'There is no place for me in Jerusalem': A conversation with a Palestinian Israeli

We sat down in the living room, enjoying two steaming cups of mint tea, for an honest conversation between two Jerusalem residents – one from west of the city, the other from the east. 

By YONATAN VERSTANDIG DECEMBER 28, 2024 08:46

KALANDIYA CROSSING, the main point of entry into the Ramallah area from east Jerusalem. (photo credit: Abbas Momani/AFP via Getty Images)

I invited Mustafa Alian to my Jerusalem home on a cold November evening. His attire, like his calm smile and manner, reflected his easy-going nature. Being invited into a Jewish household did not seem to faze him.

We sat down in the living room, enjoying two steaming cups of mint tea, for an honest conversation between two Jerusalem residents – one from west of the city, the other from the east.

Mustafa, it’s good to see you. How are you feeling tonight?

I’m feeling quite relaxed, to be honest. I’ve never done this before, so I am a bit nervous, but it is the good kind of nervous – the one you get before doing an important thing.

It is important, without a doubt. This is not a common occurrence in this city. It takes courage, and I thank you for having it. Let’s begin by hearing about yourself. Who is Mustafa Alian?

I was born on the Israeli side of Beit Hanina, which is the expansion of the old Beit Hanina on the other side of the fence, in the West Bank. My town is a part of east Jerusalem, and so we are citizens of Israel and have easy access to the Begin Highway, which leads straight into the city. It only took me about 20 minutes to get here [Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood].

I have five siblings, which is pretty standard where I come from. I am 23 and finishing my bachelor’s degree in computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

AERIAL VIEW of Beit Hanina. The Begin Highway can be seen in the distance, separating the Israeli Beit Hanina from the older Palestinian one. (credit: Courtesy Hagai Agmon-Snir)

Are your parents originally from Beit Hanina?

My mother was born and raised in the Ramallah area to a family of farmers. They were simple people who worked the land and sold its produce. They were loving and caring, always sacrificing for the sake of family. My mother followed in their footsteps, always caring for us, until today.

I remember visiting my mother’s parents as a child, passing through rigorous checkpoints that would last for many hours. During periods of escalation, we would, at times, be stuck in the West Bank, unable to return until the roads were cleared.

As I grew older, and with my grandparents’ passing, I stopped visiting my mother’s family in Ramallah altogether. It was just too overwhelming to make that difficult trip over the border and back, especially when you could be caught in the crossfire at any moment.

My father was born and raised in Jerusalem’s Old City to a family that originated from Hebron. They moved to Jerusalem during the British Mandate. His father was a troubled person and could not provide a stable livelihood for his family. The home was lower class, to say the least, and my father had to leave school and start working at the young age of 12.

As the oldest, he bore the responsibility of being the father and provider of his household from a very early age. He decided to be this same strong provider for his own children so that we could focus on our future instead of our survival, like he had to. This was not a simple task. My father’s side is a family of 300, and my household is the only one to have not dropped out of the educational system. That is only two percent.

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I cannot tell you where my parents met. But they got married and moved to Beit Hanina. My father was an Israeli citizen, which granted my mother a similar status. My mother would travel to the West Bank, studying architecture at Bir Zeit University [north of Ramallah]. Eventually, she had to drop out because of the First Intifada, which made traveling back and forth impossible.

The violence of the intifada was so bad that she sadly had a miscarriage as a result of the conditions on the roads and checkpoints. It was at that point that she chose the path of raising her family in Beit Hanina, leaving her past life and dreams in Ramallah behind.

I’m sorry to hear she had to go through that. So, they settled in Beit Hanina and started a family. What was it like growing up there?

My siblings and I would play in the streets with the other children. I was happy and carefree until the others started being hateful and spiteful, choosing power and popularity over decency and kindness. Being mean was considered cool.

 The kids around me would be disrespectful and brazen. I wanted to distance myself from them. I found the computer provided a place where I could be comfortable and worry-free.

I was disconnected from my environment and utterly absorbed by the computer. English was everywhere, and I loved the challenge of understanding this unknown written word.

The world around me did not know English, so the computer was my only available teacher. I wanted to learn as much as was available. Creating a Facebook account was a real achievement for me. Interacting [on the Internet] gave me a thrill like no other.

