Palestinians, has the second-largest Syrian refugee population, and is facing unemployment issues for their own citizens. 33.1% of the Jordanian population are considered international migrants. The feeling of not being just Jordanian is prominent and the fight for Palestinian justice is felt strongly all around Jordan. However, Jordan is not temporary. I truly wonder what it will mean to be Jordanian in fifty years and how/if the government and its policies will reflect it accurately.

This post doesn’t feel complete and I am not even sure if I answered the prompt entirely. But weirdly, that feels fitting for a topic about the nuance of Jordanian identity and the meaning of Palestinian justice.

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