I was enthralled by American pop culture. Every time I was asked in school about my dream, it was to move to New York and become a software engineer. This has been my dream since the fourth grade.”

How important was religion in your life? 

I grew up religious, even though my parents were not. The first time I saw my father pray was when I was 17! He turned to religion during that time.

School was the natural place to discover Islam. I had always believed in a greater power, and I had looked to Allah in search of that connection. In east Jerusalem, the atmosphere is one where Islam is constantly praised, and I was interested in discovering more of its greatness.

But puberty had changed me completely. I became disengaged from my Arabic environment and culture. I started questioning every previous belief of mine. I challenged every reality and every conception. In truth, it all stemmed from my connection with the World Wide Web.

When online, I was always surrounded by free and open individuals who did not scrutinize or judge me at all. I felt more comfortable with them than I did with my own community. I started seeing everyone around me as a collective that did not challenge any element of their lives. People would blindly follow the path laid out for them. No questions were ever asked. Free will was nowhere to be seen.

I couldn’t be like them. I noticed that religion was overbearing or misused for malicious purposes. Everything always stemmed from religion. Every bad thing that happened was justified by Allah and his teachings. People around me would twist their religious beliefs and practices based on their own preferences, often staining the beauty and kindness of faith for their own greed. I felt like it was just too controlling. It canceled individuality.

Over the next few months, I kept questioning my world and came up with the same conclusion. Islam, in its current form, was not for me. Islam had spiraled out of control, and I did not want to be a part of the storm. Religion was used as a justification for hatred, and I was sick of this hatred that had no end and no good purpose.

I left Islam as a young teenager. I hid my secularism from everyone, as it was simply not allowed. I would still uphold the five pillars of Islam publicly, but inside I was completely uninterested in Islam. Being forced to be a devout Muslim only distanced me more from that world.

However, Islam has many values concerning humanity and family. The traditions of Islam all revolve around being with family and sharing abundance with loved ones. There are many elements of Islam that I believe in and hope to keep for myself and my future family.

Please tell me more about your national identity? 

The recurring wars in Gaza made me hate the Jewish state. My entire Arab society and our Arabic news channels would show the worst scenes and stories from the war. I became afraid of the IDF and the Jewish people.

I was convinced that the evil Zionist entity was hell-bent on the destruction of the Arab way of life. Stories of the sinister occupying Israelis were everywhere.

The computer was a place where I could be exposed to all types of people from around the world. And I soon became quite close with a person online who was an Israeli Jew. I had always expected people to act upon national lines and definitions, but he didn’t.

That was a real turning point for me, and I started seeing people for who they really are and not how they are categorized. Unfortunately, our interaction with Israeli officials is always negative. This negative interaction solidifies the anti-Israeli education and media we receive.

Leaving Islam and discovering the cosmopolitan world online opened up a plethora of questions and curiosities. Once you start questioning parts of your reality and personality, you then cultivate this compulsion to question everything. I started working at McDonald’s and met many Israelis who were good to me. This reality was in direct contradiction to what was taught to us as Arabs.

I kept seeing the Palestinian nationality movement as one that only strives to create animosity and strife with the Israelis instead of finding positive interaction and common ground for a viable solution. The Palestinian narrative views the settlements as a warning sign; if they do not strengthen their own religious identity and defiance to the Israeli people, their entire reality will collapse.

You must understand that the Palestinians are afraid of losing their land, their culture, everything. They are afraid of disappearing from this world. This fear is the fuel that the Palestinian Authority uses to accelerate hate and antagonism among the Palestinian people toward Israelis. That was when I decided to abandon the Palestinian cause. It did not follow the values of goodness and humanity that I hold. I did not believe in this life of fear and hatred.

Was this your state of mind when starting your degree at the Hebrew University?

It feels good to say these things out loud. Yes, I arrived at the university with this state of mind. I knew that I needed a good degree in order to fulfill my lifelong dream of making a living elsewhere, be it in New York or any other Western place, so I enrolled at the Hebrew University to study computer science. I was determined to envelop myself in the world of computers, which I cherished so dearly.

Learning was awful. I was the only Arab student to attend the lectures, since all of the others had stopped coming. We started with 40 Arabs out of 600 students; now only 15 have remained.

We never communicated with the Israeli Jews, who were much older and in different stages of their lives compared to us younger Arab students. Quite frankly, none of us really wanted to engage with the Israelis. And so, we weren’t really part of the university at all. There was no interaction at all; just exams, assignments, and grades.

That sounds like a really rough start. Did things improve?

After the first year, I became a teaching assistant and simultaneously interned at the university’s tech lab, which ultimately forced me to interact with Jewish Israelis. I finally managed to connect with them in real life. I started making new friends with Israelis, with whom I shared many common interests.

For the first time in my life, I had real unfiltered conversations with Israelis who were grateful to interact with an Arab, and that really moved me. I was inspired by this to do the same with other Israelis.

The other Arab students at school were extremely toxic regarding my new relationships. They didn’t hold back their opinions and would constantly try to persuade me not to believe the Israelis, insisting that they are colonizers trying to wipe out my Arab culture and identity.

I chose to distance myself from some and hide my Israeli friendships from others who were closer to me. It was an extremely anxious period; it became so intense that I had to stop going to the campus for a while. This double life was just too much for me to control.

Things are better now – don’t look so worried! My ability to connect with both cultures eventually fell into the daily routine on campus and everyone got used to it, which came as a huge relief for me. I even went to therapy for an entire year in an attempt to find the right medium for coping with reality.

I had this intrinsic feeling of not belonging anywhere. I would hide my identity from the world, and that created a sense of hopelessness and despair. I felt alone and unsure of who I was and what I stood for. Therapy made me more confident and even proud of my identity, regardless of religion and race. It taught me to accept myself for who I truly am.

What a mental journey you’ve endured. What does the future have in store for you, now that you’ve weathered the storm?

The dream – from all the way back in fourth grade – is still there. A degree in computer science has made it more possible than ever before.

I am a Palestinian, and I am an Israeli. I’m connected to both spheres. However, I am simply disconnected from most of these two nationalities, and that is why I want to live abroad. I want stability for myself and for my future family. I want them to be free to choose their own path.

I want them to live in a place that allows for questioning reality. I want them to live in a place where they can be whoever they want, for I could not. In Jerusalem, you are never free. There is no place for people like me in Jerusalem.

I considered heading north to Haifa, Nazareth, Acre, and other places. But after meeting many, many northern Arab students, I could not find anyone who felt both Israeli and Palestinian, [living] in true coexistence. They could not even consider the concept. In their eyes, one identity comes at the cost of the other.

But why not stay? Why not be that person who blurs the lines between these two polar worlds?

I’m sorry, Yonatan, but this is not my fight. I don’t want to be a part of this conflict, and so I can’t be a part of its solution. My views are too alienated from both societies. I could never live freely in Israel or the West Bank, as religion and family are the main factors that root the Arab communities to this land.

The same can also be said for most Jewish communities. I respect many of the values which are upheld by these indigenous lifestyles, but their versions of life are not ones that I share.

The search for national and social identity, coupled with their paramount importance in the daily lives of everyone occupying this land, is too dominant for me.

I do not share this life orientation, and I do not belong to the communities that do.

I’m sad to hear that, Mustafa. I think you could have been an integral part of a real cultural revolution. 

Perhaps you are right. But I still carry the profound belief that real peace in Jerusalem between the Arabs and the Jews is possible. It will take a generation or two, and we will no doubt require some strong leaders who share this vision, but every new generation will bring with it more Arabs and Jews equipped with the acknowledgment of the positive effects that come from the interactions between them.

The next Arab generation will be more embedded in Israeli society in every way. The next Jewish generation will be more aware of the Arab presence in this land. The key is to combine these two worlds and try to build a culture that includes the other side, all while maintaining their individual integrity as two separate identities.

By educating the next generation on the values of respect and equality between themselves and their neighbors, we can begin viewing each other as people of the world, as goodwill individuals, as true equals, and as human beings.

Due to the sensitive contents of this conversation, Mustafa Alian’s real identity has remained anonymous. The name provided here is an alias.